{"id":180,"date":"2021-07-30T08:30:24","date_gmt":"2021-07-30T15:30:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/hardfeelings\/?p=180"},"modified":"2021-07-30T07:20:35","modified_gmt":"2021-07-30T14:20:35","slug":"talking-to-archivists-2-surprise-emotion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/hardfeelings\/2021\/07\/30\/talking-to-archivists-2-surprise-emotion\/","title":{"rendered":"Talking to Archivists (2): Surprise, emotion!"},"content":{"rendered":"

This post, co-authored with project research assistant, Christina Mantey, is part of a series of posts we’re writing over the next few weeks that will explore some of the emerging themes in our research on the emotional dimensions of archival work. We’re calling this series “Talking to Archivists” because it reports on our analysis of interviews with 29 archivists and working professionals\u00a0<\/a> on grief and other emotions in archival work, on their preparedness for such work, and on resources that support it.<\/p>\n

Checking out codes<\/h3>\n

In our last post<\/a>, we described the iterative coding work we’ve completed over the last year. Our next task in this process is to continue to analyze the ‘data’ within each code to look for further patterns and themes, and to determine how codes can be refined and understood in relation to each other. During this process, we expect to combine some code categories, to rename or redefine others, and to identify significant themes, ideas and concepts that can help inform our understanding of how emotion is involved in and impacts archival work. In some of the next few posts, we’re going to dig into a couple of the codes as they stand now to give a sense of what the archivists and records professionals we interviewed told us about the emotional dimensions of their work.<\/p>\n

Feeling surprised and unprepared<\/h3>\n
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“It was a bit of shocker to me that this was a component of my work. Certainly I don’t remember it coming up when I was studying.”<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

When participants described their experiences of grief and emotion in the workplace, they frequently described feeling surprised and unprepared for the emotional dimensions of archival work. This is a theme we\u2019ve discussed in conference presentations and elsewhere on this blog, but it still seems like a good place to start our discussion of codes in this series – to begin with the acknowledgment that the emotional dimensions that were the subject of our research are – or at least, have been – underemphasized in archival education and professional discourse and therefore may come as a surprise when they are encountered on the job. ‘Feeling surprised and unprepared’ was a code that emerged during our multiple readings of the transcripts and we applied it in 21 of the 27 participant transcripts we coded.<\/p>\n

When we look at responses tagged with this code, we find a substantial list of aspects of archival work that were surprising including, but not limited to:<\/p>\n