Other Wind
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Preservation Warrior!

I’ve been looking back over my list of funny things that have happened at the Archives since I’ve been there. Most of them probably aren’t that funny to non-archives staff, but I think that everyone might enjoy this one.

Now, we get a lot of calls from people who mispronounce the word archives by blending the “ch” instead of saying it like a “k”. I can understand this mistake, since most people don’t deal with archives very often and since that’s the way the word looks.

But the Knox County Arcade?

I bet this person was referred to us by someone else and just misunderstood the word archives, but even if that is the case, I don’t think I would believe it if I heard someone say my important records were kept in an arcade.

I don’t know what tickles me more—that the person really thought we were called the Knox County Arcade or how disappointed they must have been when they realized that they wouldn’t be able to play Pole Position while we located their old school records.

I was kind of disappointed too, when I realized the possibilities we were missing. Just think of the games we could develop….

ARCHIVAL DESTINY—a Pinball game that chronicles the life of a record from creation to placement in cold storage

PRESERVATION WARRIOR—a spy shooter game in which the player protects an archivist who carries the US Constitution

What else can you think of?

We recently finished celebrating Tennessee Archives Week 2002, a time during which archivists across the state were supposed to promote public awareness of archives and preservation. I think the Archives Arcade would be great publicity. And hey, it’d be fun for me too (on my lunch breaks of course).