More Bitching and Moaning from the Land of Local History

Sometimes my paranoia intersects with someone else's incompetence leaving me quite confused.

My little local history book will contain many a photograph, which is part of the whole marketing point of the book since the audience likes pretty pictures (and I'm a huge sucker for them myself, this being the most fun part of the research). Also, the inclusion of images helps the local repositories show off their collections. Well, I worked at a repository that had the two best and largest collections from two of the earliest photographers in the town. Anyone who has seen a historic image from the town has probably been looking at an image from one of these two collections. They document not only the history of the town, but amateur and professional photography during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

In any case, I put in a substantial order for 30 of these images way back at the end of September. The woman in charge of issuing the permission for using these images was oh, so helpful, responding immediately and telling me that, as an employee, I would receive the employee discount. The employee discount was $20 per image (which, incidentally, was the regular rate for pretty much every other repository in the region, but I digress). Then, she came back and said that, no, I would have to pay the full rate of $40 per image. She wasn't too clear on why they had changed their minds. Well, eventually I got another job elsewhere and the point became moot.

October passed, then November. I moved across the country, got an extension on my deadline, and contacted her again in December to see if they had finished my order, then again in January. They had not even begun to compile it on either occasion. The offices were moving around, she explained, so they had not had time to pull together the licenses and compile the images. I smelled the rank stink of bullshit on that, but let it slide because I had the deadline extension and because in her next e-mail she said that they had changed their mind and were going to give me the $20 rate. She also waved the possibility of a further discount if I would allow them to include text from their publicity department in my text. As lovely as the word "discount" sounds to my broke little ears, that arrangement just did not sit well with me ethically, so I declined.

Here it is March, roughly six months after my initial request, and I receive a note from my publisher wanting the images as soon as possible. So, I contacted the woman at the repository again. Would you believe that they had not yet begun the work to get the images together? No excuses, they just had not done it. She finally put the work order in for the scans today. A much smaller repository, run entirely on volunteers, processed a similar request for more images in a week.

I am quite irked by the way this repository has treated me. I never saw them treat any other researcher this callously, even if that researcher were behaving like an ass (and we had one or two that acted like the entire staff was their personal team of research assistants). They certainly did not ignore researchers who were actually publishing something because part of their grant applications and information for donors included statistics on the number of publications that cited the repository. Citations indicated that the repository was useful to researchers and its existence, therefore, justified and worthy of funding.

You would think that I would have an "in" having worked there and being personally acquainted with the people involved. Then, again, maybe their personal acquaintance with me is why they are giving me this runaround! That's where my paranoia comes in. "They hate me," I think. "They are out to sabotage my project!" At the same time, their attitude reminds me of part of the reason that I was unhappy there. The "corporate culture" at the place allowed certain people expertise on a subject and those people behaved as if the history itself were a product that the museum owned. So, maybe they don't have something personal against me, they are just self-important and using that self-importance to cover the fact that they were behaving incompetently.

Meanwhile, in about a month, I allegedly should have a cd with the images, and can send them on to the publisher with their captions. The final product will be lovely, I am certain, and will, with any luck and skill, be exactly the book that I wanted to read six years ago when I first visited the town. The thing might even be in my hands by the time of my thirty-tenth birthday this summer. The thing itself should make the Great Wallow of Self-Pity a much happier occasion.