Saturday morning my archives class got a behind-the-scenes look at the archive of the Oklahoma City Memorial. From an archival perspective, it was very interesting because so a large part of what they’re preserving is atypical — items from the fence (stuffed animals, rosaries, memorial wreathes,etc.), shovels used in the recovery effort, the playhouse from the daycare.

As long as I was able to focus on what the archivist was saying, I mostly managed to keep in an analytical mindset. Even seeing some of the evidence from McVeigh’s trial in Denver wasn’t too bad. But it did get a bit overwhelming when I started reading the labels on the boxes I was standing near, which happened to be of small items — such as Mardi Gras beads and WWJD bracelets — taken from the fence and, on the next shelf down, of unclaimed personal effects from the building itself.

That’s when I started thinking about my trip to the Holocaust Museum and the cumulative effect of spending three hours there one day. How do people work in places like these? It seems like the sort of work that would either follow one home or become completely numbing. The archivist who showed us around said that you get used to it, but I wonder if a certain sense of mission would also be necessary.

Horrific acts can potentially be part of most archival collections, but working in a place dedicated to such a thing would be beyond my abilities. I am very glad, however, that there are people who are capable of it.