A couple of weeks ago I got a request from a writer for a multi-part interview we had in our oral history collection with a well-known regional artist. I hate getting requests from writers or reporters of any streak because the concept of planning ahead is completely unknown to them. They always need the information immediately, their requests are rarely, if ever, straight forward, and, of course, they haven’t bothered to contact me until the last possible minute.
But I did the best I could for this patron. The artist’s interview ran to eleven tapes and had a 130-page transcript. I offered to look up the specific information that she wanted and then just send her those pages, but, no, her inquiry was not that focused. It wasn’t, in fact, focused at all and nothing would do but that she had to have the complete transcript. Attempting to read through a book-sized transcript 24 hours before your publication deadline is pushing it, but I figured that perhaps she was looking to glean some good quotes for her article.
So I moved heaven and earth to get this patron the transcript. That movement of the spheres required long-distance hand holding via e-mail and multiple checks of the Postal Service package tracking service. But the patron was appropriately grateful to receive the material and I promptly forgot the whole thing. Until yesterday when I received a complimentary copy of the publication.
Pleased by the unexpected gesture, I flipped through the journal to see the results of my labors. The article I had busted my chops for was one page–one page!–in length, filled with an absolute minimum of biographical information on the artist, and included only one quote and a partial one at that. To add insult to injury, when I checked the citation list, the patron had referenced the interviews as being owned by the Gondorian Archives instead of the University of Arnor.
Yes, the Gondor Archives does own a copy of this collection, but were they the ones that sweated blood to get her this transcript? NOOOOOOO!
What kind of writer, you may ask yourself, puts other people through a great deal trouble in order to get information she could have gathered from a reputable encyclopedia and a few periodical articles–and then doesn’t cite her source properly? The kind that will shortly be missing a head, my friends.
