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| The archives gang are breaking up! (sob) |
The Fonds is leaving! Having selfishly allowed himself to age into retirement, he shall exit the building at 5pm today, an archivist no longer. No more cataloguing photos of women spinning and making cheese, no more family history research, no more chasing rowdy teens from the building and no more getting called in the middle of the night when the fire alarm goes off.
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| The old library building. |
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| the old archives |
This is a big loss to the Orkney Library and Archive. The Fonds first came to work at the Laing Street building as the photo archivist in 1986 and was promoted to head archivist in 2010. He takes with him a wealth of knowledge, information and unflappable calmness which are irreplaceable. More importantly, he was the only one of us who could work out the duty rota without being reduced to tears and, not having much of a sweet tooth, he left the buns alone.
The Fonds has contributed posts for this blog over the years and many of them can be seen here. The brighter ones among you will notice that keen music fan Fonds has included many songs titles in the blog headings, a fact which escaped the notice of Dusty and myself for some years.
Covid restrictions mean that there will be no boozy send off and we won't be able to cling to his ankles as he leaves the building for the last time begging him to check the fuse box one last time or at the very least to show us how to scan negatives as we were too busy thinking about Strictly the last time he showed us.
Our plan is to form a (socially distant) choir and warble this out the library and archive windows at him at 5pm GMT. Do join in if you feel like it:
Farewell Fonds! (Although we reserve the right to pester you by phone with all the stuff we can't find/remember/know over the next decade.)
