Happy Birthday For Tomorrow Glenn!

Oh Glenn Mederios, is anything, ever going to change our love for you? Certainly not the fact that you went to university after your chart success and became a teacher and the possible fact that your children are called Chord and Lyric pleases us greatly.






OBVIOUSLY we pretend to be the girl in this excellent video the most: (the balloon bit)









...but we also like to pretend that we are riding a horse on a beach with you and the following song is the Orkney Archive ode to our old, desperately needing a service, soon to be obsolete micro-film viewer-printer which only the archive staff may use.


Nothing will change our love for it.


 Not the wonky focus knob, not the way the lens constantly springs out of place, not the way it snatches the film from our hands and spews it out the other side, not the rubbish way it sucks in two sheets of paper at once and then prints half of a newspaper page on each one....NOTHING will alter our ardent love for it. This one's for you Canon Microfilm Scanner 800! Take it away Glenn...

2B Or Not 2B? Ode To Our Favourite Pencil

I’m the archive 2B pencil

I’ve been here 15 years!

If a reader ever pinched me

Dusty would weep real tears.

You see, I’m dark enough to see,

Yet soft enough to erase,

So I leave no mark behind me

On an archive’s precious page.

I’m this archive’s  trusty friend,

Tho’ I be but old and wee.

To the bitter, shavings-filled end,

Orkney Archive’s faithful 2B!

GWA (Geeks With Attitude)'s Ode To Archiving in Honour Of Ice Cube's B'Day

You are about to witness the strength of geek knowledge...

Straight outta storage, dusty letters from dead dudes,

Catalogued by geeks with attitude

When I'm called on, I get my gloves on,

Open the folder and get my read on,

You too sir, if you read the rules

The archive staff are gonna hafta come and shush you,

If you chat, or get a mobile out,

If you eat a twix or a bun, we'll throw you out,

Readers start to grumble, they wanna copy stuff,

Over five percent and man you've had enough!

Goin off on an archivist like that,

When all she doin is protectin old tat,

So give up the phone,

I'm just doin my job, so no need to moan,

Here's a heavy weight to keep yo stuff flat,

It's in old writin, how you like that?

Paeoleography is the name,

It's just part of the archivin game,

Me n you can make it out, no maybe,

I'm takin records out the box, daily,

Yo weekly, monthly, yearly,

Until them dumb, dusty letters read clearly,

And I'm there with the archival sticky tape,

Sir, you can't fix like me,

So when I'm in the searchroom, you better wait,

Coz archivist is packin up stuff,

As I leave, believe I'm clompin,

But when I come back, I'm comin straight out of storage...

Rapped to the tune of Straight Outta Compton by NWA. There can be no youtube link to such a profanity filled song on this innocent blog, (and our firewall restrictions make it hard for us to access anything related to NWA.) but you probably all own it anyway, I am sure.

Ode to pulling rusty staples from archives and replacing them with colourful plastic paper clips...