j’s scratchpad

Tonight, I unpacked a box of dishes that used to belong to my great grandmother. Based on the dates on the newspapers wrapping them, my Mom and I last went through the box about ten years ago. I remember going through the box and repacking the dishes, but I don’t remember it being that long ago. One of the joys of going through the dishes is that my great grandmother left notes stuffed in or attached to many of them giving their provenance. Holding the unique sugar dish with a flower-shaped pedastal is one thing. Reading the note indicating it was a wedding present for her parents (April 8, 1903) is something entirely different. (Wow! I have a dish I know is more than 100 years old!) Not all of the dishes have notes, but several do. The notes add value. I don’t know what to do with the slips of paper if I’m ever using the pieces, though. And not having notes for everything makes me wonder more about the history of the other pieces. Had I a digital camera, I would photograph the pieces with their notes. I could show you the sugar dish and its note. Some of you would get a kick out of the reverse side of the scrap of paper. It looks like some kind of letterhead or sales slip or … I don’t know what with this lettering:

Gillette L (there’s more, but here’s where the paper ends)
Division of the
Merchandise Mart

J. W. Dickenson, Jr.
General Manager

Several of the notes are written on similar scraps. I can’t help wondering what happened to the rest of the paper. The scraps seem like they’re from the same place on each sheet. What happened to the other part of the paper? Did she write notes on that part? Where are the notes?

Anyway …

What notes should we leave for knowledge management and provenance in our workplaces? We know documentation is important. Do we take the time to write enough?

Well, I now can have six people over for tea. Let me know when you’re coming and I’ll put the kettle on.

==Ladies center for the tea cup chain.==

(I can’t figure out how to center text in WordPress, but I did just figure out how to break the display using HTML tags. Wow. It took me years to do that in Manila. Go, me!)

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 8th, 2007 at 2:39 am and is filed under Librarianship. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.