What does an archivist do?
An archivist is essentially a specialized librarian. We manage a specialized collection that maintains an archival history of UCSF buildings. Building plans are kept for the life of each UCSF facility; our oldest ones are hand-drawn plans on linen of UC Hall from 1915.
We were early adopters of an industry-wide move to transition from paper to digital files of building plans. I oversaw the digitization of an entire Plan Room. Everything is indexed and coded by the UCOP retention policy schedule. Whatever isn’t digitized is stored in one place offsite. When people need information that we have stored offsite, we can get it delivered the next day.
How did you become interested in this work?
I always liked architecture, travel, and architecture photography. My father was a mechanical engineer and taught me how to read blueprints. When I was a grad student in 1998, I joined UCSF as a temp, only intending to help organize for a few months. After they saw I was actively interested in the work, I got hired for what was called Capital Projects.
Why is archiving important?
This university has been around a long time, and some buildings have been remodeled often. I think of my role as a real-life search engine – I can find the original structural data with a robust database of any other information you need, such as the year a retrofit was done, who performed the work, and seismic information. It would be a mess to try to go through hundreds of thousands of sheets of drawings to get this information manually; the original drawings of Genentech alone are about 1,000 pages.
For me, customer service is paramount. I will get a call, “Helen, I really need to find the plumbing on this floor so I can fix a leak,” and I treat it like a priority. I feel like I’m providing an important service to UCSF.
I spent most of 2020 working toward creating a central archive, one place for all info. If you want to remodel Moffit, why should you have to go to two different archives? It’s finally coming into place. I’m proud to be a part of making that happen. I will have left behind a good, solid useable database.
