Struggling

I'm not sure why but I've really REALLY been struggling with my latest assignment - and essay on archives.

The question is How 'inevitable' and 'unavoidable' are the restrictions on access? (with the two words taken from a paper in a book about archives.

First off, the paper in question is terrible - worse than terrible! I can't believe it was published.  The author wanders around not really talking about anything in particular and certainly not about access to archives (which I think was supposed to be the focus).  So that was unusable.

So I went searching for reading - have you ever tried to put the words 'access' and 'archives' into a library search (or even Google Scholar)?  Don't! you won't get anything of any worth.

Lateral thinking was necessary for a start on this one - more searching the library databases and I wasn't finding anything worth using (either not relevant (eg. mainly about internet archiving) or so old that I didn't feel comfortable using them).  I checked the reading list from the course - not much there.

The lecturer is lovely, and very approachable, so I emailed and asked her advice.  I got the following reply:-

"Have you tried searching the library for 'archives' and 'access'?"

So, that was useful advice!  I continued searching and reading.

But I found I was really struggling to find stuff - so I emailed again, this time saying that I was worried that what I was finding was either just about improving access by putting stuff online, or was written about museums and libraries (eg. not archives which are different), or was over 6 years old.

This time I got a longer reply, saying that old material is fine, and that she'd done a search for me; she'd been kind enough to copy and past the search results for me - but she obviously hadn't looked at the results as most were over 10 years old and were not at all relevant.

Unlike me, it's now a week before the deadline and I've still not written the bloody thing - I'm getting there, but it's taken it's time and I hate what I've written!