The horrors of photo albums, the joy of wiener dog pictures.

So I've moved onto "part 2" of my current job as a contract conservator/archivist/librarian/etc. "Part 1" involved processing boxes upon boxes of a WWI/WWII collector's archive. It had everything from war medals to books, as well as thousands of photographs and deteriorating cellulose acetate negatives.

"Part 2" will involve the cataloging, rehousing and treatment of several boxes of photograph albums and scrapbooks. And let me tell you, a lot of these albums are not the type that you have the whole family gather around on the couch. Quite a few of them were assembled by soldiers, fighter pilots and other people who saw the horrors of war. The odd thing, though, is that you'll get several pages of smiling family portraits, the family dog...and then a picture of a dead horse. Or a really, really dead baby by a riverbank. Or a close-up of a bullet hole in a guy's arm.

But then, thankfully, I'll get the equivalent of a "unicorn chaser" in the form of a photo of a dachshund, an ostrich or a Victorian-era British guy in drag with a unicycle.