Taking the good with the bad.

Today was one of those days when I was reminded about what is great and what is not so great about this place. It is very informal. This morning I went to the City Archives to see if I could get a copy made of a book the city published in 1930 (or 31, that date is kind of hard to pin down). It was an announcement of an international competition to design a new urban plan for the city. I have already found one copy in the City Library, but they are being a pain about copying it, so I decided to see if I could get a copy from another source. The City Archive is an odd combination of old and new. Anything recent is on microfilm with readers available to use. Older stuff (which is anything basically more than 20 years old) is still in hard copy. After discussing with the staff what I was looking for, they gave me their catalog for everything before 1955. It is a little hand typed manuscript catalog of the collection when the archive was was initially created from consolidated collections. Then they basically said, if you can find it in there, we'll get it for you. No nicely cross-referenced computer data base, not even a card catalog. It took a little digging (like about an hour), but I think I found it. It will take them a couple of days to dig it out, and if it is what I am looking for, then they will make a copy of it for me (not sure what it is going to cost).

So, after that I decided to head over to the Croatian National History Museum. Now, I wasn't expecting much because every time I have been here as part of a group operation, we have never gone there. I actually had to go to the tourist info office to get the location since I have been where they guide book says the museum is, and don't recall ever seeing it. That's because it really is pretty poorly marked.

Their exhibition at the moment is "I Gave Gold for Iron" Croatia's participation in the Great War of 1914 to 1918. So, it was a nice little exhibit. The museum is small, but they did a nice job arranging the display. Anyway, at the very end I actually found something that I really wanted to get a picture of. The very last item in the entire exhibit had some old newspaper front pages. One was from an Osijek newspaper, and it had a discretion of the events on the square on 5 December.

So, I asked if I could take a picture, and they said no. Then they got a little defensive (which really wasn't necessary because I completely understand, every museum has its rules, some allow pictures, some don't). So, then they asked me what I wanted to take a picture of and why. When I told them it was just the one newspaper and that I was doing research on the square, this started a debate between two of the staff members. The younger one seemed very adamant about enforcing the rules, but the older (and obviously more senior in position) decided to let me take the pictures.

So, that's the two sides of the system. It is antiquated, and it can take a lot of work to find something that a modern system would spit out in no time. On the other hand, the bureaucracy is much more lax, and if you can provided a good reason for why you want to do something that is technically prohibited, they will usually let you do it.

This picture this time is a model of Zagreb from sometime in the 14th or 15th Century at the City Museum. Just thought is kind of fit the tone of the post.