Day 14 - the Archives in Konin

This is the kind of day every genealogist loves - a day in an archive.  To make sure we didn't get lost in Konin, our cousin Artur came with us.  It was also helpful to have him to translate with the archive staff.  At first, it was clear that the staff didn't grasp that I've been doing research for 15 years.  I understood the Director well enough to know that he thought we were newbies.  No matter. Within a short time I was able to get across that I knew which records I wanted to look at and wasn't looking for someone to teach me how to do research. 

It is a government archive, so there were several bureaucratic hurdles to jump over, including several documents to sign to say what research we were doing, that we had to complete with a list of records we wanted to make photos of (which needed the directors approval signature), and a separate form for each year of the fond that I wanted to look at.  I limited the number of books to what I hoped was manageable in a couple of hours. 

They only pull books twice each morning, and we missed the first call.  So we waited for about 45 minutes before the books arrived.  The room held 8 desks, one had a microfilm reader on it, which meant only 7 were suitable for metrical books, and all 7 desks were taken.  One lady was already working on books.  Two others managed to get their request in early and were also occupied.  There were 4 of us sitting watching a broken clock waiting for our books for 45 minutes.  Everyone except the first lady were gone by the time we finished. 

We found a total of 17 documents related to our family.  One of the staff stood guard while we made our photos (without a flash, which is fine since flash doesn't make a good photo of a document).  And we were done.  It was a good day.