A lesson from a pink folder

Nicola Avallone

A month ago, I went to Italy to visit the archives of the ministry of foreign affairs. I was looking for documents from the various Italian consulates in the US that could give me a lead on how the Fascist Regime organised tourism and how it was presented to the Italian Americans.

This was not my first time at an archive, I already went to the state archives in Rome last summer and had a great time: people were helpful, the folders held interesting sources and everything felt like a very well oiled machine. So, when I approached these, I had my standard set quite high from my previous experience. Well, those standards were not met at all.

When I arrived at the ministry of foreign affairs, I went through security and was given a badge and instructions on how to reach the study room: go right, take the elevator to the 2nd floor and you will be there. And so I did. I turned right and took the elevator to the 2nd floor. I found myself in a wonderful hallway, covered in red carpets and surrounded by tall wooden doors. I thought it was magnificent, so much better than the other archives, so suggestive. I stopped a person asking for directions, and they told me, “No, you’re on the wrong floor. The archives are downstairs, ground floor”.

Mh, ok, I must have misunderstood, let me go down to the ground floor then. There, I stopped another person for information and they were so kind as to guide me personally to the archives. They pointed me at a door and told me to go ask inside.Wonderful! I got inside and asked the person there about the archives and how to request folders and check catalogues. They answered me, “Go through the door on the right, you can ask people there”.

Ok, another door to go through, this time this one has written on the front ‘Diplomatic Historical Archives’. Sounds promising. I open the door, go through it and I am welcomed by a cold, white hallway, completely empty, no one inside. I walk, until a door on my right appears with a sign ‘Electricity Room’ and a door to the left says ‘Plumbing Room’. In front of me I see a series of lockers with folders inside and then it clicked: they sent me down to the storage room of the archives, not the study room. A bit upset about the time lost and the misunderstanding, I proceeded to look for the study room. After some time, I saw a door ‘Library’, and asked them where I should go. They told me immediately where to go and I finally found this study room. But my newly found hopes were immediately crushed again when the archivist greeted me with a buongiorno, followed by, “We’re closing the archives for the next two weeks”. Well, to put it euphemistically “what a bummer”. I was furious, it was not communicated online that the archives would close, only that I was supposed to book a slot due to some renewing ongoing works that reduced the number of seats available.

Well, flashforward two weeks later, during which I went to my beloved state archives hoping to find something interesting, I finally got to hold in my hands the folders I selected for my research, and I proceeded with hunting for sources. I was still frustrated, angry at this system, angry for wasting precious time, under pressure for having my research time basically cut in half, but then, something happened. I was going through a folder when I stumbled upon a small subfolder, in pink paper with a name that did not ring any bells. I took it in my hands and I was about to discard it because it did not seem interesting, until something told me to open it.

Maybe it was curiosity. Maybe I was tired and just wanted to be nosy why some person who in wrote to the Italian embassy in 1935 deserved a full subfolder for themselves, or maybe it was sixth sense. Whatever it was I opened it and found a pamphlet with a series of posters that were gold for my research. And at that point, all the anger and frustration vanished because I remembered why I love this job: buried under tons of papers, I found what I jokingly call ‘the scroll of truth’; that source whose importance is not in the content itself, which may or may not end up in the final draft, but rather is there to tell you, “Hey, you’re on the right path”.

This story about my small misadventure is there to tell you that we, as academics, often feel like we are going towards a dead end and everything is crushing on you. It is, weirdly, a part of our job, to feel like this. But, part of our job is also knowing that somewhere there is always a small pink folder that will tell us, “You’re doing great”.