March 11, 2025
Lunchroom culture at The Wolfsonian depends on when you dine. By 1pm, noon-time chatter about word games and the latest TV series fades, making way for a quieter crowd. That's when you’ll often find metadata specialist Erica Anderson and associate librarian Nicolae (Niki) Harsanyi catching up over their meals or preparing afternoon coffee. Despite their different backgrounds and years on the job, the two share a lot in common. Each works closely with our collections databases—Niki with the library's catalog, and Erica with the object catalog (each accessible through digital.wolfsonian.org). We sat down with Erica and Niki to talk all things cataloging, their daily coffee club, and the ever-frustrating Miami traffic.
Erica Anderson: So, I'm just coming up on 6 months at The Wolf. When I went to lunch on my first day, it was very crowded with a lot of people and voices. I typically don't take lunch very early, so I started coming to the lunchroom at 1pm. Slowly, we started talking to each other and you invited me to the afternoon coffee club.
Niki Harsanyi: We can't have liquids in collection areas (where my workspace is). Otherwise, I would have a mug of coffee at my desk all the time. Coffee after lunch always comes as a reward.
Erica: It's a perfect little break in the middle of the day. We sit and chat . . . talk about how bad the morning traffic was.
Niki: How was it today?
Erica: Coming into work? Not good. Another accident on Florida 836.
Niki: We talk about other things too!
Erica: Of course. I'm slowly getting more and more stories out of you, little by little. You seem to have had such an amazing life.
Niki: I have many stories to tell because I'm old . . .
Erica: I never said that. [Laughs] Not my words. But really, I moved to Florida only 6 months ago, so it's interesting to compare experiences. It's a whole new world for me here.
Niki: I grew up in Romania and lived in places around the East Coast, so it's been interesting to hear about the Pacific Northwest, where you're from.
Erica: What were some of the biggest differences from Romania when you moved here?
Niki: Well, of course the U.S. is big and I noticed that everything was bigger in size. The roads are wider, the cars are bigger. People have a greater mobility here too.
Erica: You've been at The Wolfsonian for 20 years now—what was your first role here?
Niki: Librarian—the same thing I am doing now. I started out cataloging mostly East European books and little by little took on other responsibilities like acquisition recording, assisting researchers, guiding fellows, and so on. Almost everything except budgets.
Erica: It's funny how similar our roles are. We both do cataloging, just in different departments.
Niki: Yes, and we both spend a lot of time working in databases. It's all about structuring information in a way that makes sense.
Erica: I think people would be surprised by how much goes into inputting objects to our records. You can't just drop something off on our doorstep and run away—we need a lot of information. Right now, I'm doing a lot of going through the database searching for inconsistencies and incomplete records. It's a process of exporting all of that data out, correcting and adding information, and importing it back in. It's a lot of back and forth.
Niki: So, you fix records that I created. [Laughs]
Erica: Maybe someday! I haven't worked on the library's records yet—right now, I'm focusing on the object collection. Eventually, I'll move over to help with library cataloging, too.
Niki: That will be helpful. We still have a backlog of accessioned materials. Some records are just basic placeholders, but at least they're in the system and searchable.
Erica: That's key. If something isn't findable, it's as if it doesn't exist. My work ensures objects don't get lost in the system—without proper cataloging, information gets separated from objects, and years later, no one knows what they are. Then someone has to start the research all over again.
Niki: It's the same for the library. A record needs to show exactly where an item is stored, and it has to be searchable. We try to attach at least 5 subject headings to each record.
Erica: What was cataloging like when you first started?
Niki: I learned how to catalog in library school, and those principles haven't changed much. The technology has evolved, but the fundamental process is the same.
Erica: Did you ever do work digitizing catalog cards?
Niki: No, thankfully The Wolfsonian's library records were always digital.
Erica: You've missed out! I've had to work with older systems before. At my last museum, half the collection still relied on paper catalog cards, and we were digitizing them by hand. It was a massive job—sometimes the typewritten records were illegible, or someone had used shorthand that no one could decipher.
Do you have a favorite book from the collection?
Niki: Actually, it's over there—it's Fortunato Depero's bolted book. Instead of a traditional binding, it's held together by two aluminum bolts. It's a Futurist book about graphic design.
Erica: I didn't even know books could be bound like that!
Niki: They can be. I should say that generally, I'm not someone who likes classifications, like favorite this, favorite that. There are a lot of good books in this collection.
Do you consider yourself a collector?
Erica: I am a collector. I don't necessarily collect one kind of thing, but I grew up with a mom who loved antiquing. She was always collecting antiques and refurbishing them, so her house is covered in old stuff. I do the same—I go to antique stores but mostly for little things. The one thing I collect a lot is old bottles, specifically ones that still have labels. I love the old labels; they're always on medicine bottles of some kind, often quite strange and wild. Do you collect anything?
Niki: I stopped, but I collected postcards and classical music records as a teenager. I also used to smoke a pipe, so I have a small collection of various pipes, short and long.
Erica: That's really cool! I try not to hoard things, though—I donate a lot so that someone else can enjoy them.
Niki: I'm the opposite. I developed this vice that I don't like throwing things away. Whenever I have to get rid of something, I really have to think about whether it could be reused or not or so on.
Erica: Maybe that's why we're in cataloging—we're both invested in preserving things!