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Transcription: [00:00:05]
{SPEAKER name="Felix Lapinski (interviewer)"}
Nancy Pope by Felix Lapinski on July 6, 1996 at the Smithsonian Memories Tent of the 1996 Festival of American Folk Life. Welcome.
[00:00:13]


{SPEAKER name="Nancy Pope"}
Thank you

{SPEAKER name="Felix Lapinski (interviewer)"}
And nice to see you. And tell me what is your association with the Smithsonian Institution?
[00:00:20]


{SPEAKER name="Nancy Pope"}
Well, I first came to the Smithsonian in October of 1984. And I was at the museum of American History in the National Philatelic Collection.
[00:00:31]


{SPEAKER name="Felix Lapinski (interviewer)"}
Oh wow.

{SPEAKER name="Nancy Pope"}
And I came here from the Library of Congress and I had been looking for a job at the Smithsonian, which was my goal in life.
[00:00:39]
And was very, very excited about getting any job at the Smithsonian. I had applied for 3 or 4 different ones. And finally I got a phone call saying "We have your application, will you come for an interview at the National Philatelic Collection?".
[00:00:52]
So I said yes, I'd be there and got the time and date. Put the phone and called a friend of mine and said "What does Philatelic mean?
[00:00:59]


{SPEAKER name="Felix Lapinski (interviewer)"}
Oh, ho, ho. You had never been involved with that before?

{SPEAKER name="Nancy Pope"}
Not at all. I had no idea at all what the word even meant.
[00:01:06]


{SPEAKER name="Felix Lapinski (interviewer)"}
Oh, I see.

{SPEAKER name="Nancy Pope"}
And she said "Stamps". And I just put the phone down and put my head on the desk and said "Stamps", oh my God.
[00:01:12]
[[laughs]]

{SPEAKER name="Felix Lapinski (interviewer)"}
[[laughs]] It didn't turn out so bad after all, I bet you.

{SPEAKER name="Nancy Pope"}
No, no. I did, I got the job and..
[00:01:19]


{SPEAKER name="Felix Lapinski (interviewer)"}
What did you, what did you do there?

{SPEAKER name="Nancy Pope"}
Well, my job was sort of pseudo research library. I lived in the library at that point for the collection. It was housed in the offices of the Philatelic Collection.
[00:01:31]


{SPEAKER name="Felix Lapinski (interviewer)"}
Oh, where are they?

{SPEAKER name="Nancy Pope"}
At that point it was on the 4th Floor of American History.

{SPEAKER name="Felix Lapinski (interviewer)"}
huh, huh [[agreement]]

{SPEAKER name="Nancy Pope"}
And the exhibits were on the 3rd Floor.
[00:01:38]


{SPEAKER name="Felix Lapinski (interviewer)"}
Oh, I see.

{SPEAKER name="Nancy Pope"}
And we had offices that were back, back behind every single locked closed door you could find.
[00:01:44]
We were very secure. We and pneumesmatics, the two divisions and very hard to find. And you had to get through locked doors to get to both of us.

{SPEAKER name="Felix Lapinski (interviewer)"}
Is that right? Yeah.
[00:01:53]


{SPEAKER name="Nancy Pope"}
My office was in the library, itself. And so I spent a lot of time reading and, um, discovering that
[00:02:00]