The work is... organizing things, mostly. He’s been instructed by his boss, Elias Bouchard, to organize the written statements that have been given through the years; it’s a mess, papers not sorted by any system he can figure out, though the numbers are at least semi-sensical. He has three assistants: Tim, Sasha, and Martin. They’ve been working at the Magnus Institute for longer, but he’s more qualified than them.

He’s also supposed to digitize the Archive: scans, transcripts, audio recordings. It’s a daunting task even before he reaches the first paper that refuses to be digitized. 

It’s from 2011, and it’s notably short. 

It’ll get you too. You can stare all you want, make your notes and your inquiries, but all your beholding will come to nothing. When the time arrives, and all is darkness and butchery, you’ll wish you had stopped listening and run.

It doesn’t matter how he tries to save it to the computer, it just doesn’t work. Saving anything else still works normally. 

Why did they hire a psychologist for this. 

He asks....... Sasha, because for some reason he can't quite understand he has a warm and fuzzy feeling about the name 'Sasha.'

"When I copy this paper to the computer, it doesn't save. All the other files save normally. Do you have any idea what is going on?"

“Give it here?” Sasha tries some things, frowns, tries again. After a while of this (“I’m basically IT for the whole institute,” she jokes) she pulls out her phone, tries speaking it into a recording app. Nothing. Her own laptop gives the same result. 

“...No. I don’t. I’m going to ask Elias what to do with this. You can keep digitizing the other statements while I do that, I guess?”

..........well that's incredibly weird.

He returns to digitizing the other statements. He tries to spend his time wondering why they hired a psychologist for this job instead of a librarian, but instead he can't stop wondering how they would make a statement that couldn't be recorded. Maybe there was a program that noticed that sequence of words and shut them down...? And somehow it was on all their computers? Some sort of bizarre virus?

He spends his lunch break reading about programming and trying to figure out if that is possible. Mostly he learns that regular expressions are confusing.

He finds another statement that won’t save either, after a while. It’s longer, and it’s from a man—Nathan Watts—who claims to have encountered a strange figure floating slightly off the ground that asked him for a cigarette without moving its mouth. Nathan ran. 

This is absolutely bizarre.

...can he summarize what happens in the statement if he puts it in different words.

Nope.

WHAT.

...he sits down and spends an hour and a half devising a code in which particular words of English represent different other words, and then attempts to transcribe the statement in his code.

Nope!

...................he is at an institute for the study of the paranormal and really should not be this surprised at the existence of the paranormal. 

Can he write a note in the documentation that says "some statements were unable to be digitized, please see this folder"?

Yeah, he can do that.

He does that, labels a folder "statements that cannot be digitized", and puts it in an unused drawer of a filing cabinet.

Then he goes to find Elias.

Elias is in his office. “Hello, Lev.”

"...I think there should probably be some sort of training for new archivists about what we know about the paranormal."

“Of course. I’m terribly sorry that we couldn’t get something ready for you before you came in—our previous Archivist died at her desk. In the line of duty, you could say. —She was quite old, we should really have been preparing for this eventuality. I do apologize. Do you have any suggestions?”

"...well, it's hard to suggest things, because I did not actually know the paranormal existed until a few hours ago. I am assuming that there exist paranormal things other than statements which cannot be digitized because that would be a really weird thing to have as the only paranormal thing. But I would really have appreciated knowing that you're looking at things that are somewhat more real than unicorns and the Loch Ness Monster. --Guess I shouldn't assume either of those are fake."

“Of course. Most of our employees start out in Research or Artefact Storage, where they have information prepared on the sorts of things you are likely to encounter—you can ask Sasha if you would like an overview of the things we contain in Artefact Storage, she worked there before being transferred to Research.” He smiles. “As far as I know, there is no truth to stories of either unicorns or the Loch Ness Monster. I believe that Gertrude, our previous Archivist, was able to use tape recorders to make copies of the... problem statements. Perhaps you could try that.”

"...presumably you tell the people in Artefact Storage what kinds of paranormal things there are and do not just surprise them with the existence of magic? I think I'd want to read whatever you use to train them."

“We don’t have a solid understanding yet of what kind of paranormal things exist; much of the goal of the Institute is to find an answer to that question. But yes, you can read our training material for employees going into work at Artefact Storage. Though I should reassure you first that anything you’ll be finding in the Archives will be much safer.”

He passes over a file; it is partly occupied with “yes, this is real, here are some minimally-dangerous artefacts you can use to check” and partly with extensive safety instructions. There’s heavy emphasis on not touching any books previously owned by Jurgen Leitner unless specifically instructed to do so as part of a controlled experiment. 

"...how do we know it's much safer?"

Lev is suspicious if there are books you're not allowed to touch. 

“All the statements are statements of supernatural experiences, written by people off the street who seem externally normal, and most have been here in the Institute being handled for several decades now. None of the artefacts have a confirmed maker, though there are of course various theories, and if they were being handled for multiple decades it would be immediately quite obvious. Really, Lev, you have nothing to worry about.”

Lev has an intense feeling of someone watching him. (If he thinks about it, he’ll notice that he’s had this feeling since he stepped into the Institute, but less intensely than he does now.)

...Yeah okay that's creepy. 

"...can I take some time off work to read this binder and think about it?" he says.

“Of course. Take your time.”

He pauses and notes how watched he feels, then leaves the room and notices how watched he feels, then leaves the Magnus Archives and notices how watched he feels.

It decreases some when he leaves the room, but not much. It disappears as soon as he leaves.