A Tale of Two Collections

I feel like I'm well on my way with the Newell and Eleanor Long Papers.  I'm at least getting somewhere!  I was really excited last week because I found two reel-to-reel audio tapes. 

I'm taking an audio preservation class this semester and we were told that one day you're going to open a box and find this  and you need to know what these are and what their risks are.  I opened the box and did know what they were.  I even knew what all the information on the boxes meant and that one was professional quality and the other was an off-brand (from Bloomington).  I could tell some slight preservation concerns, but overall they seemed stable.  They will be at the ALF which should help.  I enjoyed having class meet internship for the day!  They will be left with the collection, but marked on the finding aid clearly so that both researchers and archivists are aware of their presence. 

I finished foldering all of the unfoldered materials and entered what I had into Word so that I could visualize what I had better and move stuff around there before physically moving it.  One folder, however, is not like the others.  The collection is mainly comprised of scripts, musics, programs, etc. from shows that this couple wrote together.  He was a music professor and she taught English courses.  Then there is a folder about Legionnaire's Disease.  In this last week I have learned more about Legionnaire's Disease than I ever thought possible.  Apparently there was an outbreak around 1978 in Bloomington, particularly with people who had stayed and the Indiana Memorial Union.  It was really a horrible thing.  Around 39 people got sick and a few people died.  This folder had notes that looked like they were from meetings on the topic, correspondence regarding the disease at IU, reports, and newspaper clippings.  Basically a subject file about Legionnaire's Disease at IU.  Unfortunately I could not tell the involvement of the Longs or why they had this information.  I developed two theories: either one of them was on a committee about it or one of them had it.  I began with the reference files in the reading room.  I looked through two folders of information to no avail (besides feeling like an expert on the outbreak a bit).  Carrie recalled some information that the archives has from the ALF and I looked at that today.  From that I was able to find a list of names of all those who got sick and a list of the people who were on a special task force.  Neither list contained a Long.  I still have a theory that Newell Long could have been on the IMU Board of Directors, but I also feel like I've spent a lot of time not finding out much about why this folder is in the collection.  It's been a lot of detective work.

Now to the Jewish Studies Collection.  I haven't touched this in awhile, it's still waiting to be completely complete and needs to be looked over.  Carrie did point me towards some folders that may have (and did have) sensitive information.  By not carefully looking at each item in each of the folders (per MPLP) I missed some student information and information with social security numbers.  With more experience I will learn where to look for these immediately.  I now will know to look at folders similar to these.  One set of folders contained information about an essay scholarship contest.  Each folder had the winner from that year, with their student id numbers.  Whoever thought that it was a good idea to have social security numbers as student id numbers really must have hated future archivists.  A potentially innocent document can instantly become sensitive because of a student id number that is really a social security number.  Anyway, I hope to reach the experience level soon to recognize potential risk areas while using More Product Less Process (MPLP).  This was the first collection that I processed using that method, so it's been a learning experience!