Between the Bureau and Briscoe

I worked on the Bureau of Public Discussion again this week.  I fixed some missing dates on the finding aid and ended up moving some things around again.  Items such as cash vouchers and requisitions were also deemed unnecessary to keep.  After looking through quickly to make sure, those items were removed.  I also found out that there is more stuff to be added.  One box is from a program the Bureau worked on jointly with the League of Women Voters.  I've decided to make this a subseries within the project files.  With that will also be subseries for the Package Library Service, reference requests, and a general one.  There are also other boxes which have some Package Library Briefs.  Neither sets seem to be complete runs, but by combining the two I think we will have everything.  There are more copies of some of the briefs than what we need though, so those will be discarded.  All of the adding and subtracting is going to take some shifting, so there's that to look forward too!

I also continued to look through Briscoe for sensitive materials.  It's really a lot of fun to look through because it's World War II era.  There is a lot of correspondence regarding professors and students leaving for the service and how to handle this.  There was also discussion about which nationalities should be allowed to attend the university and who should get financial help.  It is really interesting to see the decisions made and the thoughts behind them.  It's also exciting when you can flip through a folder and find correspondence from Alfred Kinsey sending along his studies in human sex behaviors to Briscoe to send to Herman Wells.  I try not to get to involved and read too much, but I do have to read enough to make a privacy call.  Also, it is good to get to know the collection better, at least when I am in my permanent job.  That will enable me to better help patrons. 

It seems like a lot of letters of recommendations for former students of Briscoe when he was a chemistry professor are in his dean of faculties papers, but since he doesn't have personal papers there they will stay.  They are 70 years old, so I'm not sure if a restriction is necessary, but I'm flagging them for now until I get the final word.  Even though it's before FERPA, there is an ethical obligation to protect people.  Carrie told me to think about what I would and would not want people to see.  On the other side of that, though, many of these people are likely deceased and it is interesting to see where people are applying and how they were judged at that time.  I feel like Briscoe's considerations about what are important qualities could possibly have research value.  He was a bit harsh...