Exciting News!

The Borns Jewish Studies Program Collection, my first collection of my internship, has been approved!  I just had to add a couple of dates and it was ready to be cataloged.  Today while I was working on my new collection I heard Dina going through the steps of cataloging it.  I just looked and it's in IUCAT, IU's online card catalog, and it's there ready to be used!  The five boxes with just paper got sent out to the ALF.  The box with VHS tapes is still in the archives for now, but the new ALF has a lovely area for films to be stored.  Someday that box can move there, perhaps.  The new area is temperature and humidity controlled ideally for materials on film, instead of paper.

Today I also got to help with a reference question.  It involved going through President William Lowe Bryan's correspondence and pulling out letters to or from K.P. Williams.  I learned that Bryan's papers are actually divided into two collections, covering the first and last part of his presidency.  Bryan was president from 1902 to 1937, so that is a very large span.  The first collection has correspondence organized by sender.  Carrie noted that had to have taken dedication and a lot of time.  I was working with the second collection.  It was divided into sections such has "Willi" which contains correspondence from people with the last name Willis, Williams, Williamson, etc.  They are then divided chronologically, but individuals are not separated.  I took all of K.P. Williams out and he will now have his own folder, as a few others already do.  In theory if this process is repeated for all the individuals it could eventually match the first collection.  But for now researchers looking for correspondence between K.P. Williams and Bryan can have it all in one convenient folder!  I found it fun to look over this correspondence because Bryan began each letter, "My dear ...." and ended them, "yours truly."  We should bring that kind of language back, my dear readers.

I also dove into a new collection.  It is the papers of Herman T. Briscoe, Dean of Faculties from 1940-1957.  The collection is already processed and has an html finding aid the archives website.  My job is to clean it up.  I'm surveying the folders to make sure that there isn't anything that should be restricted, such as tenure discussion.  Hopefully this helps to hone my privacy skills.  Also, the html finding aids tend to get forgotten, so it would be great to get it prepped to become and EAD finding aid, which are kept in a separate place.  There are 23 boxes, though, so I am now surrounded.

Week Two in Review

This week I almost finished the Jewish Studies Program records.  It's so close!  I spent the first part of the week arranging the container list based on my processing plan, then I rearranged the folders in the boxes.  IU Archives attempts to adhere to More Product Less Process by not re-foldering unless it's necessary.  This does greatly speed up the process as most of the files are in good shape.  I did run into a small problem with the adhesive labels that came on the folders.  The problem being that adhesives don't really stay adhesive but instead fall off leaving you label-less.  Files that once had labels then had to be relabeled, but luckily the container list made this pretty easy.  I also began removing photographs from the collection so that they can go upstairs to live with Brad, the photograph curator.  I made a copy of each photograph to leave in the file and copies of identifying  information to go with the photos.  I also recorded from where photographs (and negatives) were removed on the finding and recorded it in the separated materials portion of the finding aid.  It's important to track where things are so that things can be found later.

I also spent time working on the description parts of the finding aid.  I wrote an abstract, a scope and content note, and an administrative history.  The abstract was the easiest for me as it was just a short description of the program and the collection and I feel like quite familiar with both now.  The scope and content not was not hard, but the language feels weird.  All I really had to do was write how the collection is organized and where things are.  To write the administrate history I used the reference file on the program. The archive has various files on IU departments, programs, events, buildings, and some people.  This one was filled with newspaper clipping about the program from over the years that provide good historical information.  I also explored the program's website to get some more current information.

Now what is left.  I still need to go through and check the floppy and zip disks for important information and then possibly remove those.  I also need to reorder the folders some more.  I tried my best to stick with original order.  Original order shows how the individual, department, or program kept their records, which can be useful for a researcher to observe.  However, original order doesn't always make sense when you are trying to find something.  That was the case, as I feared it might be, with this collection.  At first I was excited because there actually appeared to be an order to the original order.  But, the subject files contain a number of materials that should actually be contained within the administrative files series instead.  I will spend Monday trying to sort that out.  How it is ordered now may have made sense when it was used in the office of the Jewish Studies Program, but now that the files will be used for research a slightly differed order will be more beneficial to the researcher. 

If all goes well I can start on a new collection next week.  It will be personal papers and I'm excited to see how this differs from the program records.  I also need to get to work on my readings that I need to do for my internship.  I tried to pick articles out and went to the SAA's journal American Archivist to get some ideas.  The problem is that about four articles seemed really interesting and useful and they are all on different topics.  I may end up with an eclectic array of readings.