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| The item level catalog record for a document in KE-Emu. |
Wednesday, July 22, 2015
June 11th - Description; plus peoples' lives, and history
I guess it would be pertinent to go into all the fields Lindsey has tasked me to fill for description in the item level records, and how exactly I go about getting the information and entering it. At the archives, we use the content management system KE-Emu to create descriptive records at every level.
June 4th - Getting into the first collection
Ah, so my work continues on the letters of the Air Corps pilot trainee...his collection is entirely composed of letters to a friend from Astoria, New York, where it appears they grew up together. This collection in particular was forwarded to the WWII Museum archives from the Florida Maritime Museum, which doesn't collect such items. Unfortunately this makes the provenance cloudy--I was unable to tell who originally might have donated the letters or why--the author, the recipient, or the families thereof.
Each collection is comprised of the personal correspondence of one veteran from any of the services and any other person; generally the collection donors are the family of a serviceperson, and sometimes they are the family of a civilian who corresponded with a serviceperson or persons; sometimes they come from other institutions whose interests did not encompass World War II correspondence. The majority of the collections Lindsey has lined up for me to choose from appear to be consistent correspondence between a member of the armed forces and one civilian, typically a close friend or family member.
The collection number is 2013.331, indicating it was the 331st collection acquired by the museum that year. There are 36 letters total, and I am assigning accession numbers to each of them in the format of 2013.331.0XX. In these collections we aim to assign numbers in chronological order, and luckily these letters are in that order already; however if they weren't, they are all dated by hand and have corresponding post-marked envelopes that could give me a very close approximation.
My pilot friend has turned out to have a roving eye almost immediately. Writing to his friend Mike, he gives a little lip service to the beginnings of pilot training for the Army Air Corps, and then launches into the real news--what the Mississippi girls are like. They will "give you just about anything you want if you buy them drinks and show them a half-way decent time". In a subsequent letter, they are also "slim and pretty, but not they way we like them--built like my Fannie and the girls we know", Fannie being his wife (!). The language and insinuations are there, and this seems to be a topic he wants to discuss with Mike a lot. I guess we'll see...I feel really voyeuristic already!
Each collection is comprised of the personal correspondence of one veteran from any of the services and any other person; generally the collection donors are the family of a serviceperson, and sometimes they are the family of a civilian who corresponded with a serviceperson or persons; sometimes they come from other institutions whose interests did not encompass World War II correspondence. The majority of the collections Lindsey has lined up for me to choose from appear to be consistent correspondence between a member of the armed forces and one civilian, typically a close friend or family member.
The collection number is 2013.331, indicating it was the 331st collection acquired by the museum that year. There are 36 letters total, and I am assigning accession numbers to each of them in the format of 2013.331.0XX. In these collections we aim to assign numbers in chronological order, and luckily these letters are in that order already; however if they weren't, they are all dated by hand and have corresponding post-marked envelopes that could give me a very close approximation.
My pilot friend has turned out to have a roving eye almost immediately. Writing to his friend Mike, he gives a little lip service to the beginnings of pilot training for the Army Air Corps, and then launches into the real news--what the Mississippi girls are like. They will "give you just about anything you want if you buy them drinks and show them a half-way decent time". In a subsequent letter, they are also "slim and pretty, but not they way we like them--built like my Fannie and the girls we know", Fannie being his wife (!). The language and insinuations are there, and this seems to be a topic he wants to discuss with Mike a lot. I guess we'll see...I feel really voyeuristic already!
Thursday, July 9, 2015
May 28th - Learning the ropes
After speaking with Lindsey, it seems that my primary task will be creating item level records for collections of personal correspondence by World War II soldiers. The museum is different from many archives in that it has the funding and resources (qualified volunteers, employed archivists) to push for this level of collection description. Often time, archival description ends at the series or sub-series level, as there are just too many pieces and not enough people. The museum is in the midst of a drive to digitize and make public as many photos and letters as possible, and creating collection records is one half of that task.
Each collection that I will work on has fairly standard description practices at all levels. Each collection has an accession number beginning with the year and followed by the order in which it was received, e.g. 2012.057 would be the 57th collection received in 2012. Each collection is comprised of correspondences and sometimes photographs. My task is to give each letter and photo an accession number, with photos always assigned the first few accession numbers. Written items are then assigned numbers by the order in which they were written, which is typically determined by written dates, or post-marks if the mailing envelopes are included among the items. If a letter has multiple pages or an accompanying envelope, all parts are paper-clipped together using a metal clip separated from the actual items by a strip of acid-free archival paper; I will note that only the actual pages of the letter are counted as parts in the record, however. Lindsey has told me that collections that the archivists work with usually come to the museum in one of a few common states--primarily correspondences, correspondences with a few photographs, mostly photographs, or as part of a completely mixed donation
My first collection is a small one from 2013. It's from a pilot in training at an Army Air Corp base in the South to a friend of his back in Astoria, New York. His letters begin with a description of learning to fly, but almost immediately turn to social goings-on, namely how the local girls are. Which is odd, because he has a wife! I thought passingly about the small dramas I might encounter in reading these letters to describe them, but this is a juicy beginning!
Each collection that I will work on has fairly standard description practices at all levels. Each collection has an accession number beginning with the year and followed by the order in which it was received, e.g. 2012.057 would be the 57th collection received in 2012. Each collection is comprised of correspondences and sometimes photographs. My task is to give each letter and photo an accession number, with photos always assigned the first few accession numbers. Written items are then assigned numbers by the order in which they were written, which is typically determined by written dates, or post-marks if the mailing envelopes are included among the items. If a letter has multiple pages or an accompanying envelope, all parts are paper-clipped together using a metal clip separated from the actual items by a strip of acid-free archival paper; I will note that only the actual pages of the letter are counted as parts in the record, however. Lindsey has told me that collections that the archivists work with usually come to the museum in one of a few common states--primarily correspondences, correspondences with a few photographs, mostly photographs, or as part of a completely mixed donation
My first collection is a small one from 2013. It's from a pilot in training at an Army Air Corp base in the South to a friend of his back in Astoria, New York. His letters begin with a description of learning to fly, but almost immediately turn to social goings-on, namely how the local girls are. Which is odd, because he has a wife! I thought passingly about the small dramas I might encounter in reading these letters to describe them, but this is a juicy beginning!
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