Today I began a new collection--2009.634, from an anonymous donor with literally no information or collection name in the collection record. It's comprised of 9 photographs, an object, and reams of letters currently lumped under a single accession number that I will need to separate out into individual accessions. Luckily the series description for the letters explains that these are the correspondences between one Connie of New Orleans and five different servicemen during WWII.
I began my work by fleshing out the collection record description, giving it a title, and set about cleaning up the item records for the photographs. For these, I needed to refer to the head of digitization, Lowell Bassett. Per his instructions, for a photo item record I needed to input the format and size, then clean the descriptions of text stragglers from the old Filemaker Pro, and finally selecting and linking local subject headings from the museum's custom thesaurus, topical subject headings from LoC's Thesaurus for Graphic Materials, and geographical subjects from Getty. They were mostly of the same subject, so I was able to ditto many of the fields. I do enjoy picking terms from the TGM, almost as much as writing letter summaries (for interesting letters).
The two folders holding the collection need a few notes to determine the accession numbers of the letters--each gentleman's (and other sorts) letters are consigned to their own subfolder, labeled A-G based on their chronological relation to one another. Because the series D and E are so much larger, their subfolders have been assigned to folder #2, and everything else is stored in folder #1. This means that once I've gotten the items records through subfolder C done, I stop with folder #1 and then resume my numbering with D in folder #2. The when I finish through the end of E, I go back to folder #1 and continue with subfolder F--whee!
Connie's letters represent a diverse set of servicemen from New Orleans, making her collection a unique window into New Orleanians who participated in WWII. There are five of them total, from both the Army and the Navy. They all appear to have been in dating relationships of varying degrees with her, in close succession. All are colorful and articulate, and two write many of their letters admittedly drunk...tres New Orleans. This ability to connect with the past really emphasizes the importance of archives for me, even if the information they hold can be staggeringly large. As a single person doing item level records, the people I read about have had at least one more chance to be marveled at and remembered, long after they are gone. Hopefully these item records will extend them many more chances once made publicly available on the Internet.
Monday, September 21, 2015
July 9th - Arrangement and hierarchy decisions
Today finally saw the Ernie Arnold collection finished...166 items! He never got any more interesting--his subjects continued to be money, writing letters, inquiring after family, suntans, and gift-giving. There were two last flora and fauna letters--one about island trees and one about a single, tiny tropical fish. The chronology he created and that was in the donor file remained far more exciting than the letters, referring to actual combat, explosions, near-death experiences and the like. The self-censoring he did for his mother combined with the descriptive censoring he did for the Navy made this a very bland collection. The most interesting aspect of processing the Arnold collection was by far having to pull the donor file to try to establish his locations for each of the letters so that a fairly accurate geographic subject heading could be included.
Once complete, however, it was time to move on to 2013.507 - The McWilliams collection. This was a small collection of five letters received by the civilian McWilliams from three different men they knew who served in the war. What proved interesting here was that when I opened the collection record in KE-EMu, I discovered an archival collection record and a series record nested within, which is not in keeping with the archives' goals for these items (a refresher: collection and item level records only are what is desired). However, the archival collection and series records contained more detailed descriptions of the collection than the collection record itself. In order to preserve the information, I copied it from the sub-records into the main record. Another decision out of step with the collections I've worked on so far was the arrangement of the letters by authors as opposed to date. This is the first collection I've dealt with where the donor was a civilian sharing correspondence with multiple service people, as opposed to the opposite. Luckily, once I looked through them, the dates on each authors letters didn't overlap at all. I was able to do a simultaneous arrangement by author and date.
Difficult issues with this one have proved determining the unit--the first author didn't have a distinct unit number of any type. When I asked, I learned that we would just leave the unit blank in this case. Verifying unit and location has been the most time-consuming task in making sure the item records are as complete as possible.
Once complete, however, it was time to move on to 2013.507 - The McWilliams collection. This was a small collection of five letters received by the civilian McWilliams from three different men they knew who served in the war. What proved interesting here was that when I opened the collection record in KE-EMu, I discovered an archival collection record and a series record nested within, which is not in keeping with the archives' goals for these items (a refresher: collection and item level records only are what is desired). However, the archival collection and series records contained more detailed descriptions of the collection than the collection record itself. In order to preserve the information, I copied it from the sub-records into the main record. Another decision out of step with the collections I've worked on so far was the arrangement of the letters by authors as opposed to date. This is the first collection I've dealt with where the donor was a civilian sharing correspondence with multiple service people, as opposed to the opposite. Luckily, once I looked through them, the dates on each authors letters didn't overlap at all. I was able to do a simultaneous arrangement by author and date.
Difficult issues with this one have proved determining the unit--the first author didn't have a distinct unit number of any type. When I asked, I learned that we would just leave the unit blank in this case. Verifying unit and location has been the most time-consuming task in making sure the item records are as complete as possible.
July 2nd - My first view of a donor file
So 95 records into Mr. Arnold's collection, I noticed some problems with descriptive fields that might extend through a serious portion of the records I've done so far. The first: I noticed when looking at the collection record out of curiosity, the writer of the letters was listed as an 'Ernest Hebert Arnold'; however, in every single description I'd written and ditto'ed, he was 'Ernest Hubert Arnold'. What a potential mess! But I remembered when starting all of this that Lindsey had told me the existing collection records had been done by employees who were not trained archivists, and could prove sloppy on occasion.
Lindsey said the best thing to do would be to pull the donor file for the collection and see what the original forms filled out by the donor said. The donor files contain all the original documentation for the act of donation and accession, as well as any notes or informational materials provided by the donors to describe the collection (but were obviously not pieces we would archive).
Lindsey said the best thing to do would be to pull the donor file for the collection and see what the original forms filled out by the donor said. The donor files contain all the original documentation for the act of donation and accession, as well as any notes or informational materials provided by the donors to describe the collection (but were obviously not pieces we would archive).
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