Today I finished the container list for the Northern Conference and started on the Southern Conference. I also did some research for the history. The Northern is so much more regimented or perhaps we just received a better submission from them. They had a report for each year and each association had a minutes report for each year. The Southern Conference is much more sporadic. A few of the associations submitted regular reports but mostly it is a random assemblage of letters, programs, and information on projects that were started and not followed through on.

I also found out that the GTU does not use Archivist’s Toolkit for their EAD. David (the asst. archivist) said they found it more trouble than it was worth. I also found that the latest report on Cinda the head archivist is that she will probably be out until some time in April. I guess that she will be there in time  to say goodbye.

Working on precision

The asst. archivist told me that the date ranges I was using would not translate well into EAD. So today I subdivided some of the files to make them more precise. It slowed down my momentum a bit but I want to learn to do it the most efficient way, which is to say “get it right the first time.” I was able to begin on the container list, and made a few notes on the history of the organization.

I believe I have figured out the hierarchy. The division between the Northern and Southern Baptist Conferences is more pronounced than it seemed from my first go through of the records. It might be better to think of them as completely different series, but there are a few outlier documents that are from a different part of the country.

Baptist Collection

I had a productive day at the GTU this week. I finished up the Suzuki box and began on a larger collection. This one is six boxes of records from the Baptist Conference. It is awesome being able to work with records this old, some go back to the 1850’s. I have never worked with records so old. The bound books of minutes in the secretary’s neat handwriting are great.

I am trying to work out the organizational structure of the organization. I am not a Baptist, so this is new to me. It looks like churches belong to associations and associations belong to conferences. Then there are committees for particular issues that may cross over conferences. I have begun putting subject headings on the files, and once I am more confident in the hierarchy I can begin arranging the files.