Field trip

I have nearly finished the arrangement of the McAfee Brown submission. I stabilized the newspapers with interleaving. The two folders with drafts of one of his books and some assorted other materials, which I assume are related, I left in original order. I pulled the items I believe are inappropriate for public viewing. And I have begun trying to flatten out the honorary degrees that were left rolled in a box.

The exciting thing is that I was able to go with my site supervisor to one of the seminaries nearby to collect their submission. The 14 boxes were already ready to go when we arrived so it was really just moving boxes from here to there. But still it was nice to have a few minutes to meet a donor and spend some time outside of the library.

Second OAC

I worked two days at the archive today because I took last week off. We were able to get the Baptist papers posted to OAC. http://www.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/c8n29vbb/ . Very exciting.

We spent some time talking about the structure of the organization. They are collaborative with UC Berkeley, allowing cross-registration and library privileges and the like. The individual departments work fairly independently; it seems the head librarian is fairly hands-off. It looks as though I won’t have the opportunity to really spend time with anyone outside of the archive.

I finished bundling the condolence correspondence for the MacAfee Brown collection and began on the second box of materials. It is..well…a mess. Letters, photos, newspapers, and notebooks were all tossed in the same box. I have had to pull out random items such as his expired passport, the bill for the kids’ tuition, a check to the DMV, research for a trip to Scotland. It is a challenge to find order in this submission.

Leaving things alone

I began working on a new collection this week. I am told that this donor has already submitted 300 boxes of materials to the GTU. It includes 200 boxes of books and 100 boxes of archival materials. Apparently the MacAfee family has saved everything related to Robert MacAfee. I was processing hundreds of condolence cards sent to the widow. It was my inclination to pare these down to a representative sample. I found the cards and letters that told of memories of MacAfee interesting, as were those from some prominent theologians. But many of the cards were store bought cards signed illegibly with nothing notable about them. I was instructed to keep everything and arrange it as best I could. I suspect there are some donor relations issues to which I may not be privy.

The correspondence was received over a period of approximately two month, so a chronological arrangement would be difficult. I have decided that an alphabetical arrangement best shows the relationships between the senders and the MacAfee family. I thought it might be best to store the cards and letters open and somehow attach those that have envelops, perhaps a plastic clip or sleeves, but I was told to leave them as they were, they may decide to do that project at a later date. That is where I left off this week.