curling negs and METS

This week at AAMLO I have developed something of a rhythm. I found that when scanning negatives, as I have been, that as the equipment warms up that the negatives tend to curl. So, I have been scanning 10 or so at a time and stopping to work on something else for an hour while the scanner cools again.
We have worked out the snippets for out METS they are small and annoying but necessary. There is just getting approval for the unlimited Dropbox account between us and getting the digital objects up on the OAC. I can't wait to see the end product.
It is interesting how quickly I can get used to the repetition of entering the metadata. The first few seemed to take forever to enter but after 4 or 5 I was rolling right along.

Good week

This has been a good week. I received my ACA exam results. I passed, Yeah!
I began volunteering at MPDSF this week. I am planning on going in twice a month. I just went in for an interview but ended up jumping right in and working. I started easy; just re-foldering clippings from the SF Opera. Just a little something to dip my toe into this extensive collection and indulge a little of my curiosity. I was fun to see photos of  photos of young Beverly Sills, so pretty.

SAA conference

Made it to New Orleans. I spent the weekend sightseeing and today is the first day of the SAA conference. It is a light day as such things go. I vised the Amistad archives on the Tulane campus. They have actually more staff than I would have expected. Full time, part time, and grant positions.There is a large processing area and nice stacks on tracks. They use Archon, which I haven't tried yet. Collections go back to the 18th century.
I would like to see AAMLO grow to that sort of capability. Hiring an archivist this year is a big step in the right direction but with some additional resources it could be a real force in the area.
Back to the conference. I will spend today deciding which sessions I want to attend. It is easier for me to do that now that I have the actual booklet than it was when I was looking at the PDf. The ACA exam is tomorrow morning. I hope I have studied enough. I guess I will find out.

Starting to digitize

I got to work on digitizing the Roberts collection this week. It was great to put some practical experience to all that I had been reading about. It is so much easier to understand and remember histogram and bit rate, for instance, once you have actually used them. It is not as dry as my research would suggest.
We have not yet been able to get the METS working, it is some problem with the CaliSphere protocols. I don't entirely understand why yet. I am hopeful that once I get to actually do a few wrappers that I will know better.
On a different topic; I tested with the state archives a couple of months ago but apparently didn't pass the oral interview. So, I took the test for program technician last week and passed. Today I saw a posting at the Secretary of State department. It is my plan to try starting there as a tech and once I have a better understanding of the workings of the various departments that I will try again. Anyway, it is a plan.

Turner posting

Finally finished the Morrie Turner finding aid last week. I was able to do the EAD from beginning to end, posted on the OAC and entered it in Archivist's Toolkit. So far I don't see why it is so desirable to be able to use Archivist's Toolkit. It seems a useful thing and pretty easy to use. Of course I have not explored its full functionality yet but I think I could pick it up quickly.
I am very proud to have finished this finding aid from beginning to end. During my internship I was able to enter mostly the overview section into OAC. This time I was able to get the container list, series, sub-series levels. And the beat your head against the desk until you figure out the error message, argh! The archivist had a great idea on that, just copy and past the error section and look at just that. You can even look at it in larger type. Made it so much easier to pick out the problem.
Check out my posting.
http://www.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/c83n24mg/

On the same page

I met the new archivist at AAMLO and am pleased to see that we are on the same page as to the direction we need to head in. Thanks to DACS standard his finding aid template is only slightly different from mine. We want to get our finding aids up on the OAC as soon as possible and we (meaning he) need to get our donor files in order, many deeds of gift and such are non-existent.
I was telling him how much I wanted to take a class in XML but could not afford the classes. As it turns out he use to teach it and volunteered to help me. I am very excited to get started on that next time I go in. How awesome is it to have my own tutor?

New beginning

So I finished school and forgot all about keeping this blog. But now I am realizing that I am starting to forget what I have been working on professionally since graduating.
I have been working, well volunteering at AAMLO twice a month since graduation. I have been arranging and creating finding aids. I have completed the finding aid for the Henry Delton Williams (Motown costume designer) and am currently working on the finding aid for Morrie Turner (creator of the Wee Pals comic strip).
AAMLO has been without an archivist for several years. They re-opened the position this summer and I applied for it but did not make it as far as the interview. I am afraid I was eliminated because I don't yet have ACA certification as was requested in the job listing. I am planning to take the test at the next SAA convention. One of the requirements of getting the ACA is that the archivist have one year as a professional, allowing up to one year to complete the requirement. Since I am a former student and current volunteer I don't think I am meeting that requirement. I am just hoping to have some position in time for the next exam, then a year later I will be good to go. I joined a study group this week.
At any rate, I do understand why I didn't get the job. It is a head of archives position and I really should have a few years as an assistant first. AAMLO hired a new archivist who started this week. I look forward to meeting him the next time I go in. I think we could work together and really increase the accessibility of the collection and make it the primo institution of its kind in the area.
I have enjoyed these past few months, catching up with friends and with my sleep. Now it is time to get back to work. Maybe try to fit in a class. Let's call this a new beginning.

winding down

There was not much new to report this week. I tried uncurling the degrees and awards from the McAfee Brown collection that had been stored scrolled, with some success and moved them to a large flat box. I added the container list to the existing in house finding aid. Much of my time was spent trying to identify people in the unlabeled photographs in the collection. I was able to identify a few people beyond Rev. McAfee Brown, but most people will remain anonymous.

I had a few items to add to the Nuclear Disarmament finding aid. I added the Scope and Content and the Abstract. It is unlikely I will be able to 100% complete this collection. The archive is expecting the donor to include a copy of her thesis which was based upon the work she did with the Nuclear Disarmament Project. So the collection will stay open until that is added.

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.

Week of firsts

The donor of the nuclear disarmament collection I have been working on added a VHS tape to the collection this week. I was able to digitize the tape and transfer it DVD. The GTU uses Adobe Elements. It was a new program for me but it was easy to use. I added some basic metadata and added the DVDs into the collection boxes.

The exciting news is that they posted the first of my finding aids on OAC. The Suzuki collection is available at http://www.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/c8tm78gd/. The Baptist collection is still in testing, but should be up soon. It was a very exciting week full of firsts. I am starting to feel like a real archivist.

steady rhythm

We were able to enter the Baptist collection container list into the EAD finding aid. It was confirmed as valid and the supervisor will check it for other errors. He believes that we will be able to publish two or possible three finding aids onto OAC before my next status report.

I continued work on the Nuclear Disarmament Project collection. I found that this collection includes a number of press clippings about the group. The GTU handles these by using interleaving between the sheets of newsprint, rather than photocopying as some other institutions do. This seems a reasonable step. Copying and replacing newsprint can take a lot of time and not necessarily add that much life to the document. The interleaving will prevent them from discoloring each other. I typed the container list into the Word document. Next week I should be able to enter the context information.

I have got a good rhythm with processing the records. I think I should try to look outside the processing room more at the overall workings of the GTU. I certainly needed the hands-on time with processing but I need to remember there is more to running a program than processing.

Take the time to do it right

This week we were able to make a few corrections to the EAD for the Suzuki collection and enter the collection level data for the Baptist Convention. The supervisor will look over the Baptist EAD and then we will be able to add in the container list to the record. I am anxious to get it posted on OAC but it will be worth the time to get it right.

I completed re-foldering the Nuclear Disarmament collection. The collection was organized by function: Activities, References (letters), and Peace Pastoral (a letter from the Council of Bishops calling for peace). I opted to retain the original order. On my next work day I will begin on the in-house finding aid for that collection.

Donor Relations

This week’s EAD progress was hampered by not having the current version of the software on the computer I was working on. The supervisor should have the right version installed by my next working day.

I began processing a new collection in the interim. It is a collection of mostly educational materials which the church used to teach about nuclear disarmament. It is pretty well organized I believe original order will be best in this case. I am mostly re-foldering and removing rusty clips and such.

On a different subject, I was able to spend some time talking with the Asst. Archivist about creating relationships with donors. We talked about how it often takes years to move from first contact to finally taking possession of records. It is not only convincing the donors of the institutions ability to care for the records, it is about the donor giving up their own responsibility for the records. They may have had possession of their records for 25 or 50 years. At that point the donor may be facing their own issues of mortality and immortality. Do they even want their records available after they are gone? 

First EAD

This was a good week. I finished the container lists for the Baptist Convention and was able to enter the Suzuki collection into the OAC. Well at least I began I finished entering the metadata. And I saw the EAD. I believe there is a proofreading step before it is officially posted. I love being able to do this. I have made more use of the LOC title and subject headings than I thought I would. Here is just the first part of the EAD.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>

  <!DOCTYPE ead (View Source for full doctype...)>

- <ead>

- <eadheader langencoding="iso639-2b" scriptencoding="iso15924" repositoryencoding="iso15511" countryencoding="iso3166-1" dateencoding="iso8601">

  <eadid countrycode="us" mainagencycode="CBGTU">suzuki.xml</eadid>

- <filedesc>

- <titlestmt>

  <titleproper>Inventory of the Suzuki, Lester Eisaburo Collection</titleproper>

  <titleproper type="filing">Suzuki (Lester Eisaburo) Collection</titleproper>

  <author>Angela Noble</author>

  </titlestmt>

- <publicationstmt>

  <publisher>Graduate Theological Union Archives</publisher>

- <address>

  <addressline>Graduate Theological Union</addressline>

  <addressline>2400 Ridge Road</addressline>

  <addressline>Berkeley, California, 94709</addressline>

  <addressline>Phone: (510) 649-2507</addressline>

  <addressline>Fax: (510) 649-2508</addressline>

  <addressline>Email: lglenn@gtu.edu</addressline>

  <addressline>URL: http://library.gtu.edu/archives/</addressline>

  </address>

  <date>© 2011</date>

  <p>Graduate Theological Union. All rights reserved.</p>

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.

First day

This week I spent my internship day reading the policy manual and then processed a small collection, the Suzuki collection. I cleared away the rusting clips, moved everything into folders and arranged it. The GTU uses MARC standard which I have read about but not used. It is not so different from Dublin core except when it comes to the subject field. I had to skip over that as it seemed to need more familiarity with the classifications than I have.

I can see how this will meet competencies d and e but it remains to be seen how we will meet f. I really wish the head archivist was back, but she is not expected to return for another month. She continues to be out on disability leave. She is consulting with the asst. archivist by phone. I am sure this will work out, but can’t help but feel that something is missing.