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.