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.