This was a short week (only 2 hours) because I presented a paper, The Harbinger of White Supremacy: The Clarke Courier, 1869-1877, at the Graduate Association African-American History Conference in Memphis, Tennessee on Thursday, September 10th. In order to get to get to Memphis at a reasonable hour and get a good night’s sleep, I left Hattiesburg at 3pm on Wednesday.
Despite the limited amount of time spent in the archives this week, I think Wednesday was a turning point. Cindy and I decided to shift once again the nature of my processing. The end of last week’s blog notes my frustration with the pace of work. Between photographs, newspapers, and slides, and then writing everything down, each folder took an agonizing amount of time to complete. At that plodding rate, it just didn’t seem like I could possibly describe more than 5 or 6 boxes (roughly 20% of the collection). While this would be useful and well done, such an end result stunk from a personal satisfaction standpoint.
Cindy had a few observations. First, she noted that my minimal processing was actually somewhere between minimal and full. To expedite the work, Cindy suggested, I needed to engage in true minimal processing. She recommended that I process the whole collection first and, if after I was done and had extra time, then go back and refine the details. Cindy observed that a solid framework for the finding aid is important both for the researcher and potential processers in the future. This minimal processing at least allows the user to get a sense of each file folder, if not a more a more absolute assessment of its worth like my earlier processing might provide.
What does this mean? Well, now instead of recording every detail of each folder, I note only as much as is necessary to help the user determine the subject, the period of time, and the mediums enclosed. In this minimal processing, I do the most rudimentary of conservation, taking out staples and paper clips and straightening out folds. The biggest change is that in this new processing I stop labeling photographs, removing newsprint and moving the material of each manila folder into an archival folder.
The take-away point is this: Begin processing activities with a mind to DESCRIBE the collection. What is it, when is it, why is it important and so forth. Preliminary description allows later preservation, conservation, and organization to go quicker. It also makes it possible for the original archivist to leave the project with the confidence that a colleague can pick up where they left off without much trouble.
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Monday, September 14, 2009
Week 3 (September 2 and September 3)
At the end of Week 2, I finished my first box! While this was a nice milestone, it also cast a rather ominous pit in my stomach. It doesn’t take a mathematical genius to realize that if there are 32 boxes in a collection, and it takes me 2-3 weeks to process each box, I’d need about five more semesters to finish with the Mary Ann Wells Papers (not to mention having to write the finding aid). With the real potential that I might only actually process five or six more boxes, at the beginning of Week 3 I decided to switch my focus to Wells’s subject files. I think that these, more than the slides, negatives or photographs will be what scholars and researchers want the most when they access the collection. It is important that I remember that all my work is for naught if it doesn’t both preserve the Mary Ann Wells papers in perpetuity and improve user accessibility.
If I began working on the first box of the subject case files with hopeful optimism, by the end of Wednesday the collection bestowed upon me “enthusiastic dread.” On the one hand, I continue to enjoy my archives internship, so each day is unremittingly positive and I am ready to work hard. What Day 5 demonstrated to me is that even minimal processing is not necessarily quick and easy. I thought I could get through half the box this week, but only succeeded in processing 31 folders out of maybe 100 in the box.
Content - I knew before I started that each box of Mary Ann Wells’s subject case files contained a mix of negatives, photographs, newspapers, correspondence, and drafts. Until I got started, however, I had no idea what processing each of these mediums really meant and that, in some instances, it might take as much as 20+ minutes to process a folder.
1. Negatives – These are the most straightforward and take no time at all. For the finding aid I include how many pages and how many total images there are and whether the page holding them needs replacement in the future.
2. Photographs – I thought these would be pain-free and quick to process, but I was wrong. Last week Cindy reminded me that for each photograph that I found in the subject case files, I would need to enter it into a separate photo log. Not only did each item in the log need a title [M445-1, M445-2, etc.), but also a short description. This entry needed to be both in the finding aid and in pencil on the back of each photograph. I processed 23 photographs this week.
3. Newspapers - When Linda Matthews did her practicum this summer, the general practice with old newspapers was to photocopy the originals and then recycle them. Newspapers are highly acidic, so their preservation is not always feasible or cost-effective. However, as Cindy noted, because photojournalism in newspapers was Wells’s medium, we decided that it was important to save two copies of all oversize (legal size or above) newspaper articles. Processing newspapers was time consuming because I needed to copy the bibliographic information for each newspaper article into my notes and onto a folder marker.
4. Drafts – Mary Ann Wells typed many of her drafts on acidic continual feed paper. She also glued separate parts together. Where it was necessary, I photocopied the originals and then recycled them so.
I finished Week 3 with even more trepidation than when I began. I didn’t even fill one archival box with ten hours of work product and I was not even 1/3 of the way through the first subject case file. With this in mind, Cindy and I agreed to look next week at what I was doing and see if I needed to make a change in my processing for the remainder of the semester.
If I began working on the first box of the subject case files with hopeful optimism, by the end of Wednesday the collection bestowed upon me “enthusiastic dread.” On the one hand, I continue to enjoy my archives internship, so each day is unremittingly positive and I am ready to work hard. What Day 5 demonstrated to me is that even minimal processing is not necessarily quick and easy. I thought I could get through half the box this week, but only succeeded in processing 31 folders out of maybe 100 in the box.
Content - I knew before I started that each box of Mary Ann Wells’s subject case files contained a mix of negatives, photographs, newspapers, correspondence, and drafts. Until I got started, however, I had no idea what processing each of these mediums really meant and that, in some instances, it might take as much as 20+ minutes to process a folder.
1. Negatives – These are the most straightforward and take no time at all. For the finding aid I include how many pages and how many total images there are and whether the page holding them needs replacement in the future.
2. Photographs – I thought these would be pain-free and quick to process, but I was wrong. Last week Cindy reminded me that for each photograph that I found in the subject case files, I would need to enter it into a separate photo log. Not only did each item in the log need a title [M445-1, M445-2, etc.), but also a short description. This entry needed to be both in the finding aid and in pencil on the back of each photograph. I processed 23 photographs this week.
3. Newspapers - When Linda Matthews did her practicum this summer, the general practice with old newspapers was to photocopy the originals and then recycle them. Newspapers are highly acidic, so their preservation is not always feasible or cost-effective. However, as Cindy noted, because photojournalism in newspapers was Wells’s medium, we decided that it was important to save two copies of all oversize (legal size or above) newspaper articles. Processing newspapers was time consuming because I needed to copy the bibliographic information for each newspaper article into my notes and onto a folder marker.
4. Drafts – Mary Ann Wells typed many of her drafts on acidic continual feed paper. She also glued separate parts together. Where it was necessary, I photocopied the originals and then recycled them so.
I finished Week 3 with even more trepidation than when I began. I didn’t even fill one archival box with ten hours of work product and I was not even 1/3 of the way through the first subject case file. With this in mind, Cindy and I agreed to look next week at what I was doing and see if I needed to make a change in my processing for the remainder of the semester.
Sunday, September 6, 2009
Week 2 (August 26 and August 27)
Original Order
The name of the game in week two was original order. At the end of week one, I came up with the following plan for the Mary Ann Wells papers:
Series I Correspondence and Work Product
1. Date - Move all files in the 3 accessions only identified by date here and order them chronologically.
2. Alphabetical – Move all files in the 3 accessions with a title into alphabetical order.
3. Combine all untitled and miscellaneous files.
Series II Oversized Materials
Series III Books and Research Notes
I was pretty confident that this would be the plan when I presented it to Cindy on Wednesday, the 26th of August. Here was something that would be intuitive for researchers, even if it wasn’t perfect. Why have folders in different boxes and series across the collection for different towns in Mississippi, when one subject alphabetical heading could be “Mississippi” with each town Wells mentioned in the state as a subfolder.
Cindy listened patiently as I explained my idea, even though inside she must have been doing somersaults. When I finished, her first question was something to the effect “What about original order?” She reminded me that my job was not to reinvent the wheel and completely dismantle the Mary Ann Wells Collection and build it back up however I thought it should look. How easily I’d forgotten, Cindy lightly reprimanded, that original order is one of the foundational principles in the archives profession. It is up the researcher, utilizing an excellent finding aid, to discern whether the order of documents in a collection mean something. Although my plan turned out to be abysmal, Cindy did an excellent job redirecting my energies. Instead of moving the physical files about, it was my job to do minimal processing and incorporate as much information as possible into the finding aid. She also reminded me not to over-think what I was doing. There were a couple of things working in my favor. The organization of the collection was already largely laid in place. Also, there wasn’t much time to fool around. At this point I still felt I could finish a majority of the collection, but to do so required sound decisions and efficiency every day.
The new plan:
Series I Assignment Case Files
Series II Slides
Series III Photographs
Series IV Negatives
Series V Oversize
Series VI Books (and book research)
This illustrates well where I was going wrong with the first draft. I wanted to integrate Series I-IV instead of acknowledging the power of a finding aid to sufficiently tie them all together.
Processing
Week two I processed 39 folders (2 boxes) of slides. This doesn’t seem like much progress for about 9 hours worth of work, but there were a number of mitigating factors that, at the time, I hoped wouldn’t repeat themselves in subsequent weeks.
1. Where to do the work. I prefer to work in the vault space sequestered away behind the unprocessed boxes. It is quiet and there is no clock, which helps me focus and makes the time fly by. The only problem with this is that I have to take handwritten notes on each folder I process and then transcribe it into the computer. This effectively cuts my processing time in half as I copy and edit my notes. For example, Day 4 processing ended at about 2pm because I need the next 3 hours to process the last box. I tried bringing my laptop in, but it does not have sufficient battery power to last five hours in the vault. I think that in the future I will transcribe the notes at home, but keep a log in case I run a little short with my internship hours for the semester.
2. One folder does not equal five minutes of work. I did not realize how time consuming processing would be. Perhaps I am too slow a writer, but copying the information longhand, assessing the preservation needs, and labeling the new archival folder took a long time. And, I kept making mistakes. I realized after about 20 folders that I was labeling each folder with the accession number, not the “M” number.
3. How true to Wells’s folder description and provenance should the archival folder and finding aid be? I think I asked Cindy about 100 different variations on each of these questions for the first 20 folders I processed. I wish I could tap her well of infinite patience, because I had a difficult time understanding how to deal with each contingency. I think that after my initial foibles, I lost my nerve to take a little initiative and be confident in my decision-making. The result was some serious micromanaging. On the other hand, I think the rapid-fire question and answer was helpful and I got a much better sense of what I was supposed to be doing.
4. I began with the slides (Series II) because I thought they’d be better for getting my feet wet than Series I. Unfortunately, it is all relative and I had just as many difficulties processing this first box of material. By starting with Series II, I soon realized I could not label the archival folders with any box number. I had to make a note to backtrack and add that information at the end of the internship. Wells also organized her slides by the serial number of the role developed. This created invariable headaches as I tried to decide just how to describe the available information.
The name of the game in week two was original order. At the end of week one, I came up with the following plan for the Mary Ann Wells papers:
Series I Correspondence and Work Product
1. Date - Move all files in the 3 accessions only identified by date here and order them chronologically.
2. Alphabetical – Move all files in the 3 accessions with a title into alphabetical order.
3. Combine all untitled and miscellaneous files.
Series II Oversized Materials
Series III Books and Research Notes
I was pretty confident that this would be the plan when I presented it to Cindy on Wednesday, the 26th of August. Here was something that would be intuitive for researchers, even if it wasn’t perfect. Why have folders in different boxes and series across the collection for different towns in Mississippi, when one subject alphabetical heading could be “Mississippi” with each town Wells mentioned in the state as a subfolder.
Cindy listened patiently as I explained my idea, even though inside she must have been doing somersaults. When I finished, her first question was something to the effect “What about original order?” She reminded me that my job was not to reinvent the wheel and completely dismantle the Mary Ann Wells Collection and build it back up however I thought it should look. How easily I’d forgotten, Cindy lightly reprimanded, that original order is one of the foundational principles in the archives profession. It is up the researcher, utilizing an excellent finding aid, to discern whether the order of documents in a collection mean something. Although my plan turned out to be abysmal, Cindy did an excellent job redirecting my energies. Instead of moving the physical files about, it was my job to do minimal processing and incorporate as much information as possible into the finding aid. She also reminded me not to over-think what I was doing. There were a couple of things working in my favor. The organization of the collection was already largely laid in place. Also, there wasn’t much time to fool around. At this point I still felt I could finish a majority of the collection, but to do so required sound decisions and efficiency every day.
The new plan:
Series I Assignment Case Files
Series II Slides
Series III Photographs
Series IV Negatives
Series V Oversize
Series VI Books (and book research)
This illustrates well where I was going wrong with the first draft. I wanted to integrate Series I-IV instead of acknowledging the power of a finding aid to sufficiently tie them all together.
Processing
Week two I processed 39 folders (2 boxes) of slides. This doesn’t seem like much progress for about 9 hours worth of work, but there were a number of mitigating factors that, at the time, I hoped wouldn’t repeat themselves in subsequent weeks.
1. Where to do the work. I prefer to work in the vault space sequestered away behind the unprocessed boxes. It is quiet and there is no clock, which helps me focus and makes the time fly by. The only problem with this is that I have to take handwritten notes on each folder I process and then transcribe it into the computer. This effectively cuts my processing time in half as I copy and edit my notes. For example, Day 4 processing ended at about 2pm because I need the next 3 hours to process the last box. I tried bringing my laptop in, but it does not have sufficient battery power to last five hours in the vault. I think that in the future I will transcribe the notes at home, but keep a log in case I run a little short with my internship hours for the semester.
2. One folder does not equal five minutes of work. I did not realize how time consuming processing would be. Perhaps I am too slow a writer, but copying the information longhand, assessing the preservation needs, and labeling the new archival folder took a long time. And, I kept making mistakes. I realized after about 20 folders that I was labeling each folder with the accession number, not the “M” number.
3. How true to Wells’s folder description and provenance should the archival folder and finding aid be? I think I asked Cindy about 100 different variations on each of these questions for the first 20 folders I processed. I wish I could tap her well of infinite patience, because I had a difficult time understanding how to deal with each contingency. I think that after my initial foibles, I lost my nerve to take a little initiative and be confident in my decision-making. The result was some serious micromanaging. On the other hand, I think the rapid-fire question and answer was helpful and I got a much better sense of what I was supposed to be doing.
4. I began with the slides (Series II) because I thought they’d be better for getting my feet wet than Series I. Unfortunately, it is all relative and I had just as many difficulties processing this first box of material. By starting with Series II, I soon realized I could not label the archival folders with any box number. I had to make a note to backtrack and add that information at the end of the internship. Wells also organized her slides by the serial number of the role developed. This created invariable headaches as I tried to decide just how to describe the available information.
A Little More Reflection on the First Week
I apologize for falling behind (it’s only Week 2!!!) and not establishing a regular schedule of blog posting.
There was more to the second day of my internship than looking at Mary Ann Wells’s case file and taking in the scope of the collection. It was also the day that I moved the collection from its place in the shelving to the processing desk. This may seem a pithy event in the grand scheme of the archival experience, but actually, upon reflection, it was a significant moment. Picking up each box conveyed a wealth of information. In my effort to be careful I came to appreciate the size of each box, its weigh, the texture of the cardboard, the physical space the collection took up on the processing table (I couldn’t even fit it all on the table), and even the strain on my muscles. Moving the boxes made the Mary Ann Wells Collection my project. It was easy to gloss over the size of the collection on day one when they were all on the shelves, but now I knew these were not mere labeled boxes on a box, but full to the brim. Without this transitional experience, I don’t think I would have had the right sense of urgency to get started. That said the second week really began in the waning moments of the first.
As you may recollect from last week’s posting, the most daunting part of officially selecting the Mary Ann Wells papers for me was just getting started. I took the first baby steps with about half an hour left on Day 2 (Thursday, August 20). After pondering the assembled boxes for a good 15 minutes, perplexed as to how I could combine 3, I opened the boxes to see the existing organization. There were two boxes of slides, 3 boxes of negatives, and 3 boxes of photographs (all ordered by subject alphabetically) in the first accession. Four oversize boxes contained a chronological record of all Wells’s photojournalism for the Hattiesburg American. There were also 6 boxes of her assignment case folders arranged alphabetically by subject.
For some reason, when I started thinking about how to organize the collection, I forgot original order completely. I think the reason for that is that I momentarily forgot that I was at an archive, not in my room organizing old schoolwork. As I wrapped my mind around trying to grasp just what it was I was dealing, I really thought hard about the most logical way, not the archival method, of organizing the collection. My idea was to integrate everything into the organization Wells created for the assignment case folders. The fact that Wells and the last archivist chose to organize the boxes alphabetically pretty much made the choice for me that my processing would follow suit. Despite the fact that the preexisting organization shouted out “I’m fine,” I could not get my head around what each series of the collection would be. My first thought was that the organization of each series of the collection would be by medium, but the fact that the assignment case folders contained a mix of negatives, photographs, newspapers, and documents tossed an intellectual wrench in that idea. Below is my first plan
Series I Correspondence and Work Product
1. Date - Move all files in the 3 accessions only identified by date here and order them chronologically.
2. Alphabetical – Move all files in the 3 accessions with a title into alphabetical order.
3. Combine all untitled and miscellaneous files.
Series II Oversized Materials
Series III Books and Research Notes
Thursday, August 27, 2009
Week One (August 19 and August 20)
Day 1
Though there is some advantage to reflecting on things as they happen, I think there is also value in digesting the experience and waiting a little while to put it in a better context. For example, now that I’m actually in the second week of my internship and doing some minimal processing of a collection, the idea of minimal processing is not as abstract as it was when all I had for reference was my textbook and preconceptions. What I’m trying to say is that perhaps my blogs for this practicum will not be raw like the stream of consciousness one might see in a journal, but hopefully a bit more measured, organized, and thoughtful.
The first day of the internship was like the first day in any new environment: lots of information, too many names, and decisions about the future that seem far too important to make with a just a few hours of experience under the belt. The internship began with a tour of the building, which mainly meant getting acquainted with the various professional spaces on the third and fourth floors. I am also doing an internship for Dr. Kyriakoudes at the Center for Oral History this semester, so I have a decent grasp of that area in the bowels of McCain. Professor Ross introduced me to all the staff members and then returned me Cindy to go over the basic rules and procedures of the institution. I spent an hour reading through the manual to reinforce some of the basic principles. I wish I could say I have the guide down pat, but that is never completely the case, so I’m happy that Cindy made me a copy to refer to when I’m in a pinch.
The concluding activity of day one was to select the collection I wanted to process for the semester. Cindy gave me the case files of 4 collections of personal papers and 2 collections that required transcription. I love transcribing old journals and letters because it is challenging and you get to read the contents at the same time. However, I’ve had some experience doing this, so I decided, all else being equal, that my internship would be best spent working on physically processing a collection. Cindy did an excellent job selecting a variety of potential projects, allowing me the option to work on either the papers of a musician, educator, photo-journalist, or family business. I looked at the case files for each one of these subjects and decided that it was the collection of the photo-journalist, Mary Ann Wells, which best suited my interests. With a mix of slides, negatives, photographs, correspondence and newspapers, this was a collection that could provide me with the greatest range of processing and maintain my interest for an entire semester.
Day 2
At the end of day one, I selected the Mary Ann Wells collection to process. Consequently, I spent my second afternoon at the Archives trying to figure out just what I’d gotten myself into. I began by reviewing the case file again. I think (purely speculative) that an archivist, almost like a character actor in Hollywood, can do their best work when they immerse themselves in the details of their subject. I’ll qualify this by saying the archivist, also like the actor, must keep the rules and the objectives of the project foremost in their mind – it just helps to have an idea of with whom or what you must deal. The case file on Mary Ann Wells was definitely not a complete biography, but it did help me begin to get a sense of the woman that I used as I began processing and which I plan to borrow from as I write the finding aid biography.
I think it takes a unique type of person to recognize the body of their work as having an innate value worthy of preservation. Mary Ann Wells’ three gifts to the Archives speak to the importance of her photojournalism and Wells’ dedication to its preservation. One testament of the esteem with which people in Hattiesburg held Wells is evident in an 8 January 1991 letter, where University archivist Terry S. Latour wrote Roger Brinegar that "[Wells’s] articles and photographs provide us with many insights into the culture and history of Southern Mississippi. In particular, her features for the Hattiesburg American highlighted people, often not widely known, who contributed significantly to making the area culturally unique." This was a woman who not only had the pulse of the community in the palm of her hand between 1977 and 1981, but had the foresight and vision to save these records and donate them to the archive almost a decade after the fact. Afforded accolades and acknowledgements by many others, I hope to capture my own glimmer of Mary Ann Wells as I process her collection.
This collection will be a challenge. The most difficult aspect of day two was mapping the scope of the collection and then deciding where to go from there. Wells’s three accessions (1990, 1990, 1997) totaled 32 boxes. On the plus side, the collection was already roughly alphabetical organized by Wells and a previous archivist by medium (there were separate boxes and folders for slides, negatives and prints). However, where to go from there? I was unsure just how much minimal processing entailed. Would I have to identify each slide and photograph individually? Could I change the original order to integrate the three accessions together? I like to complete projects, but at this juncture I also started to realize that perhaps I’d bitten off more than I could chew. I finished day two pondering befuddled, but not disheartened. One of my favorite clichés is that everyone starts somewhere. The first few weeks will be two steps forward, one back, but eventually everything will work itself out.
Though there is some advantage to reflecting on things as they happen, I think there is also value in digesting the experience and waiting a little while to put it in a better context. For example, now that I’m actually in the second week of my internship and doing some minimal processing of a collection, the idea of minimal processing is not as abstract as it was when all I had for reference was my textbook and preconceptions. What I’m trying to say is that perhaps my blogs for this practicum will not be raw like the stream of consciousness one might see in a journal, but hopefully a bit more measured, organized, and thoughtful.
The first day of the internship was like the first day in any new environment: lots of information, too many names, and decisions about the future that seem far too important to make with a just a few hours of experience under the belt. The internship began with a tour of the building, which mainly meant getting acquainted with the various professional spaces on the third and fourth floors. I am also doing an internship for Dr. Kyriakoudes at the Center for Oral History this semester, so I have a decent grasp of that area in the bowels of McCain. Professor Ross introduced me to all the staff members and then returned me Cindy to go over the basic rules and procedures of the institution. I spent an hour reading through the manual to reinforce some of the basic principles. I wish I could say I have the guide down pat, but that is never completely the case, so I’m happy that Cindy made me a copy to refer to when I’m in a pinch.
The concluding activity of day one was to select the collection I wanted to process for the semester. Cindy gave me the case files of 4 collections of personal papers and 2 collections that required transcription. I love transcribing old journals and letters because it is challenging and you get to read the contents at the same time. However, I’ve had some experience doing this, so I decided, all else being equal, that my internship would be best spent working on physically processing a collection. Cindy did an excellent job selecting a variety of potential projects, allowing me the option to work on either the papers of a musician, educator, photo-journalist, or family business. I looked at the case files for each one of these subjects and decided that it was the collection of the photo-journalist, Mary Ann Wells, which best suited my interests. With a mix of slides, negatives, photographs, correspondence and newspapers, this was a collection that could provide me with the greatest range of processing and maintain my interest for an entire semester.
Day 2
At the end of day one, I selected the Mary Ann Wells collection to process. Consequently, I spent my second afternoon at the Archives trying to figure out just what I’d gotten myself into. I began by reviewing the case file again. I think (purely speculative) that an archivist, almost like a character actor in Hollywood, can do their best work when they immerse themselves in the details of their subject. I’ll qualify this by saying the archivist, also like the actor, must keep the rules and the objectives of the project foremost in their mind – it just helps to have an idea of with whom or what you must deal. The case file on Mary Ann Wells was definitely not a complete biography, but it did help me begin to get a sense of the woman that I used as I began processing and which I plan to borrow from as I write the finding aid biography.
I think it takes a unique type of person to recognize the body of their work as having an innate value worthy of preservation. Mary Ann Wells’ three gifts to the Archives speak to the importance of her photojournalism and Wells’ dedication to its preservation. One testament of the esteem with which people in Hattiesburg held Wells is evident in an 8 January 1991 letter, where University archivist Terry S. Latour wrote Roger Brinegar that "[Wells’s] articles and photographs provide us with many insights into the culture and history of Southern Mississippi. In particular, her features for the Hattiesburg American highlighted people, often not widely known, who contributed significantly to making the area culturally unique." This was a woman who not only had the pulse of the community in the palm of her hand between 1977 and 1981, but had the foresight and vision to save these records and donate them to the archive almost a decade after the fact. Afforded accolades and acknowledgements by many others, I hope to capture my own glimmer of Mary Ann Wells as I process her collection.
This collection will be a challenge. The most difficult aspect of day two was mapping the scope of the collection and then deciding where to go from there. Wells’s three accessions (1990, 1990, 1997) totaled 32 boxes. On the plus side, the collection was already roughly alphabetical organized by Wells and a previous archivist by medium (there were separate boxes and folders for slides, negatives and prints). However, where to go from there? I was unsure just how much minimal processing entailed. Would I have to identify each slide and photograph individually? Could I change the original order to integrate the three accessions together? I like to complete projects, but at this juncture I also started to realize that perhaps I’d bitten off more than I could chew. I finished day two pondering befuddled, but not disheartened. One of my favorite clichés is that everyone starts somewhere. The first few weeks will be two steps forward, one back, but eventually everything will work itself out.
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
How I Got Here
I graduated from William & Mary in May 2006 with a bachelor’s degree in history. In October of that year I got a break and landed a position as assistant registrar for a small historical trust in Berryville, Virginia. I worked full-time for The Clermont Charitable Trust until April 2007, processing their collection of objects for storage in an off-site storage facility. It really was a wonderful opportunity and helped me develop an acute sense of the precision and patience necessary to describe, photograph, and ultimately build a collection profile from the ground up. These six months demonstrated to both the executive director and ultimately me that I could work a 40 hour week without supervision and minimal direction, setting goals for myself and taking initiative where prudent. Starting in May 2007 I split my time between Clermont and The Museum of the Shenandoah Valley (www.shenandoahmuseum.com) in Winchester, Virginia. I think it was the experiences in these last 18 months that set me on my course to Southern Miss.
Beginning in the fall of 2007, both the executive directors of The Clermont Trust and the Museum because to inquire of me if I was thinking about graduate school. I was through a year at Clermont and four months at the MSV and they thought it was time I start considering longer term professional development. This made sense. The history business, like academia, is an education-driven field where people without master’s or doctorate degrees can only rise so far. I took their point that I should aspire to something greater, push myself, and better control my own destiny. Even though deep down I knew graduate school was necessary, at that point I don’t think I was ready to go. I finally had some friends, set up my apartment and was comfortable in my first bachelor pad. It was only a chance meeting with Dr. Douglas Chambers of the USM History Department that really got the graduate school wheels spinning.
Doctor Chambers came to Clermont that fall to consult the executive director on how to start a community oral history project. The Clermont estate has an intriguing architectural and family history surrounding it, so when Dr. Chambers came to the property before his meeting, I gave him a brief tour. I remember that he peppered me with questions, to the point that I somewhat sheepishly felt like I was doing a poor job as the registrar of the trust (I was promoted in April 2007). Still, we established a good rapport and I didn’t think much of the encounter after he left. Well, the boss must have talked to Dr. Chambers about his efforts to convince me to consider graduate school and given me one hell of a recommendation because not a week or so later the professor first floated the idea of me coming to Southern Miss as the graduate assistant for The Southern Quarterly.
I was shocked, but also cautious. What did I want and was Southern Miss the right choice? Experience at Clermont and the Museum meant I could potentially enter master’s programs in historic preservation, museum management, history, archives, and library science, to name a few. I was also concerned, justly or not, about the pedigree of Southern Miss. This turned out to be less of an issue when I really considered what was really important to me, but in the beginning, not having heard of Southern Miss and coming from a top-notch Virginia school, I was more than a little dubious of this opportunity thrust into my lap.
Though the decision to come to Southern Miss was mine, luckily I had my supervisors at Clermont and the Museum to put things in the right perspective. One reminded me that graduate school would only be two years of my life and not only hone my resume and skill sets, but help me further mature and come into my own. He noted that a master’s degree was not an anchor into one profession, but rather proof to employers of a certain proficiency and competence that I could apply in any number of fields. The executive director at the Museum helped me figure out what type of master’s degree I wanted. She asked me a simple question: “What do you enjoy about your responsibilities at Clermont and the Museum?” It took a while to flesh out an answer, but eventually I was able to pronounce that I enjoyed working with archival materials. I have some experience handling artwork, furniture, and other objects, but realized that I could never completely appreciate the beauty of a Monet or the woodworking craftsmanship that distinguishes a Queen Anne chair from its Chippendale counterpart. However, whether it was transcribing 18th century letters for the Museum or processing and researching Clermont’s collection of photographs, I found books and manuscripts more interesting. Each (individually or as a collection) has a story and often a unique narrative.
This helped tremendously. From the beginning, I knew that I wanted a master’s degree that would give me options when I got out of school. I am a generalist and would rather know a little about a lot of things than everything about one subject. Now I had a little more direction. Museum-specific graduate programs were too narrow; especially when I wasn’t 100% museums were where I wanted to be long-term. The combined History/Library Science degree at Southern Miss, in contrast, satisfied my parameters. LIS classes would provide the library training to be qualified for a job in an archive or library while the history degree would accomplish the same if I ever decided to teach high school or go back into the museum business.
One thing remained. I already knew that I could assimilate into the organizational culture of a museum. What about an archive? It seemed a misnomer to state that I was in graduate school to become an archivist when I had no professional work experience to justify my interest. The archives practicum this fall provides that missing piece of the puzzle. I really hope it works out and I am looking forward to a positive experience. I expect the internship to be a useful litmus test as I weigh job opportunities in the spring and decide what post-graduate path I want to follow.
Beginning in the fall of 2007, both the executive directors of The Clermont Trust and the Museum because to inquire of me if I was thinking about graduate school. I was through a year at Clermont and four months at the MSV and they thought it was time I start considering longer term professional development. This made sense. The history business, like academia, is an education-driven field where people without master’s or doctorate degrees can only rise so far. I took their point that I should aspire to something greater, push myself, and better control my own destiny. Even though deep down I knew graduate school was necessary, at that point I don’t think I was ready to go. I finally had some friends, set up my apartment and was comfortable in my first bachelor pad. It was only a chance meeting with Dr. Douglas Chambers of the USM History Department that really got the graduate school wheels spinning.
Doctor Chambers came to Clermont that fall to consult the executive director on how to start a community oral history project. The Clermont estate has an intriguing architectural and family history surrounding it, so when Dr. Chambers came to the property before his meeting, I gave him a brief tour. I remember that he peppered me with questions, to the point that I somewhat sheepishly felt like I was doing a poor job as the registrar of the trust (I was promoted in April 2007). Still, we established a good rapport and I didn’t think much of the encounter after he left. Well, the boss must have talked to Dr. Chambers about his efforts to convince me to consider graduate school and given me one hell of a recommendation because not a week or so later the professor first floated the idea of me coming to Southern Miss as the graduate assistant for The Southern Quarterly.
I was shocked, but also cautious. What did I want and was Southern Miss the right choice? Experience at Clermont and the Museum meant I could potentially enter master’s programs in historic preservation, museum management, history, archives, and library science, to name a few. I was also concerned, justly or not, about the pedigree of Southern Miss. This turned out to be less of an issue when I really considered what was really important to me, but in the beginning, not having heard of Southern Miss and coming from a top-notch Virginia school, I was more than a little dubious of this opportunity thrust into my lap.
Though the decision to come to Southern Miss was mine, luckily I had my supervisors at Clermont and the Museum to put things in the right perspective. One reminded me that graduate school would only be two years of my life and not only hone my resume and skill sets, but help me further mature and come into my own. He noted that a master’s degree was not an anchor into one profession, but rather proof to employers of a certain proficiency and competence that I could apply in any number of fields. The executive director at the Museum helped me figure out what type of master’s degree I wanted. She asked me a simple question: “What do you enjoy about your responsibilities at Clermont and the Museum?” It took a while to flesh out an answer, but eventually I was able to pronounce that I enjoyed working with archival materials. I have some experience handling artwork, furniture, and other objects, but realized that I could never completely appreciate the beauty of a Monet or the woodworking craftsmanship that distinguishes a Queen Anne chair from its Chippendale counterpart. However, whether it was transcribing 18th century letters for the Museum or processing and researching Clermont’s collection of photographs, I found books and manuscripts more interesting. Each (individually or as a collection) has a story and often a unique narrative.
This helped tremendously. From the beginning, I knew that I wanted a master’s degree that would give me options when I got out of school. I am a generalist and would rather know a little about a lot of things than everything about one subject. Now I had a little more direction. Museum-specific graduate programs were too narrow; especially when I wasn’t 100% museums were where I wanted to be long-term. The combined History/Library Science degree at Southern Miss, in contrast, satisfied my parameters. LIS classes would provide the library training to be qualified for a job in an archive or library while the history degree would accomplish the same if I ever decided to teach high school or go back into the museum business.
One thing remained. I already knew that I could assimilate into the organizational culture of a museum. What about an archive? It seemed a misnomer to state that I was in graduate school to become an archivist when I had no professional work experience to justify my interest. The archives practicum this fall provides that missing piece of the puzzle. I really hope it works out and I am looking forward to a positive experience. I expect the internship to be a useful litmus test as I weigh job opportunities in the spring and decide what post-graduate path I want to follow.
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