Week Sixteen: The Grand Finale

It's official.  My sixteen week internship--and the Spring 2011 semester--are officially over.  Though graduation is still, as soon as I complete this blog post and give a presentation in summation of my experiences as an intern, I will officially be counting down the idle minutes until graduation!  Haha, idle minutes.  That's funny.  As a library science student, it's basically standard that we hold down several part time jobs, internships, and volunteer positions.  There is never enough downtime to make the majority of us bored, but I think that's definitely a good thing.  I grew a bit too attached to Mystery Writers of America mss. over the past several weeks, so I'll continue to volunteer at the Lilly until processing is officially complete (or until I have a seriously convincing reason to leave Bloomington).  Closure is definitely something that I value, so it's good to know that I should be seeing this collection processing through despite going beyond the confines of the academic semester.

A recap of this past week can be summed up in one sentence (albeit a grammatically strained run-on sentence): I spent the days labeling folders, transferring materials from old to new housing, and fixing a couple discrepancies I noticed along the way, mostly pertaining to confusing descriptive wording.  I have quite a few boxes left to go, but it's certainly doable, and it will be a nice thing to keep in my weekly routine.  Two new interns will begin at the Lilly for the summer in about a week, and the cycle will start all over again.  If either of them keep a blog, I'll link them from my own--be on the lookout!

Overall, my internship was a great experience.  The processing work that I did at the Lilly was much like what I've done for over a year at the Indiana University Archives and similar to my work at several other internships and jobs over the years, however the content was certainly different, and I really enjoyed learning about the specifics of archives work within a special collections repository.  There definitely are some managerial and/or theoretical differences between archival methodology at Lilly and the IU Archives, Wylie House Museum, etc. , and I think that my perspective is much deeper having this sense of comparison.  I also really loved working with the Lilly staff.  As with many libraries, the Lilly employees are a great quirky bunch with eclectic interests and specialties.  It's always great to be around so many different people who are engaged and enthusiastic about what they do!

Closure has never been my strong suit, so I'm going to bow out quietly with a few photographs.  I plan to continue periodic postings as my MWA mss. processing continues.  I may even branch out to other topics of archival interest.  Dare I say blogging is slightly addictive?

Thank you for bearing with me, kind readers!

Archivally always,
Amy

Oversized news clipping scrapbook pages, which will be sent to the preservation lab for proper housing.

Eek, disintegrating scrapbook page corners!  As if 1949 newsprint wasn't harrowing enough.

Great Edgar Awards Dinner image from the event's 3rd year.

Edgar Award and "Special Award"

Edgar Awards Dinner Menu: Cannabis consumme with conked noodles, Dismembered torso of smithered turkey, Iced scearm of whipped heroines, and Coffee Monoxide?  Mm!

Members, holding an Edgar, in days of yore

Television character Vampira with her writer at a function of the MWA Sothern California Chapte

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Hamming it up for the camera... in front of one wall of my MWA mss. box-fortress processing space!

Article Abstract - RDA and Archives, by Cory Nimer

For the subject of my final internship article abstract, I chose to focus on Cory Nimer's, "RDA and Archives," as published in the Journal of Archival Organization (Vol. 8, Issue 3 & 4) in late 2010.  While there has been quite a bit of buzz going around IU in relation to the cataloging department's impending transition to RDA, and we discussed the change from AACR2 to RDA in cataloging class, I have heard virtually nothing about how RDA will affect cataloging of archival materials.  When I saw Nimer's article while browsing around for an interesting read, I couldn't pass it up.  Anyone without access to the electronic journal can access similar content through Nimer's powerpoint slides, which information as presented at the 2010 SAA annual meeting, Session 604: Bibliographic Control of Archival Materials: The Impact of Library Standards on Archives.

The article presents a great overview of the current situation in bibliographic description.  Nimer prefaces by explaining the history of descriptive standardization for both archives and libraries--the two of which have long been slightly incongruous.  Indiana University, like many (dare I say most?) large institutions, practices collection level description for archival materials using AACR2/MARC cataloging to make materials searchable through its large-scale institutional database.  Because AACR2 was formulated without sensitivity to descriptive needs of archival collections, archivists often find it difficult to effectively describe materials for access.  However, when library leaders set out to revise current cataloging standards c. 1997, they sought to alleviate descriptive troubles and tensions by building "metadata framework and descriptive standards that will encourage collaboration."

Nimer provides a thorough introduction to what RDA is, who is invested in its development, its evolution since conceptualized in 1997 (then considered AACR3) to first official publication in summer 2010, and its underlying foundational principles.  On a very basic level, RDA (Resource Description and Access) is a cataloging code developed to replace the Anglo-American Cataloging Rules (AACR2), which incorporates recent theoretical advances and expands the descriptive scope to include a wider range of materials--including archival holdings.  Through none of the primary stakeholders (Joint Steering Committee, Committee of Principals, and code co-publishers) involved in development are strictly archival institutions, archivists and archival associations were heavily consulted for feedback on RDA drafts. 

The foundations of RDA include three sets of requirements and/or principles: Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR), Functional Requirements of Authority Data (FRAD), and International Principles; it seems that FRBR is the most influential source of descriptive modeling.  Basically, these requirements change the conduits of descriptive thinking, material relationship networks, and the related "bibliographic universe".  Nimer includes excellent visual models with make comprehension of FRBR relationships much more meaningful.  Though I have never seen information visualization diagrams for current AACR2 format catalog records, those put forth by Nimer in relation to FRBR and RDA show clear relationships between and among information subsets as well as distinct works.

Obvious impacts of archival priorities include the consultation of the inclusion of the families entity in addition to FRBR's persons and corporate bodies entities, as well as an enriched range of attributes for each, all of which where influenced by the FRAD conceptual model, which looked to EAC and ISAAR (CPF) in its modular development.  Additionally, archival cataloging guidelines in the fashion of Describing Archives: A Content Standard (DACS) were integrated into RDA after 2005 and 2006 proposals by the Library of Congress; these proposals supported the replacement of manuscript rules from AACR2 with DACS formatted description as well as concepts from/references to Rules for Archival Description (RAD) and General International Standard Archival Description.

Several criticisms of RDA--rather specifically to FRBR--in relation to archives are set out in the article as well, which include its incompatibility with "organic aggregations of material," and the ineffectiveness of multilayered description in describing unique archival collections.  Rather than have a complex relational diagram of works, archival materials will likely result in just one simple record set.  However, I am curious as to what sort of visual relationships and connections may be made among archival collections created by the same individual and either processed separately or housed at multiple institutions.  From reading Nimer's article, it seems as if RDA have the potential to link collections, however I am unclear as to how this will be manifested in record user views.

Nimer goes further into contents and features.  I will spare the minute details here, but on a basic level, RDA's core standard requires additional elements for item descriptions, thus records for archival collections are required to include information such as title proper, date of production, manifestation identifier, carrier type, and extent for the Manifestation record; preferred title and identifier for the Work record; and expression identifier, content type, and language for Expression record.


Nimer goes on to include a highly accessible description of RDA Toolkit , which is available in both electronic and print formats.  He discusses features, emphasizing useful hyperlinks to sections and various related supplementary sources, including associated rules, an annotation feature, and the NSDL Registry--which Nimer cites as the most useful outside link.  The most valuable RDA site tools are cited to be the "workflow" documents, which will are user-friendly walk-throughs for those new to RDA.  Interestingly, RDA is not linear, thus navigating through sections when cataloging may prove confusing for novices, including archivists for whom cataloging is only one minor facet of professional endeavors.

The article also provides a discussion on "Encoding of Archival Descriptions," which was slightly confusing to me without a visual supplement.  From what I gather, RDA includes additional fields, such as content, media, and carrier types, which should be helpful for more thorough encoding of archival collection features.  I remain slightly confused as to how, if at all, this will effect current encoding analog EAD attributes.  Will encoded finding aids need to be revised to reflect field changes and/or additions?  From what I can tell, Nimer does not offer a solution to this question.

All in all, it sounds as if RDA should be a boon for more thorough, intellectually accessible collection level archival description, which includes more dynamic linkage of entities in creation of an exciting "contextual web of resources and creators."  The priorities of the profession continue to be taken into consideration by major stakeholders, and perhaps following the RDA test period, the specifications may be further tailored to suit archival needs.  In any case, RDA represents an improvement upon AACR2's capacity to describe archival materials.  I am, however, a bit intimidated by all the new accronyms that I need to add to my library science vocabulary.  RDA, RAD, FRAD, FRBR?  I'll start making my flashcards now.  (Haha)

Week Fifteen: Arrangement and Inventory = Complete!

I am proud to say that at the close of my internship this week, I completed arrangement of the Financial series, cleared up some confusion in the Photographs series, cleaned up minor issues that I had set aside along the way, and began some refoldering work--it's all downhill from here!  Though I will not be 100% finished processing Mystery Writers of America mss. by the time my internship officially ends next week, I feel really good about the progress I made thus far, given that this is the third collection (a decently sizable one at that) I will have worked on over the course of less than five months.  All the difficult work is largely finished, and what remains is brushing up the collection description, building the collection level catalog record, chronologically arranging all correspondence as per Lilly Library popular practice, and physically rehousing each folder of materials.

Rehousing will entail hand-labeling new folders and building new, archival quality boxes which will be best for long term preservation.  These activities are in line with professional ethics, though rehousing is not a uniform practice across all repositories.  For example, at some institutions, I know that refoldering is not always an option given budgetary constraints and the time required to hand-label each one.  I am admittedly not a preservation expert by any means, but from what I understand in layman's terms: Acid free folders are ideal as buffers to control acidic paper's deleterious effects on surrounding papers.  Documents made with highly acidic ingredients (i.e. most of those produced in the late 19th through mid twentieth centuries) releases acidic compounds, which may cause surrounding papers to become brittle.  However, as I learned from my whirlwind day at the IU Preservation lab, acid free folders do not actually stop acidic deterioration.  Simply because papers are stored inside an acid free folder does not mean that they are protected from one another, as no buffers exist directly between individual items.  Rehousing in acid free folders does, however, provide some peace of mind in knowing that storage materials are not contributing additional harm to collection contents, and they also give a clean, polished look to a collection.  Though appearances don't necessarily contribute to preservation objectives, they do appeal to donors and users, representing that a repository cares for its collections.

I am not exactly looking forward to the laborious penciled labeling of new folders, however I am excited about the final product which will debut as a fully processed collection in the not so distant future.  I plan to finish up my processing work with Mystery Writers of America mss. after the semester closes.  Over all the hours we've spent bonding together--looking at old photos from the organization's youth, peering in at intimate monetary details, and watching the group's overall development from a small group of like-minded authors to a comparatively renowned organization with members from all corners of the United States--I want to see the collection through to completion.  This also seems wise, as I imagine it will be much easier for me than for anyone else to compose the collection description and catalog record content since I've spend so much time with the materials.  Because I am still busy on the job-hunting front, I'll be living in Bloomington possibly as long as late July, so I will volunteer at the Lilly (at least) one day per week.  With work at the IU Archives, volunteering at the Lilly, volunteering at Wylie House Museum, and applying for jobs, I will most definitely have no problem staying busy, though I also hope to spend a bit of time enjoying the outdoor air.

That's all for right now.  I'll post a few more collection photos over the weekend!

Amy

Week Fourteen: The Dreaded Financial Series

Well, I finally caved.  Despite my skillful month+ long avoidance of the six dreaded boxes of Mystery Writers of America financial materials, last week I had to "man up" and face the folders of bills, envelopes bursting with canceled checks or deposit slips, booklets full of account stubs, and ledgers galore.  My initial reluctance to deal with these materials stems from the stigma that my mind must have attached to finances.  No, they aren't pretty.  The stationary is never ornate (at least not these from second-half of the twentieth century).  It's also highly unlikely that I would happen across any juicy or otherwise thought provoking details while flipping through to gauge general folder contents and date ranges, as I often do with materials of other genres.  Financial records, at least in my opinion, are not necessarily interesting in an overt or otherwise independent sense.  However, surely I understand that when considered as a group or in tangent with other related documents, their evidential value can potentially shed insightful light on the practices and interests of the record creating/compiling body.  For this reason, the Lilly desires to retain all financial records--regardless of how minute.

I believe I mentioned a few posts back that the Indiana University Archives, where I also work as a processor, has appraisal policies which dictate the exclusion of financially oriented items such as significant volumes of itemized receipts or account statements.  Major financial documents (such as annual budgets or statements which provide a broad overview of financial standings) are retained because they can say a lot about an organization or person without taking up significant space; itemized financial documents tend to accumulate quite quickly!  However, I sense that the IU Archives, which documents institutional memory in relation to departments, specific people, or groups affiliated with the University, rejects detailed financial records to avoid voluminous duplication of information shared among multiple collections, as well as because informational value is generally extremely low among these documents.  Even the evidential value fades after significant time passes, when weighed against processing time and precious shelf space.  Because so few reference requests come in to the Archives in regards to financial information (i.e. to what charities Prof. So-and-so donated in what specific amounts in December of 1963, or how much an academic department spent on coffee for the break room each week from 1952-1976), and because navigating disorganized financial records can be incredibly taxing, it further makes sense to me that this is one content area that is easy to justify not retaining.

Still, I can see why these records will be saved in regards to the Mystery Writers of America mss. at the Lilly.  For one, the organization is much smaller than something so big as an entire university system.  MWA has only been in existence since 1945, and the Lilly currently holds its entire inactive administrative record.  In this situation, financial details documenting the group's formative years and those from subsequent decades may play a worthwhile role in preserving the organization's history.  I hope that this rational does, in fact, sound rational.  It seems a bit hard to articulate, though it all makes sense in my head (very reassuring, I know).

Anyhow, any attempt at theory aside, I spent the week wrapping up series arrangement and got a good start on wrangling the financial documents.  The hardest part about processing this series for me is determining document genres.  I try to mentally recreate the business processes of the organization--the cycle of disbursements, receipts of payment, various avenues of funding--but in the end, sometimes it's easier to leave a bit of that up to the researcher.  When obvious, I retained folder titles as they were written upon arrival. For items such as unlabeled ledgers, I chose to err on the side of caution and arranged all of these chronologically, though some ledgers overlap and were obviously kept to document different purposes.  This made sense to me, however, because from the average researcher's perspective, it seems easier to approach things chronologically than categorically for a more holistic approach.  The collection is also still small enough that having to do a little digging wouldn't be too arduous.  Overall, this "think like a researcher" strategy has been very helpful with my processing projects, especially when I let my nit-picky perfectionism start to take over and need to ground myself in terms of what the real goals and expectations are in description and categorical analysis.

I anticipate that I will complete arrangement of the financial series during week Fifteen, after which I'll clean up my inventory a bit (I have a horrible "notes to self" habit), then send it along to Craig and Cherry.  After the inventory's official approval, I can start on refoldering and reboxing.  There are a few items set aside for the Preservation department to address (two fragile scrapbooks, the brittle 100+ year old pulp magazines, and some oversized newspapers; more on all that next week).  At this point, I doubt that all this will be completed by the end of the semester, but you never know!  As usual, I'll keep you updated.  Either way, the Mystery Writers of America mss. is well on its way to intellectual arrangement, description, and access!  What a beautiful archival cycle.

Amy

PS: One more article abstract to come... and hopefully some more photos to round out the semester.

Article Abstract - "Maximal Processing, or Archivist on a Pale Horse"

While browsing through several journals in search of relatively recent articles written about processing in archives, I came across Robert S. Cox's article entitled "Maximal Processing, or, Archivist on a Pale Horse," as published in the Journal of Archival Organization in 2010 (Vol. 8, Issue 2).  For some reason this particular journal has thus far eluded my serious attention.  I often find articles in SAA's American Archivist and ACA's Archivaria, but I'm definitely going to add this journal onto my repertoire of sources.  It is a relatively new publication, the first volume of which debuted in 2002.  From my initial browsing, it looks like the journal covers a lot of practical topics that may be really valuable for easily accessible professional advice on the job.  I wonder how long my database access will prevail post-graduation!  (Fingers crossed)

Anyhow, the article is a reactionary piece to the pervasively sited Greene and Meissner article "More Product, Less Process: Revamping Traditional Archival Processing," which started a bit of a revolution in processing theory and practice.  For anyone unfamiliar, More Product, Less Process (MPLP) is a strategy by which archivists minimally process collections to maximize access by potential users.  Levels of processing may vary, but collection level description is the standard absolute minimum, preferably accompanied by an inventory of folders.  MPLP was largely embraced for its realistic answer to reducing unprocessed backlogs with respect to financial constraints and limited staffing.  In his "Maximal Processing..." article, Cox argues for a modification of MPLP that he thinks more appropriately in line with archival ethics and long-term goals.

The article starts off with a metaphor aboutAlbert Pinkham Ryder's master paining, The Race Track (Death on a Pale Horse), which features the grim reaper on horseback winding around a race track.  This was an interesting approach by which to broach the subject; it helps align archival history with a visual metaphor and forces readers to think creatively from the outset--something that I believe is difficult when confronting MPLP with a critical lens, due to its widespread appeal.  From this metaphor, Cox explains the symbolic meaning of the image in terms of "amnesiac" professional habits:

"...those of us who do not learn from the past are condemned to reinvent it, and we have driven ever onward, wielding our sharpest technologies as we visit and revisit a suite of seemingly irresolvable tensions at the core of our profession: tensions between technological innovation and technological gaps, between the desire for uniformity in standards and the need to accommodate diversity in our collections and researchers, the tension between our ideals and the realities of our resources." (pg. 135).

As the article progresses, it becomes apparent that Cox is warning archivists against following MPLP simply because it has become the current trend.  Minimally processed collections across the board may be creating yet another inaccessible backlog of materials that require further processing in order to make materials accessible to users in a feasible manner.  To combat this threat, Cox proposes his own strategy, deemed "maximal processing."  A variation on rather than opposition to MPLP, maximal processing considers record collection context in the processing plan.  It recognizes that description does not exist in a vacuum and because of this takes the full range of professional activities and responsibilities into account in deciding how best to process each individual collection.

In the section of the article entitled "Life on the Minimum," Cox explains the details of MPLP.  He certainly does not criticize the rational behind it, but he does point out weak points including archivists' current tendency to perhaps go too far in foregoing rearrangement in the name of prudent economic and temporal judgment.  He also touches upon recent trends to seek reduction in description costs, including crowd sourcing and "wikified" finding aids, in which archival users play a role in providing collection context.  He does not explicitly point out why these tactics may not be the best choices (surely I could give an argument for either side), but his later emphasis on using sound professional judgment in descriptive practices leads me to believe that he is not a large proponent of user-generated metadata.  However, Cox does mention Christine Weideman's (Yale University) strategy to inquire for description and potentially arrangement from donors, many of whom are often eager to discuss the contents of their collections (pg. 137).  The section concludes with Cox's criticism that under MPLP, every collection is treated identically at a minimal level, which is essentially leading the profession to a loss of connection with products, services, and patrons.


In the next section, "Truth and Consequences," Cox analyzes the impact that minimal processing decisions will have on our ability to function as archivists in the traditional sense, as well as users' ability to connect with the materials which they seek.  He weighs all of this in terms of external costs accrued through complex relationships on the practical, professional, ethical and social levels with other archivists, institution administrators and other coworkers, donors, researchers, the public, etc.  According to Cox, minimal processing will cause strains for all of these relationships, thus increasing the external costs and equalizing or even tipping the scales on internal costs saved through minimal processing (more in, more out, less time, less staff).  I thought that this was an incredibly insightful way to frame the processing dilemma.  It is often difficult for me to itemize costs which are lack direct monetary value, however it is obvious that all of the aforementioned in total will have a serious affect.  Minimal appraisal, a relatively hands-off management of privacy rights, reduced intellectual control resulting in difficulty providing reference assistance, preservation concerns going unresolved, reduced job satisfaction... the list goes on and on, but the sum total adds up to one serious potential hazard for the future of the profession.

Cox explains the various costs in detail, emphasizing that the effect will be an exponential one as time goes on.  Some points that resonated with strength for me include his commentary on researchers' difficulty approaching a collection that is minimally described.  I speak from experience when I say that an inconclusive collection level description is not always encouraging for the prospects of researchers to take the initiative to physically delve into the unknown depths of generalizedboxes.  Though a collection itself may technically shed its status as "hidden" as soon as it is described at a basic level and launched on a repository's database, the contents themselves remain a mystery.  Researchers, especially students (yes, I am generalizing here) frequently operate on a level of complacency.  If a collection description fails to explicitly satisfy his or her research interests, it is highly probable that this collection will be passed over, even if it harbors potential.  Furthermore, even when a basic inventory is created for a collection which is not rearranged into an intellectual order during archival processing, it may not satisfy the shift in historians' interests toward cultural moments and ideas and away from solid names or places which are more likely to appear in an archival inventory.  "Thick description" is a potential solution to elucidate otherwise "hidden" themes, connections, and subject matter cover by collection materials, thus he supports this practice in maximal processing.

Cox brings up another great point in terms of archives as a marketing tool.  When archivists themselves do not have an intimate knowledge of collections, it is difficult to effectively market holdings and services.  We may be steering ourselves toward a profession where we are merely the point of access for information, rather than collection navigators and interpreters.

One more point that Cox brings up is something that I had not yet considered: the idea that researchers choose archives by way of geographic convenience and other personal interests outside of collections themselves.  "Because research projects typically span geographical, conceptual, or personal borders, because we have such a rich, varies, and highly distributed historical record in the United States, and because researchers approach questions from any number of novel perspectives, most of us are, as archives, replaceable."  The horror!  But in all seriousness, Cox makes a good point.  Our patron base operates on subjectivity and choice; we must work to make collections accessible and descriptively appealing in the interests of maintaining viability as active repositories.

The final section of the article, "Maximal Processing: The Model," describes Cox's ideal processing model in detail; from what I gather, his model mirrors the process he put in practice at his own institution, the University of Massachusetts.  He begins similarly to MPLP, with a "phase one" survey method of all archival collections within his own repository, which proved effectively in raising use of a number of previously "hidden" collections; this is known as pre-description.  Basic two paragraph abstracts are composed for each collection, and these descriptions (all EAD compatible) are launched into a searchable database.  Post-survey, after all backlogs have been basically described, Cox suggests adjusting work flow to incorporate basic descriptions at the point of accession.

The "phase two" of maximal processing, which does not appear in MPLP, involves all collections being placed in a queue for full processing at the level ideal for each individual collection.  Priorities for full processing are weighed by the archivist and may include donor relations, research interest, and exhibit or marketing potential.  At this stage, processing involves appraisal, arrangement, and description (generally at folder level) pursued with respect to financial costs and professional interests.  Cox believes that arrangement and description are key in making collections accessible for researchers.  Furthermore, he does not lay out a definitive processing strategy, rather Cox urges archivists to use best judgment informed by academic training and archival experience.  Subjective guidelines such as these are difficult to approach and may be interpreted differently depending upon the individual, but this is also the whole point.  Archivists must individually weigh all priorities and abilities in assessment of processing goals on a collection by collection basis.

Cox sites a third step, "post-description," in which collection descriptions are continually reassessed for and dynamically changed as a result of changes in professional descriptive standards, technologies, and historical practice.  This will not not always be a feasible option given the strain already placed on archivists' abilities to manage collection building, processing, and services, however it's something that needs to remain a possibility.  Archives, history, and documentation formats are not static.  The world is constantly in flux and development, and we as a profession must anticipate and react to changes in the name of archival duties and ethics.

In conclusion, Cox rehashes many of his points and offers a final commentary on lexicon: "The word minimum is a clarion for our limitations and for what we cannot do; maximum shines a light on the goals to which we aspire" (page 147).  However poetic and idealistic, I appreciate Cox's metaphors and idealism.  As a profession, we cannot expect to thrive unless we critically examine, fine tune, and attempt to perfect our practices to the best of our abilities in respect to finances, time, technology, and ethics.  I have always been a proponent of the "nothing is black and white" perspective, and I believe that maximum processing is also a reflection upon that theory.  MPLP is not an end all approach to archives in the twenty-first century, but it remains a respected, effective method of processing toward a unified goal for access to which modifications informed by sound individual professional judgment may be added for a more dynamic and fruitful archival future.

Week Thirteen: Addressing Loose Ends in Arrangement

Week thirteen came and went.  Despite my claim for what has probably been two weeks now that I am "almost finished" with initial arrangement of Mystery Writers of America mss., I still have a little ways to go before I can call this step complete.  I continue to avoid the financial series, as I wanted to solidify the rest of the arrangement before delving into it.  This past week, I remembered that I had neglected to address a few more boxes which were not included in the inventory with which the collection was accessioned.  I initially put off arranging the materials in these boxes, as their processing would be pretty straightforward.

The boxes contained publications (The Third Degree newsletter and Mystery Writers Annual), manuscripts for several MWA anthologies published within the last five years, and some random loose papers--also created within the most recent few years.  I just had to basically sort everything, type up the inventory, and physically arrange materials to match the assigned intellectual order.  The publications were a breeze; despite not having a complete run of these materials, it was all chronological order.  None of these items were foldered as of yet, so I'll have to see what Craig prefers--one folder per issue, or several issues per folder.  It's really just a question of time, resources, and whether or not item level foldering will be ideal for collection navigation and access in the future.

The manuscripts were a bit trickier.  This is my first experience with this realm of materials.  I got a bit turned around on the terminology (proof vs. copy edit vs. shelf copy) and couldn't always tell in what order the revisions took place, though in the end, it shouldn't be a big issue.  So long as my descriptions adhere to the characteristics and identification provided on the documents themselves, it will be up to the researcher to determine the progression of edits.

The loose papers proved a bit more of a challenge, as did the infamous "question" pile where I designated all folders I wasn't so sure about.  The loose papers were largely unrelated to one another, so it didn't seem to make sense to lump them all together.  However, there was a group related to Edgar awards from recent years which I lumped together.  Other loose papers obviously fit in with other topics covered in the collection, and I was quickly able to configure their appropriate placement within the existing series.  The "question" pile proved a bit more of a problem.  It turned out that all the folders I set aside were labeled "Miscellaneous," "Untitled," or "Loose Papers"--not exactly informative for researchers!  Most contained a myriad of documents through which I could not detect any overarching theme.  However, my own inability to understand the material groupings should not supersede.  In the interests of retaining original order for any intellectual value the documents may have specifically in relation to one another as presently grouped, Craig advised me to assign generalized titles, while noting major portions of the contents [i.e. Correspondence, general, 1973-1984 (includes related clippings, administrative memos, and financial documents)].  Surely such a description still leaves much of the folder contents "hidden" while browsing the finding aid, but it's a legitimate compromise in the interests of melding professional ethics with the realities of time and resources.

Aside from setting a few folders aside to send to preservation (some tragically brittle pulp mystery magazines from the 1890s), now my next step is to physically arrange the series in the proper integrated order.  Right now I have boxes for each series, but they are independent from one another.  I'll also finally come to terms with the (dare I say dreaded?) financial materials.  It's an exciting time to be a processor nearing the end of the arrangement tunnel!

In other news, a shameless plug: to anyone on the Indiana University campus who has a little extra time in his/her schedule during the next two weeks, consider stopping by the Lilly Library's Lincoln Room to view my exhibit entitled "Paul Weatherwax and Zea mays: IU Professor and Pioneer in Holistic Study of the Corn Plant"!  Curated as a project for my SLIS Manuscripts course, the exhibit features highlights from Weatherwax mss, the papers of a celebrated Indiana University botanist who researched and published prolifically during the mid-twentieth century on the topic of corn origins, both morphological and anthropological.  I will take some photos following the exhibit installation tomorrow afternoon!

That's all for now.  My article abstract on RDA and its influence on Archives will be posted in the next couple week, but I plan to abstract on Robert Cox's article entitled "Maximal Processing; or, Archivist on a Pale Horse" in the next few days.  It's an interesting reactionary piece to Greene and Meissner's much heralded "more produce less process" approach to archives work.

Equally important, I hope you're enjoying the onset of spring!  Bloomington is certainly beautiful this time of year--that is when one does not find him or herself confined to a windowless processing space.  I'm convinced that just makes me appreciate sunshine more when I can get it!

Abstract - Archivists' Toolkit, Archon, and ArchivesSpace: What's the Difference?

As a student studying Archives, it's a given that Archivist's Toolkit, Archon, and ArchivesSpace register in my vocabulary as a professional buzz words or phrases.  However, because Indiana University does not employ Archivist's Toolkit or Archon in electronic description of its archival materials, and Archivesspace remains a plan in the making, the concept remains in the abstract for me.  For this reason, I thought that delving into the applications' documentation would make for an excellent blog post in preparation for a component of archival processing that I may encounter in my future career.  Though we dabbled in these technologies during my Introduction to Archives course in Fall 2009, I think I could use a more in-depth refresher.

For anyone not familiar, I will provide a brief overview of the various technologies:

Archivists' Toolkit (AT) is an open source application created "for archivists by archivists"--more specifically, it was created by the University of California San Diego Libraries, the New York University Libraries, and the Five Colleges, Inc. Libraries thanks to a Mellon Foundation grant.  It operates on a web-based interface, can be networked or individual, and can be locally customized for tailored input and/or output.  Originally released as Version 1.0 in 2006 with the latest updated (2.0 Update 8) released in October 2010, AT is the "first open source archival data management system to provide broad, integrated support for the management of archives" (archiviststoolkit.org).  The application is meant to be easily accessible by archives staff for collection management and creation/maintenance of metadata to support digitally described archival collections.  In broad terms, the goals of AT include: support processing and materials access, promote standardization of data and metadata, increase staff efficiency of efforts towards electronic description, and make training easier, thus more cost effective.

Simply put, Archivists Toolkit is a management tool which supports archival management as applied by individual institutions.  This includes input information--such as accessions, description at varying levels, authority control, and physical location--as well as access outputs--such as digital finding aids, MARC catalog records, statistics, reports, etc.  Because of AT's open access on the web, it is meant to be a point of consensus upon which standards may evolve to a greater extent, perhaps transforming into an online Union Database of sorts through which holdings could be compared and searched in a "one stop shopping" sense (pardon my cliche).  Rather than rely on "home grown" databases or methods for accession, ead encoding, finding aid creating, etc., the goal is to create an all-purpose tool which will save time and money while decreasing redundance.  To help interested potential implementers, the AT site includes a number of presentations given at professional group meetings, workshops--some of which are available in text, interactive forums, and and a wiki.  All in all, it seems straightforward enough for someone such as myself to learn the technology simply through user-friendly documentation.

According to the project's website, which lists self-identified institutions currently employing AT, use varies by state, with 18 repositories listed for California and a whopping zero from Indiana.  It is likely that not all users are officially listed on the site, however it is clear that the technology has not taken off with the majority as of yet, though I suspect this is because it is still under development to some extent.

Archon, on the other hand, is more focused as an output software.  This technology, as developed by my undergraduate alma mater, the University of Illinois, is touted as an "award-winning software."  To quote the Archon website:

"It automatically publishes archival descriptive information and digital archival objects in a user-friendly website. With Archon, there is no need to encode a finding aid, input a catalog record, or program a stylesheet. Archon's powerful scripts will automatically make everything in the system searchable and browsable on your repository's website!"

The Archon site is a bit more basic than that of AT, but this makes it easier to navigate for core information.  The site is more "user friendly" to an interested archivist, whereas the AT site is more interested in providing as much information as possible to potential users.  Still, the Archon site includes application features, documentation and reports, forums, and listserv access in an accessible format that leaves me much less overwhelmed.  From what I gather (and through some helpful pointers via a handy slideshow by Brad Westbook at the ALCTS forum of the 2011 ALA midwinter meeting), Archon differs from Archivists toolkit in that it was developed by a single institution, focused more on end-user web access to finding aids and/or digital content, and is a web application.  It seems to be less dynamic in terms of front-end description than AT, however the public interface provides a fantastically streamlined approach to online collection access.  If I understand it correctly, Archon provides a relatively complex web interface and search capabilities with very little technical knowledge or effort by the individual performing metadata input.  A special administrative interface simplifies editing for archives staff, allowing one to view and change the completed finding aid information, including sections which would not appear to a general public user and make changes as appropriate.  The Archon User Manual includes a robust "how-to" tutorial, including marked up screen shots which take the potential implementer through the technology step by step.  Though the list of Archon implementers does not look quite as long as that for AT, it is clearly in place at a number of major archival institutions including universities, historical societies, even the San Diego Zoo!

In light of the strengths and weaknesses of both Archivists Toolkit and Archon, the two teams (NYU Libraries and UC San Diego from AT, University of Illinois from Archon) are at present working together to create a "next-generation archives management application" which will meld the best features of both technologies.  This hybrid is deemed ArchivesSpace--I'm assuming this name is in relation to the Dspace of the digital library realm.  The team will also look to solidify a foresighted plan to ensure a low cost for future application maintenance/administration, interoperability with other archive and digital library applications, and generally improve upon the technological sustainability of the project to avoid the need for painstaking migration in the near future.  At present, publicly available documentation for ArchivesSpace includes technical documents, specifications for various types of records, and the latest updates on AT and Archon themselves.

All in all, ArchivesSpace looks like it is going to be a fantastic resource that I hope to use in my future career.  Its dynamic, user and archivist friendly design sounds as if it will be accessible and appropriate for archivists at institutions of varying sizes and collection focuses.  Surely I did not do it, or the other two related technologies, justice in this blog post, but I think I gained a more immediate awareness of the major differences and interrelationships which will shape the online archival landscape in the future.  Theoretically, a tool such as ArchivesSpace could eliminate, for example, a university archives' dependence upon a digital library or IT department to assist in enabling an online presence for collections.  Independence sounds great to me.  I signed myself up for the ArchivesSpace google group to keep abreast of changes as they come along and look forward to its anticipated release in the next year or two!

Week Twelve: Moving Right Along

I shall start off with my standard "Oh gosh, I can't believe I only have four weeks left before the end of my internship!" line.  The days are rolling by.  I think it's definitely a good sign for my future career satisfaction prospects that I still get to the end of each day and think, "Well, that was fast."

Week twelve didn't hold a lot of groundbreaking revelations, to say the least, but I'm still moving along with processing.  I finished with the majority of the difficult sorting and arranging--i.e. breaking up a number of subject file series (series-es?) into the logical series that I devised for the collection.  When I began, the materials were oddly arranged to some extent in series, but with the majority of materials filed under a generic "Subject Files" series.  I retained this designation for some files, but I found that many folders more appropriately fit under "Administrative," "Correspondence," "Events," "Regional Chapters," etc. than were originally oriented as such.

I honestly encountered no big ethical dilemmas over the course of the week.  Though I do have a "Questions" pile that I've thus far avoided, I don't think it will be too much trouble to sort things out.  I tossed most materials in the pile during the first week or two of arrangement.  Since then, I think I've gained a good grasp on the differentiation between series, even when topics, qualities, or formats overlap.  [Clarification: The toss was figurative, of course!]  Craig and Cherry will check over my inventory once I get to a good review point, but until then, I'm feeling confident.

No, I have not yet tackled the bulk of the Financial series.  About four boxes stuffed with small, itemized ledgers, envelopes full of check and deposit stubs, receipts, tax forms dating back to the late 1940s, etc.. remain... it's a bit of a mess.  I plan to find Cherry on Thursday (During this week, number 13, I am yet again a bit late in posting) and talk things through with her.  I don't want to make any suppositions, but I also don't want to waste my processing energy on anything that should be "de-accessioned," "weeded," or whatever the appropriate term may be in this situation.  I will also make it my point to find out what the appropriate term is!

Otherwise, I have a couple more boxes of manuscripts to add to the inventory, which are large files that will not take much time at all to process.  After that, I'll address the "Questions" pile and get the series into the proper order.  Right now I just have boxes per distinct series but not in relation to one another (i.e. two boxes of Correspondence, two boxes of general Events, two boxes to the Edgar Awards Dinner (annual) event.).  Like I explained in my last post, it will be easy to shift the processing on to my predecessor, whoever the lucky individual may be!


Now, I leave you with a couple more photos!

To help visualize the financial materials... here is an exciting box full of canceled checks!

 

An invitation to the 1953 Edgar Allan Poe Awards Dinner -- the MWA's annual event during which the organization awards prizes to mystery authors/books/related, including a best novel of the year, best novel by a new author, best short story, etc.

An Edgar Award certificate (with editing on the date at the top; I assume this was a draft!) for George Thurston Scott's first novel, "Cure it with Honey"

Article abstracts soon to come on what RDA cataloging means for Archives, an overview of Archon software, and one more yet to be decided--not for lack of options, rather for an overwhelming abundance of options  Should you have any suggestions, don't hesitate to post a comment!

Best,
Amy

Week Eleven Auxiliar Post: Keeping Things Interesting with a few Photographs

I decided it was time to jazz things up again with some collection photographs.  Below are a few of my favorites thus far.

One of several fantastic pulp mystery magazines from the 1890s--the oldest items in the collection, which precede all others by approximately 50 years.  This particular example, the Young Sleuth Library, is dated 1894.

Another pulp magazine: Old Cap. Collier Library, dated 1890.  I just love the graphic design style on these!

It probably does not come as a huge surprise, but these pulp magazines are extremely brittle and delicate.  Here you can see the corner of one starting to crumble. (Note the unintentional juxtaposition of the crumbling pages and the character's melancholy face at left.. ha!)

Several photographs from the collection.  Most photographic materials, these included, document Edgar Award Dinners throughout the Mystery Writers of America's history.  The Edgar Awards are an annual event for Mystery Writers of America members akin to the mystery novelist's Oscars.  More details to come in next week's post.

Week Eleven: Go Forth and Process

Technically I am cheating--it's already Monday of week twelve and I'm just now recapping week eleven.  My excuse is that I took a much needed quick trip out of town over the weekend, which pushed back my blog post but helped me start this Monday morning feeling refreshed and ready to face the week.  Just five more left weeks left before the end of the semester, and with it the end of my internship at the Lilly.  Every day I am continually reminding myself of the limited time span that I am working with in processing the remainder of the Mystery Writers of America mss.

For the most part, I am moving along at a good pace going through the collection box by box and assigning each folder to its appropriate series.  While processing the Claxon collections, I sorted all materials by series after which I arranged folders within each series.  With this collection, however, I thought it made more sense to pursue both of these tasks at once.  As I arrange the materials, I am also creating the collection inventory and ascertaining date ranges for each folder.  It is my hope that this strategy will allow me to maximize my effectiveness to save time in the long run.  Once series assignment, arrangement within series, and date range assignments are completed and typed up into a shiny new inventory, I just need to double check everything, talk my work over with Craig and Cherry, and start the refoldering process.  Yes, I still have a bit of a ways to go and still need to look at retention issues for financial documents, but I feel good about where I am and my progress thus far.

One reason I devised this particular strategy is that in the case I do not finish processing, I want it to be relatively simple for my successor to pick up where I leave off.  Rather than having folders in haphazard arrangement somewhere between original order at the point of accession and the finished product, the materials and inventory will either be retained in the order present at collection accession or in finished product form (or as close to it as possible prior to supervisor review).  Both forms should be easily intellectually accessible for a new processor.  I think that foresight such as this is essential in maintaining sanity.  As archivists, we are naturally inclined (or at least trained) to document workflows.  My processing strategy is a way of ensuring that my own workflow and rational is documented.  Of course categorization by series is a bit subjective according to the processor's experiences and understanding of the creator; the person who may theoretically pick up on processing may differentiate between folders appropriate for the correspondence series and folders full of correspondence which relate directly to a subject or event in another series slightly differently than I would.  If that sentence did not make sense, here is an example:

There is a correspondence series for which I have thus far assigned general correspondence, correspondence with specific individuals or organizations/offices, and correspondence related to a specific issue (i.e. specific rights disputes, income tax laws).  However, correspondence is also interspersed throughout other topical folders.  When several folders relate to a single event or topic (i.e. Edgar Awards Dinner, anthology publication, etc.), I assigned folders of related correspondence under the event or topical heading rather than a general correspondence heading.  Craig talked this issue over with me and supported my perspective.  Basically, the reasoning behind this arrangement comes about by thinking as a researcher.  Most often, researchers are not purely searching for correspondence.  They are searching for a topic within correspondence.  It is more logical to streamline access by retaining materials of similar subjects together in the same series.  This decision also reflects respect de fonds and/or original order.  However, if processing is picked up by another individual, my reasoning may not be clear.  There may also be interpretive differences between folder relationships by myself and the successor.  So long as I document my choices and consider a transition of hands with foresight, issues such as these should not be a problem.

Otherwise, my processing is going smoothly.  I started to second guess my choice of series when I noticed a fine line between some differentiations (Events and Subjects, Writings and Printed Material), but Craig thought I should stick with my original instincts, which I too think is for the best.  Because this is a decently sizable collection (31 boxes; not huge by any means, but it dwarfs Claxon mss. II), assigning a higher number of series, comparatively speaking, will be a helpful choice benefiting user navigation.  This is at least the goal.

This week (number twelve), I will continue on with processing, beginning with box 5.  Mind you, this number is misleading of my progress, as I initially processed more than ten boxes at the end of the collection before jumping back to number one.  My biggest problem will be figuring out how to manage the growing number of boxes that I'm actively working with in limited processing space.  Surely this is something I will continually encounter in the future!

You'll hear from me again soon.

Abstract: "The E. Lingle Craig Preservation Laboratory Repair and Enclosure Treatment Manual," text by Garry Harrison

After my last post discussing Paul Conway's 2010 article on the future of the preservation community in light of the ever-increasing shift towards digital information and digitization for preservation strategies, I still think it is important at present to understand the basics of physical preservation.  I highly doubt that in my lifetime, all physical forms of information will become obsolete.  A digital Gutenberg Bible, such as that created through a project at the Harry Ransom Center, is a fantastic scholastic resource which will reach geographically disparate audiences and help to minimize physical wear and material degradation on the original.  However, the value of the tangible object itself remains irreplaceable.  There is some undefined human connection to physicality that cannot be replaced by digital surrogates at this point in our evolution.

A fantastic resource to support physical preservation was produced by the staff at Indiana University's E. Lingle Craig Preservation Laboratory and is freely available to the public online: "The E. Lingle Craig Preservation Laboratory Repair and Enclosure Treatment Manual" (text and images by Garry Harrison, Head of Circulating Collections Conservation, and slide show design by Jacob Nadal, former Head of the Preservation Department).  One attendant at the recent SAA-SC Conference for Graduate Students and Beginning Professionals came to Bloomington chiefly to attend the Paper Conservation workshop at the Preservation Laboratory because she regularly uses the manual as a reference at her home repository.  I suspect that I too may refer back to it when assessing options to resolve my own preservation issues in the workplace.  The manual is easy to navigate, contains a wealth of information, and makes many treatments accessible for real-world application.  Even if one does not go so far as to independently perform preservation treatments, repairs, or build protective enclosures, the manual may serve as a guide for what preservation actions are possible and what resources are required.

The manual opens into a handy and straightforward table of contents.  The first two categories on the table are "repair treatments" and "enclosure treatments".  Each selection under these categories (e.g. cut pages, tape removal, mylar encapsulation, phase box, etc.) includes a step-by-step slideshow detailing the entire treatment, textual treatment criteria, tools/materials used for treatment, instructions for using the manual, and a map image of a generic slideshow, which walks the user through its navigation.  Surely not all of the treatments included will be relevant to archivists, as many are in relation to book repairs, but there is surely still a wealth of information in many of the treatment descriptions.

For example, use of tape for paper mending in years past is something that an archivist is highly likely to encounter.  Under the Tape Removal heading, the manual explains that adhesives may discolor paper, interfere with text legibility, and plastic film may shift leading to exposed adhesive residue that may adhere to and damage neighboring documents.  Rather than merely explain how to remove tape, the "treatment criteria" section explains when and why this procedure should be executed, urging practical choices.  Relatively few tools are involved in this treatment, including a heated microspatula, fume hood, small rush, solvent, and paper towels.  If I were an archivist at a small repository without a preservation department or workspace, the requirement of a fume hood may mean that this is not a feasible treatment to pursue on sight.  Furthermore, after reading through the slide show for tape removal, it comes to my attention that the procedure is delicate and required the confidence and competence of an experienced individual.  Without further training, I don't know that I would feel confident pursuing treatment even with a fully supportive tool supply.  Still, I believe it is helpful to know that this procedure is certainly possible if performed by a preservation professional.  Practically speaking, if tape removal would improve the lifespan and use of a valuable physical object, it may be worth pursuing by an institution's preservation department or contract preservation facility.

Aside from detailed preservation treatment instructions, the manual also includes sections on the table of contents for "hand tools" (weights, bone folders, tweezers), "shop tools" (deacidification system, freezer/dryer, press boards), and "supplies and materials" (adhesive types, tapes, paper, pamphlets/envelopes).  I found all of these quite helpful in understanding what various tools and materials may be used for archival quality treatments and how to visually identify them as such.  Personally, when I open up a Hollinger catalog (which started showing up in my mailbox as soon as I registered with SAA; is it strange that I get almost as excited about sale priced acid free folders as I do about good Groupons or discounts at my favorite clothing store?), I feel a bit overwhelmed by the various options.  Sometimes the mere volume of choices makes understanding for what each item is intended and why that much more difficult.  The straightforward explanations and photographs on the preservation manual are a great reference--I just wish there were more!  Perhaps someday I can make a visual dictionary of archival supplies my own project.

The Preservation Manual contains one more section on the table of contents: Glossary and Appendices, perhaps my favorite section.  Here users find a glossary of terms (some of which point to hyperlinks connected to further explanations and images), though it is primarily in relation to book terminology.  The appendix also includes easy to follow instructions for making a casebound book from scratch (something I did last summer during a Conservation Workshop course), dealing with mold, attaching book plates, and a special projects section.  The final section in the manual's glossary, Special Projects, includes several preservation procedural examples which likely have value to archives professionals: creation of an analog disc sleeves, paper deodorization, Sanborn Maps, and giant encapsulation.  I will keep all of these in mind for the future.

The portion on mold is fascinating and, I imagine, extremely helpful in orienting ones own mold problems in relation to preservation decisions made in the example cases entailed in the manual.  The examples are oriented toward real-world mold cases encountered by the IU preservation staff, all of which deal with books.  However, treatment decisions and options are similar for archival materials, especially those used in the example "Mold, decision to restore (example 1)".  The delicate and laborious treatment used to salvage a bound book of newspapers from the 1940s is a true testament to the laudable skills of preservation professionals.  I may be on the verge of waxing poetically here, but it really is amazing that mold-ridden materials are, in some cases, able to be restored and remain usable for patrons.  On the other hand, if moldy materials are encountered at present or several years in the future, I am inclined to believe that digitization for preservation may be an easier, more cost effective mode of information preservation.  In the case of a small portion of Sermons I encountered while processing Claxon mss. II, I detected a musty, possibly modly smell.  The tactile quality of the paper was also somehow "off".  Following a materials assessment by Doug Sanders of the IU Preservation Department, it was decided to use the lab's deacidification system to treat the papers.  Though deacidification isn't necessarily a thrifty procedure, the unique quality of the materials merited preservation action.  This procedure is much less involved than those detailed in the manual, which helps me put its condition into perspective.

In reading through the Preservation Manual, it is clear to me that no treatment decision is black and white; every action depends on a repositories unique collections, resources, objectives, and values.  The manual elucidates the decision process as executed by staff at Indiana University, gives real-world examples, and makes clear that there isn't necessarily a right or wrong decision for all preservation cases.  In the case of several mold treatment examples, the Harrison (the manual's author) admits that his own treatment decisions were a bit experimental.  Choices were made based on experience, knowledge of past treatments, available resources, and physical artifactual value.

Overall, the E. Lingle Craig Preservation Repair

Publish Post

and Enclosure Treatment Manual was an interesting and engaging read.  Author Garry Harrison created a colloquial text with un-intimidating language and humor, which makes complex procedures and concepts accessible to the everyday archives or library professional (or graduate student!).  I already have the site bookmarked on my home computer and can only hope it remains publicly accessible in the future.

Article Abstract - "Preservation in the Age of Google: Digitization, Digital Preservation, and Dilemmas," by Paul Conway

When I Shadowed Doug Sanders in the IU Preservation Lab a couple weeks back, I wanted to follow the experience up with some readings on preservation and/or conservation. Admittedly, I remain a bit unclear on the differentiation between conservation and preservation. According to A Glossary of Archival & Records Terminology, by Richard Pearce-Moses (from the SAA Archival Fundamentals Series III),

Conservation is defined as:
n. 1. The repair or stabilization of materials through chemical or physical treatment to ensure that they survive in their original form as long as possible. -- 2. The profession devoted to the preservation of cultural property for the future through examination, documentation, treatment, and preventative care, supported by research and education.

Preservation is defined as:
n. 1. The professional discipline of protecting materials by minimizing chemical and physical deterioration and damage to minimize the loss of information and to extend the life of cultural property. -- 2. The act of keeping from harm, injury, decay, or destruction, especially through noninvasive treatment. -- 3. LAW - The obligation to protect records and other materials potentially relevant to litigation and subject to discovery.
preserve. v. 4. To keep for some period of time; to set aside for future use. -- 5. CONSERVATION - To take action to prevent deterioration or loss. -- 6. LAW - To protect from spoliation.

If you ask me, the difference still isn't entirely explicit in looking at those definitions alone. In a successive note, however, the author elaborates in saying that conservation is sometimes considered treatment for damage repair. Alternatively, preservation activities are considered a subdiscipline under the responsibilities of the conservator. That said, I will refer to preservation throughout this post rather than conservation, as I believe it more accurately relates to my intended idea of preservation as minimizing information loss and extending the life of materials.


Getting back on topic...

In response to my curiosity about the conservation profession and preservation activities, Cherry suggested that I look into Conservation OnLine (COOL), a resource for conservation professionals operated by the Foundation of the American Institute for Conservation (AIC). The site is a great resource which contains information pertinent to various facets of conservation and preservation work according to types of cultural property, materials, and subjects. It includes a news section, a directory of conservators and allied professionals, and links to other related groups which may be of use and interest.

The site also links to the Journal of the American Institute for Conservation (JAIC), which hosts a wealth of articles from the journal's publication run dating 1977-2005 (only articles three years old and older are accessible in a digital format; others are available to AIC members only in print format). Journal articles are freely accessible to all site visitors. Though I browsed through the full run of titles and read a number of article abstracts, my lack of training in conservation and preservation made most topics slightly intellectually inaccessible. As I mentioned in a previous entry, the conservation/preservation field is a small one which requires years of specialized trainings through extensive coursework and hands on experience. In searching through various journal databases to which IU subscribes on a quest to find more generalized articles on the topic, I came across "Preservation in the Age of Google: Digitization, Digital Preservation, and Dilemmas," by Paul Conway, as originally published in The Library Quarterly, Vol. 80, No. 1 (January 2010). Conway, a researcher and professor at the University of Michigan and has been heavily involved in the archives, preservation, and technological dialog for more than thirty years.

Though I am certainly aware of the shift to digital in all facets of life, both commonplace and professionally, I remain curious as to various opinions on how the archives community will prioritize and integrate this change. Conway's article presents an excellent introduction to the changing face of information with respects to the interests and practices of preservation professionals. It was published just over a year ago, but I think Conway's points are still quite valid.

The article looks at both "digitization for preservation" and "digital preservation," explaining that these are two separate concepts with entirely different actions and objectives. "Digitization for preservation" is explained as "digitizing" a tangible/physical resource as a way to prolong the life of information potentially even beyond that of the object itself. The articles does not give examples of this practice, but I assume any digital curation of a physical collection may fall under this heading. If I understand correctly, examples of digitization for preservation include some archival collections at IU (e.g. Herman B Wells speeches and the Andrew Wylie papers)content on the UNC's Southern Historical Collection, the University of Michigan's massive Google Book digitization project (of which IU is also a participant), and the wealth of digitized historic records available through Ancestry.com.

Alternatively, "digital preservation" means ensuring that born-digital information remains viable for the enduring future. This sort of preservation includes any and all content in digital format (including the digital products of "digitization for preservation"). Not all digital information is necessarily worth saving, but any that is requires a plan to make sure that information remains accessible. It cannot be assumed that just because a document, site, or application is accessible now means it will be accessible one, five, fifty, or a couple hundred years down the road.

Conway frames his discussion in the context that nearly all information is now going digital, yet the concept of prolonged preservation of said information is still not configured into the cyberinfrastructure plan. This is likely because those working at the front end of technological development consider the product but not its broader, long-term implications. In the present, we do not often think of the products of our daily interactions as being part of our cultural heritage--newspaper articles, advertisements, modes of entertainment, music, photographs, etc. However, all of the aforementioned items are commonly present in archival collections. Our daily interactions and modes of information sending, retrieving, and exchanging are our unrehearsed, authentic cultural heritage. At present, many of these things are increasingly present in our lives in digital formats. Without a foresighted preservation plan for this information, decades of cultural insights are threatened.

While those pioneering cyberinfrastructure, informatics, and information systems may have thoughts of longevity on the back burner, Conway poises preservationists to reconsider the realities of their professional future and take part in the digital dialog in the interests of making preservation a priority. Throughout the article, he speaks to the preservation community in terms of fundamental values and reconfiguring priorities. Conway discusses two reports on these matters: Preserving Digital Information and Preservation in he Age of Large-Scale Digitization (both affiliated with the Council on Library and Information Resources). He also touches up on traditional preservation practices and a basic history of the discipline's major trials and triumphs, cost effective prioritization, financial strain, and the impending crisis of material degradation affecting audiovisual formats.

The discussion narrows down to five poignant recommendations that Conway suggests to the preservation community. These include prioritizing for preservation quality environments (i.e. dark, cool storage with relative low humidity), shifting resources toward audiovisual digital migration, accepting digital technologies and embracing them to build collections, digitizing materials based on assumed impact (looking at a home institution's collections independently as well as in tangent with digitization projects pursued elsewhere), and come together to formulate standards and best practices for digital collection building. He encourages preservation professionals to learn new technological skills in the selfless interests of preserving cultural heritage resources.

My only hesitation with Conway's recommendations lies with what I interpret as Conway's belief that technology will settle and become to some degree static; he makes several statements to this effect. However, I do not know that anyone can predict technology will reach a state of complacency. For this reason, I expect that digital preservation strategies will always be, to some degree, in flux. Furthermore, computer science is not finite in the fashion of physical material science; material composition can be definitively broken down to each specific molecule. Digital data is based on a system of interpretation and requires the aid of a machine to be intelligible by humans. Each additional change in technology requires a new form of computer mitigation. The only hope for long term preservation lies in a collaborative effort between those interested in information creation and those devoted the information preservation.

One thing I was slightly disappointed by in this article was its fleeting mention of Google and its various initiatives and developments toward user-centered, unmitigated information seeking, fluidity vs. fixity of information, and instant gratification. Conway did not elaborate on how Google's anonymous style of all-encompassing information access will affect preservation priorities or infrastructure, and I am sure that much more can be said on this topic, however I also understand that this topic is at the same time entirely broad and still not entirely defined.

The content of this article was certainly different to what I learned out at the Preservation lab. Here at IU, digital and physical preservation are not interrelated departmental bodies. I suspect this is the case at present for most large institutions, and I am certainly curious to learn how such arrangements will develop in the coming years. Still, call me a luddite, but I cannot imagine that someday, I may have the good fortune to browse item-by-item through the Mystery Writers of America mss. on the Lilly's website. Manuscript collections are, in my mind, much too gargantuan to make item level digitization feasible. I know that this merely means repositories will prioritize digitization projects, as they do already, but I am also comforted in my belief that the physicality and connective nature of "traditional" archival collections will likely not become obsolete--if only for the reason that digitization for preservation is not feasible given financial, temporal, and data space constraints, but also because the archives may well be one last place where a person may revisit a past before digital information proliferated. There will still be fragile pages to turn, rusty paper clips to remove (or not), and enigmatic handwriting to decipher on coffee-stained letters. Technology may be changing, but human nature and the value of tactile connection will surely not change quite as fast.

Week 10: MWA and a bit of a break

Happy St. Patrick's Day, blog readers! I aligned with my inner librarian today and decided to geek out in green for the occasion. It's only a matter of time before I start wearing eccentric holiday-themed brooches. Haha. To be fair, I saw the Madeleine Albright Brooch Collection exhibition at the Smithsonian over the summer, and it was nothing to be embarrassed about. In fact, it actually made me consider donning a brooch every now and again, though I don't know that I could find or afford any like those on display. In any case, perhaps I'll keep channeling my inner librarian to see if I get the courage and inspiration to go for it.

This week at the Lilly, I continued to process Mystery Writers of America mss. All is going well, but because the collection is so large, it feels like slow going. I've had a relatively easy time assigning series for each folder I encounter, though there are of course a few enigmas. Right now I'm considering the difference between "Writings" and "Printed Material". Perhaps these two series should be joined into one, but when I defined each series individually, there was a definite differentiation. "Writings" was meant to contain manuscript material for books, poems, short stories, screen plays, and other writings written in affiliation with the MWA. "Printed Material" was to contain promotional documents and more ephemeral material, such as brochures, flyers, newspaper clippings, and newsletters. These two categories are clearly related in some sense, and I plan to talk with Craig and Cherry about how to proceed with them next week.

I am also curious as to a small detail when naming files related to a specific event. For example, should a folder be named "Awards dinner 1987" but contain documents dated in the range between 1986-1988, how should the folder be labeled? Should "Awards dinner 1987" remain the title with the 1986-1988 range like this: "Awards dinner 1987, 1986-1988, " or is this too confusing for a researcher? Is it more important to give as much information as possible, accurate dates, or the name of the precise event and corresponding date held? Like I said, small details, but something I'm curious about. If I had no supervisors to turn to and were processing this on my own, I would use the full title plus date range, but this is because I like to include as much information as possible. If, as a processor, I know something about a collection which would be easy to pass on to future users, I generally want to include that information in the inventory or collection description. At the same time, I know that too much text makes a finding aid difficult to browse and mentally digest. Providing over-information may also be a bad habit to start, as though it may be valuable, this practice will likely unnecessarily slow down processing. Given MPLP's proliferation, it's probably safest to err on the side of being a minimalist. Again, something to talk about with Craig next week.

One thing that I really enjoy about keeping this blog is that it forces me to rehash my day-to-day duties and reflect on my strategies, problems, and questions. I often set things aside to revisit later, and reflection helps bring everything back into perspective. Often merely thinking about an issue again once I am outside the context of processing makes me see the potential solutions, reasoning, and repercussions more clearly.

Anyhow, I took some photos of some MWA materials this week. I will share them once I sit down at home with my camera.