This week, I spent the majority of my time continuing to work through the ideal arrangement of the Claxon mss. II collection. Having read Jennifer Meehan’, I tried to incorporate her points and ideology into my every day activities, which meant asking myself questions and continually evaluating my decisions based on the larger context of the records, their creator, and future users. I attempted to balance these concepts with basic archival principles and values, such as original order and provenance for the sake of authenticity, reliability, and integrity of records.
I do, however, find it interesting to consider that a bulk of the materials with which I am working do not reflect their natural system of creation and organization. According to notation marked on many folders, Neville and Emma Claxon--the Baptist Missionary couple whose papers I am processing--looked through and sorted their documents while in retirement in Bloomington. It sounds like at least a portion of this sorting and rearrangement was to facilitate the composition of personal memoirs, thus items were regrouped categorically according to the level of personal importance and relevancy that Neville and/or Emma assigned after decades of spent removed from their missionary activities in Africa.
I wonder, is this something that should be included in my eventual collection description? Surely I will chat with Craig about this in the coming weeks, but my best educated guess at the moment is that yes--this is important information which will affect how materials are intellectually organized, and it would be valuable for researchers to know that documents oriented together in physical files were not necessarily the products of similar actions. I myself am often confused as to how best to categorize such files, but so long as the description and rational for arrangement is translucent in the end descriptive product, I am confident that whatever arrangement I follow will be navigable.
Another interesting issue I faced this past week was how to best organize the two boxes of sermons composed by Neville. The vast majority of these sermons are handwritten notes, often on scraps of repurposed paper. Some sermons include a topical title, others include one or more biblical verses, and some include dates. A number of sermons are also in French, as they were composed during the period of time that the Claxons worked in Benin--where French is the official language--as well as in Florida with French speaking Haitian immigrants after their final return to the United States. I do not see a clear system of organization among these documents, and I have a hard time skimming the notes for related content. Many were housed in a box without folders, though some groups were held together with rubber bands. Others are contained in folders with basic headings such as "Messages" (from what I gather, this is basically another word for Sermons).
Because Cherry told me about a large archival project related to Baptist Missionaries in Africa which is being pursued at Duke University, I went online and searched Duke's finding aid database to see if I could find any similar collections for guidance by example. The collections with online finding aids did not exhibit any significant holdings in the way of sermons. Several had a small number described or named at the item level. I also saw general identification that sermons were present, but no folder or grouping according to any logical system (i.e. chronological, biblical verse, topic, etc.). I spoke with Craig about how best to go about grouping and foldering the Claxon sermons, and it sounds like I'll just do a general grouping according to their original order, noting the date span of items in each foldered group. I will, however, have several folders devoted to strictly French sermons, as these came physically oriented together to begin with. Several French sermons are dispersed throughout the general groups as well, and I will speak with Craig to see if it seems best to leave them in preservation with original order imposed by the Claxons or move them in with the sets of French sermons.
Though the majority of the collection is in good physical condition, the sermons seem to have experienced a bit more wear and tear. More paperclips and staples are seriously corroded, more rubber bands have turned into a hardened, sticky mess, and at least one group housed in a plastic bag exhibits serious brittleness along with mold damage. I set these moldy items aside, and in the coming days I anticipate that I will be oriented to the process of working with the preservation department. The Lilly is fortunate enough to have two full time preservation/conservation staff members who deal with materials and exhibits. Surely these two are kept quite busy! I am definitely curious about how they will approach the mold issue, something I foresee coming into contact in my future career but am currently unclear on the best method of preservation. My guess is that these materials will either be encased in a manner by which to stop the potential spread of mold to other items, or they could alternately be photocopied, with the photocopies being retained in the collection in the place of originals. I know this is occassionally the practice for extremely brittle, crumbling news clippings. Surely it is not ideal, but original physical materials cannot always last indefinitely. These guesses are merely my own speculation, and I anticipate learning the real life outcome in the near future.
In the interests of informing myself a bit more accurately on preservation and conservation issues, this week I plan to search around and read what I can find on the website for the Northeast Document Conservation Center--a resource that Cherry recommended. Also, for the sake of my own curiosity, I will recently read the article by Morgan G. Daniels and Elizabeth Yakel entitled "Seek and You May Find: Successful Search in Online Finding Aid Systems." This topic is something which seriously interests me, and I anticipate that its prevalence within the professional archival dialog will only increase in the coming years. Few analytical studies have been performed concerning search strategies among online archival finding aids, though I think the concept of "searchability" is incredibly important in terms of linking potential users to materials. Before the age of electronic resources, a researcher would interact with an archivist who could connect him or her with collection contents, as the archivist assumably intimately understood his or her repository's holdings. This luxury of a the archivist as a personal research guide of sorts does not exist on the vast, lonely internet interface that is increasingly the mode of information seeking, thus researchers' ability to navigate online resources will have a significant impact on their potential use of abandonment of potential archival sources.
Next week, I look forward to finalizing my collection's arrangement and delve into refoldering. Baby steps... but things are surely coming along!
Amy
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