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.
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