Sorting extravaganza

The time finally arrived to sort through the surprisingly massive amount of materials I had uncovered during my survey.  Once I got all of the boxes in one place, it turned out that I had way underestimated the number of boxes I needed to go through.  I thought I had 14, but I really had 23!  I was able to use my boss’s office and there were boxes everywhere…

And more that were hidden under desks and tables.  I had been thinking the entire semester of the best ways to organize the records, so luckily, the sorting passed by relatively quickly and easily.

This is about a third of the way through

And more progress, about two-thirds done

I was able to give five boxes worth of materials to the communications director, as there were piles of recent photos, printed materials, and publicity documents.  I was also able to recycle the equivalent of two boxes due to the many duplicate items.  A couple of the boxes were artifacts, which I previously inventoried, and I gave one box to my boss since it was old donor files that were inadvertently given to me.

With everything sorted, I began organizing the newsletters into subseries.  I came up with eight subseries, which were organized by title and one for random newsletters.  I was happy to find that I have a pretty complete series of the earliest newsletters, from 1965-1972, but I have a gap until 1981.  I’m not positive they were even creating newsletters during this time period, though.

I was able to turn this

Into this!

Next I began to organize the large amount of event materials.  These records posed a much larger challenge in terms of organizing.  There were several types of records that could either be a series itself or a subseries. After much debate and consideration of what I know about the agency and what would be most beneficial to staff and volunteers, I decided upon one main events series, with subseries for each year of a large fundraising event, a subseries with all materials for another event where it wasn’t necessary to have each year separated, and a subseries for miscellaneous events.

I also decided that any Auxiliary-related events would be a subseries under the Auxiliary series, and not under the events series, due to the history of the Auxiliary (since the 1940s) and how people search for information related to them.  It would be most helpful for people to have all Auxiliary records together, rather than as subseries in other areas.

This towering pile of event invitations and programs

Became this…  And this was actually subdivided a  little more.  I inventoried the records for the large fundraising event, but not the miscellaneous events because there are too many (probably around 100) and it’s actually unlikely that anyone will ever want to reference them.  These are the types of materials that have very little research value but no one wants to get rid of.  I may go back later and try to record the general time frame that these cover, though.

Next, I inventoried the annual reports, which equaled three boxes of records.  I still have to count the annual reports from 1853-1931, but was able to count (and weed) the more current ones.  Based upon a discussion with my boss, I am saving up to five of each.  I think this is too many, but it’s a good start to removing duplicate items.  This group is complete from 1982-2013.  So, combined with the earliest records, I’m missing annual reports from 1931-1982 – a huge gap – yet, I’m still thankful that I have any older reports at all.

I was very pleased that things went smoothly.  Even though everything is sorted into general type, I still have eight boxes left to organize and inventory.  Not too bad since I started with 23!  I hope to have that done in the next week or so.  In the meantime, I’m already starting to refine my digitization plan based on what I’m learning that I have.  Obviously, I won’t take the time to digitize anything too current, but definitely the older newsletters and annual reports.

I’m also very happy to say that I found the missing photo albums that I thought had been thrown out!  You may remember me mentioning it a few weeks ago.  I found them in a box under a pile of VHS tapes.  I was about to give the whole box to the communications department when I saw the albums.  I don’t know how they ended up in that box, but I’m so happy to have found them again.

In other news, I wrote the questions for the first oral history interview, which is in just a couple of weeks, and sent it out to colleagues and the CEO for feedback.  I confirmed that I could borrow an archivist friend’s recording equipment for the interview, which is very helpful and a big weight off my mind.  I also typed up the inventory list of the completed series.

I also began transcribing the oral history interview that the original Edgewood archivist did back in 2001.  It took me about 45 minutes to transcribe the first 15 minutes, and I type about 100 wpm!  That really opened my eyes up to the time required for transcription.  I will put transcribing that interview on the back burner for now and focus on my immediate project plans.  I will also need to rethink my goal of having both interviews transcribed by the end of the semester, since the second one is just a week before the semester ends.  This project is really helping me to learn about the exciting work of an archivist, as well as the challenges in time allocation and deadlines!

First day part two

On my first day going through the storage room, I also found some nice historical publications of Edgewood’s, mostly from the 1960s through the 2000s.

In this dusty binder, someone had thoughtfully put together samples of invitations from about 20 years of Edgewood’s fundraising events, including most years of the Across The Bay 12K race, which was held for 30 years.  I may be able to put together a complete series of the 12K publications, thanks to this binder and some detective work around the office.

There were also many examples of invitations to events held by others to raise money for Edgewood.  All of the items are stored in generic plastic sheet protectors, so I’ll put these into better storage later, once I have inventoried everything.  I’m appreciative of the person who took the time to carefully get everything together, in sequential order, in this binder.  So many of the papers I’ve come across so far have been damaged by being randomly thrown into boxes.

In another box, that I wasn’t sure if it looked like it would have anything that I was looking for…

I found an oral history interview!  It even had a signed legal release form wrapped around the CD.  It was underneath a bunch of event photos.  I was quite excited and immediately contacted the original archivist, who gave me some background information.  It was the only interview done, I believe in 2001, and I’m so happy to have found it and rescued it from this box.  It had been transcribed, but I can’t find the transcription anywhere so I’ll have to do it all over again.  I haven’t listened to the CD yet but will soon.  The narrator, Cecil Malmin, recently passed away, but I’ll make sure his stories get put to good use.

I also found a box of slides of children, presumably clients.  I really don’t know what to do with these unlabeled photos and slides.  I’ve already found hundreds (mostly photos).  They have no details – no names, no dates, no contextual information – but does that mean they’re not worth keeping for the future?  I feel very comfortable weeding out photos of unknown people from random events that clearly don’t have connections to Edgewood, but I’m not as confident about discarding images of clients, even if they’re unnamed.  How to select which photographic records to keep and which to discard?

I also found a folder with older write-ups of Edgewood’s history.  I haven’t read through them yet, but some of the papers may have information I don’t know about and could be helpful.

I found an article about two former Edgewood residents reminiscing of their time at Camp Swain, which was a summer camp purchased on behalf of Edgewood (still an orphanage at the time) that the kids used to visit, from 1911 until the mid-1940s.  Nowadays, the children are still taken on camping trips each summer, but the location varies.  The article gives an idea of life at the orphanage at the time.

Who leaves a comb in a box of papers??

I’m also very happy that I found a large stack of old newsletters from the 1960s.  By this point in time, Edgewood was a home for emotionally-disturbed youth.  I plan to digitize these, along with the other records I find, but for privacy reasons I’m not sure yet how much can be shared publically.  There’s so much to consider when making older records available online and I want to make sure that I follow best practices around copyright and privacy.  Some of the articles that don’t include pictures or the last names of the children may be shareable, but I’ll be researching this.