Winding down

It’s hard to believe it’s the end of the semester already.  I feel like I’ve accomplished a lot with this special studies project and learned so much about working with paper-based archival collections and about oral histories.  It’s been an amazing opportunity to create a mini archival collection.  I realized about halfway through the semester I was incredibly ambitious when I made my original plan.  I actually only added an oral history component because I didn’t think there’d be enough to do with the surveying and preservation aspect!  Only about 70% of what I hoped to do actually got done, but I’ll keep chipping away at everything.  The most important thing is that I found all of the old orphan records from the 1850s and on and that they’ll be preserved.

Over the past week, I met with Edgewood staff to go over the inventory of everything I found to see which records they wanted digitized.  I had already planned to digitize a number of items for preservation reasons and for use in marketing projects.  But I was surprised by some of the other items that people asked for electronically, like photographs from the 2000s.  I politely declined to do anything too contemporary because of the sheer volume of items.  But I somehow still ended up with a digitizing plan for approximately 200 records, most of which have multiple pages or need some sort of special handling!  For now, I’ve prioritized the order of digitizing, but I am reserving the right to modify the plan as I progress.

The oral history interview that I had scheduled for December 3rd was unfortunately cancelled by the interviewee because of a severe rainstorm we had in the Bay Area that day.  I was disappointed, but I completely understood and also didn’t want an elderly lady driving by herself across a flooded Golden Gate Bridge, so it was for the best.  This interview and the interview with another former client of Edgewood have been scheduled for the first week of January.

I heard back from the archivist at the San Francisco History Center and she’s asked some questions about the records to help her decide which ones to take.  I’ve also reached out to leadership at Edgewood to see which orphan files I can donate to the History Center, due to privacy issues.  I suggested a 70-year gap, which I think is a standard and would allow files through 1944 to go to the History Center.  At this time, Edgewood was still an orphanage, but some of the files do contain medical and adoption information, so there are definitely privacy issues to be considered.

I have completed a very thorough first draft of the transcription of the oral history interview I did a couple of weeks ago, with two full listens completed.  Now, I just need to fact check a few names he mentioned and read it through one more time to check that it’s all coherent and flows well.  Then I’ll share it with Edgewood staff and the interviewee.  I’ll also check to see if the History Center would like a copy.

It’s astonishing to me, but I added up the hours I’ve spent on this project and it’s already over 168 hours – and I didn’t even finish everything on the project plan!  Every step of my plan has taken so much longer than I expected.  This is mostly due to finding so much more than I originally thought I would during my survey and having more people respond to my request to be interviewed for the oral histories.  And of course, I’m a little slower than a professional archivist because this is my first time doing any of this in real life.

Now I’m just wrapping up my final report.  The work will continue for several more months, until I can complete as much of my original plan as I can.  What’s left is digitizing records, donating materials to the History Center, and completing two more oral history interviews.  It’s a lot, but it’s doable over time.

I’ll continue to post updates here on my progress as I can!

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.