The Texas / Dallas Archives

My first week of my internship proved to be a very exciting one.  I got to jump in with both feet and go!

The Frank Oliver Collection
This collection is an unprocessed collection that my supervisor and the archivist are letting me work on from start to finish.  There are eight long rectangular boxes which contain articles and sketches of Frank Oliver's work.  The assession number is MA 08-11.  This tells me that these are manuscripts (MA) that were received in 2008.  The 11 means this is the 11th collection received in that year.

Day One
After being shown around the archive, I was shown the collection I would be processing.  I spent my first day going through each box, taking notes, and determining original order.  At first it was difficult to determine whether the articles and sketches were ordered geographically or chronologically from publication date.  I made it through three of the eight boxes.  I had at this point determined that more of the boxes seemed to be in chronological order and therefore determined that I would organize the items by date of publication.

Day Two
I finished going through another three of the boxes and took notes on what each one contained.  The boxes were primarily a year a box.  I glanced through the last two boxes and everything was organized geographically by region.  The region of Texas had been written on the back of the template card.  I determined to wait on these two boxes until after I had begun ordering the chronological items and then figure where they fit.

Day Three
I spent the entire day working on placing the sketches and articles in files organized by date.  I filled an entire box with folders dating from 1968-1971.  It appears that an article was published on a weekly basis.  I am still researching which newspaper carried this collection.  The official name of the collection of articles and sketches is Texas! Discovering the Lone Star State with... Frank Oliver.