J Lawrence Jones and EAD

July 22

Today I spent time placing the J. Lawrence Jones collection into archival architectural boxes.  These boxes are at least three feet tall and have dividers creating nine sections inside the box.  These are labeled A1 through C3.  I worked through and organized 80% of the collection.  I also took meticulous notes on what was in each section.  This will be used to help in writing the EAD file in NoteTab.

July 23

Today I finished boxing the rest of the of the JLJ collection.  I also had to write up what was in each section of each of the four boxes.  This took some time.  I not only had to write it on the box, I had to write it on the lid of the box.  I also continued creating the J. Lawrence Jones finding guide in Word.

EAD was working so I was able to work on the Dallas Pen Women collection and prepare to file the boxes away.  I had to add to scrapbooks we had to the collection finding guide.  We had to call the techs to help us figure out why I couldn't save in NoteTab.  We realized it was my profile and I did not have the permissions to save and work.  We fixed this and I was able to keep working with EAD without any more problems.

July 25

I spent most of the day working on the computer in EAD.   I made a few small corrections to the Pen Women finding guide and made labels for the boxes.  I was then able to file the boxes away in the archive.  That collection is complete.

Dallas Pen Women

I also started typing the Frank Oliver collection into EAD.  I copied box one into EAD.  This is box one of five.  Each box has 95 folders.  Granted, it is copying and pasting, but it is tedious.  I will be working on it all next week.

I also played around with the Jones collection in EAD.  I wanted to see how it would look because there are no folders.  There are nine squares.  I think I figured out a way to get the information in the finding guide and still have it look good.  I even showed Brian, the archivist, and he said it looked better than he thought it would.  That made me happy.  I got through the first series and almost all of box one.

Dallas Pen Women and J. Lawrence Jones Collection

July 15

Today I spent the morning placing the Dallas Pen Women collection into folders.  After discussing the organization of this collection with the Archivist, I tried to keep it to the original order that was in the boxes but got approval to change some wording and break up a miscellaneous folder into other series that made more sense.  I did the same with the general folder.  These two folders were broken up into other series that made more sense for what each series in the collection contained.

I also made some corrections to the Frank Oliver finding guide.  This completed the collection.  The finding guide is ready to be converted from a Word document into a PDF document and uploaded to the web.  EAD has had some issues with this finding guide which is why it was completed in Word. Eventually it will be done in EAD.  I also filed the boxes away in the archive.

July 16

Today was spent in EAD working on the finding guide for the Dallas Pen Women Collection.  I also did some research looking for information to add to the biographical note.  This collection had five different series and is contained in a single box.

As I spent time working in EAD, I tried to work on copying the finding guide for the Oliver collection.  While everything seemed to work perfectly fine for the Dallas Pen Women, it would not save any work I did on the Oliver collection.  EAD is a finicky program.

I also started a new manuscript collection today.  I began looking at the J. Lawrence Jones collection of architectural plans.  I began writing the finding guide in EAD.  I had the accession folder with a lot of information and files on what the five boxes contained.  Lawrence Oliver's grandson had written a biography.  I used this biography as the biographical note for the finding guide.  I give credit that it was written by his grandson and that I only made small edits.  This bio had been typed on a typewriter and I found typos as I was copying it into EAD.  The only corrections I made were to a few spelling and grammatical errors.  I stopped at this point because I did not want to write in the scope and contents of the collection from the lists I had that were nearly 20 years old.  I wanted to check the boxes myself.

My favorite part of the day was when my supervisor asked if I wanted to see the "Magic Kingdom".  This is the rare books held in the vault.  I saw some amazing things.  They have several first editions of famous works as well as a first and fourth folio of Shakespeare.  One of my favorite pieces was a volume of Alice in Wonderland that had been illustrated by Salvador Dali.

July 17

I spent the entire day verifying the J. Lawrence Jones collection of architectural plans.  I had a 5 page table with the plans, address if available, and the number of plans included.  I did not feel comfortable creating a finding guide without verifying that everything on the list was still in the boxes.  I did discover that there were a few items missing and one box was a big mess of mixed up items.

Dallas Times Herald project and Dallas Pen Women

Day 15 (July 8)

Today I spent a good portion of the day sleeving negatives from the box I had begun the previous week.  I sleeved nearly the rest of the box.  There were some interesting topics and it became easier to tell which photographers were more organized when it came to their negatives.  Russ Russell gave very little information as to what the subject was in his photographs.  Russell's cutting even seemed a little careless.  I came across several sets of negatives where there seemed to be 3 or 4 negatives that did not match up with the topic written on the envelope.  On the other hand,  Robert Vasek placed his photo assignment card in the envelope with the negatives.  This provided sufficient information on the subject.

I spent an hour working at the reference desk with Brian, the archivist.  He showed me where things were when people came up to ask questions or needed something that was in the back.  By the end of the hour, I was able to help out a patron looking for the city guides while Brian answered the phone.

I also spent some time trying to research a couple of sets of negatives to see if I could figure out more information about the subject.  I had to pull the microfilm for the Dallas Times Herald.  After searching through the film up to a week after the date the photos were taken, I gave up.  Plus the scanning of the microfilm was making me dizzy.  May be I shouldn't go quite so fast through them the next time.

Day 16 (July 9)

I completed the negative sleeving as far as I could go.  There were several envelopes that had no year on them.  As the full date is part of the accession number, I could not complete these.

I spent some time making corrections to the Oliver collection.  I went back and renumbered the first two boxes because it did not feel right to have it numbered 19, 19a, 20... especially when 19 and 19a were not even similar.  I also made the necessary changes to the finding aid.

When all that was done, I started processing a new manuscript collection.  There were two boxes of paperwork from the Dallas Pen Women.  This collection is about a group of women who gathered together and shared their writing with each other.  The collection includes meeting minutes, newsletters, correspondence, autobiographies, music, poetry, and directories.  I started organizing this collection and determining the original order by taking notes of what was in each folder.

Day 17 (July 10)

Today I spent most of the day beginning to enter the photo negative sleeves into the database.  I have to enter more information than what was on the envelope, so I had to look things up online for more information about the subject.  I got through nearly half of the sleeves that had been completed out of the box.

I also spent another hour on the reference desk with Bryan, my supervisor and the assistant manager.  We briefly discussed what I had been working on and my midterm review.  Like previously, I helped find books in the back that patrons have requested and helped others with the microfilm.

I finished the day by completing my notes on the Dallas Pen Women collection.  This collection is ready for further processing and placement into folders.  I discovered that as I went through the collection, there are numerous staples and paperclips that will need to be dealt with.

Day 18 (July 11)

I spent most of the day inputting the negative sleeves into the database.  I even had to pull microfilm for three sleeves to gather more information.  This time I was more successful in discovering the photos used and information about who or what was in the photographs.  The next step is to file the negative sleeves according to the accession numbers.

Dallas Times Herald project

Day Thirteen (July 1)

Today I completed the Frank Oliver Collection.  The school sketches were interesting to file.  I placed them in order of the lesson workbooks that Oliver went through during his time at the Landon School. 

After 2 hours, I had completed adding all works into the finding guide.  Both the archivist and my supervisor were out for the day.  The manager called my supervisor, the assistant manager, and he gave her a few ideas of what I could work on next.  We searched for some boxes of items from a group in Dallas, but I found 12 large boxes to be overwhelming with no prior guidance.  I ended up working the rest of the day with the photo person.

I started a new project on the Dallas Times Herald.  I was given a box of photo negatives that needed processing.  I was shown how to place them in sleeves and how to write the accession number.  The accession number for these photos is very long, PA83-41/yyyy-mm-dd-photographer initials1/#.  The 1 is for the sleeve of negatives o a particular subject and the # is the negative number.  I worked with both 35mm and 120s.  I even came across a few slides. 

This project is a lot like putting a puzzle together.  I ended the day with an envelope of negatives about the Anadarko Indians.  I had to put three different rolls of film together in the right order before placing in negative archival sleeves. 

Day Fourteen (July 2)

I spent the entire day working on the box of negatives I had started the previous day.  I even picked up where I had left off the previous day with the Anadarko Indians.  I had a second envelope of 120 negatives to order.  I worked diligently through the envelope.  I discovered that the second photographer that I came across in my processing of this collection was a lot more organized than the first photographer.  He put more notes and information on the envelope so that it made processing easier and no extra research into the subject was needed.

I left early today to finish packing for a long low tech weekend out at the lake for the holiday.
Happy 4th of July!