Internship - Day 11.0

AT and MP

Today was a repeat of last week with regards to processing. As was done for the Environmental Coalition of Orange County (ECOC) collection, I made another pass on the Fair Housing Council of Orange County (FHCOC) records to bring them up to a moderate level of processing. Good reinforcement of technique, but nothing new to report to you, my dear readers.

Instead, I'd like to take the opportunity today to sing the praises of Archivists' Toolkit (AT) and how it supports the efficient character of Minimal Processing (MP). Perhaps you'll consider these observations a bit mundane, but while processing the FHCOC collection I was struck by how seamlessly original order is maintained, even as the archivist intellectually creates order from chaos. Let me explain:

Here are boxes 2 through 4 (right to left) of the processed FHCOC collection. The contents are filed in approximately the same jumbled order in which I found them in the original bankers box when they arrived in Special Collections and Archives -- their original order. For the most part, there was little in the way of organization, except there was a thin set of about four folders which had been previously processed by a prior caretaker. This gave me pause and I had to consider that there was some method to the madness confronting me. I decided to keep everything in the box in the sequence in which it came to maintain its original order. If there was an order, it was well hidden, but perhaps it would reveal itself after working with it a bit.

In retrospect, there wasn't any order, or value to maintaining the physical order of the contents, other than to save me the step of reordering similar papers together. Being somewhat obsessive, I had to resist more than once the temptation to reorder the papers. After refoldering the documents and labeling the folders it became more difficult to justify the rework of putting the papers into an artificial order. So the urge diminished.

The aspect that did reveal itself, though, was that after inputting the series, subseries, and folder labels into AT, the reordering I had resisted doing physically could be accomplished electronically. By dragging the entries into a semblance of order my want for physical reordering was satisfied -- and while maintaining the physical original order of the papers.

Here's the finished AT Resource view of the entire collection:

Note the highlighted filing unit for the year 1975 under the series/subseries Legal documents | Court documents (click on the image to enlarge). This is not one folder of court documents from 1975, but one entry that represents three folders. Check out the Instances on the right side of the frame. You can see there are three instances (folders) of 1975 court document spread across three boxes. The locations of the three folders is indicated by the salmon-colored flags in the first image above. So even though the three folders are physically split up, they have been brought together intellectually in AT under one child entry.

The beauty of this is that the archivist is freed from having to physically reorder the contents of collections, even when the material may cry out for artificial organization. The sorting, ordering  and consolidating of like documents can be done electronically as a final step after inputting each of the folder labels into AT. Minimal processing is supported because any temptation to reshuffle papers into order is unnecessary, unjustified, and thus eliminated. Original order is maintained as a matter of course (even if it has no obvious value) while simultaneously saving the archival processor time, effort, and work space that physical reordering of documents would require. This is a beautiful thing.

Internship - Day 10.0

Minimal to Moderate Level Processing

Always keeping me on my toes, my mentor my supervisor presented me with a new challenge; try my hand at processing a collection at the moderate-intensive level. She suggested that, given I have organized the first collection of materials (ECOC MS-R164) at the folder level it would be appropriate to describe them (even if briefly) in the finding aid. My supervisor directed my attention to the sections of the processing manuals that instruct on the requirements for Moderate levels of control.

ECOC boxes retrieved for moderate level processing.

So I paged the boxes from the stacks in the basement cage and did a deeper dive into the ECOC materials. Whereas I had previously had only described the scope and contents of the records at the collection level, I now developed Scope and Content notes for the series and subseries levels, and Arrangement notes at the series level. I'll also make use of the student staff to add the existing folder listings into AT under the corresponding series and subseries.

It took me all day to process at the moderate level, but in the end these additional efforts will have the effect of increasing the richness of the finding aid providing more detailed and varied keywords a researcher can analyze in their search results. And your humble Archivist Apprentice will have added another brick in the foundation of his experience.

Internship - Day 9.0

FHCOC Reconsidered

FHCOC in the stacks.

At the end of the day last week, I asked my supervisor to review my AT resource record for the Fair Housing Council of Orange County (FHCOC) collection. As mentioned earlier, the collection does not have much variety in types of documents it contains, but is challenging in that the original order resembled the aftermath of 52-card pickup. But not to worry, the beauty of electronic finding aids is that original order can be maintained, yet the materials can be arranged intellectually for easy reference and easy retrieval.

First thing this morning, my supervisor shared her thoughts on the next steps for the FHCOC records. She made some excellent suggestions. This is the exact situation that makes an internship so valuable. I made my best effort at applying the archival theory I've learned from coursework and professional publications and then get to have it reviewed by an experienced archivist who gently makes excellent suggestions for improving the usefulness of the finding aid for research. Based on our discussion, I modified my series arrangement from:

• Court documents
• Regulatory documents
• Planning documents
• Newsletters

...to the following series and subseries...

• Legal documents
• Court documents
• Settlements
• Publications
• Regulatory documents
• Planning documents
• Newsletters

I was also reminded that DACS calls out for scope and content notes for "Each subsequent level of a multilevel description..." (3.1), so I added additional notes at the appropriate levels. We also determined it would be helpful to researchers if the folder labels were transcribed into AT. I generated a work ticket to delegate this task to a student assistant.

I concluded the day's tasks by labeling the document boxes, shelving them, updating the Stacks Locator, and updating the Accessioning Checklist and Processing Work Plan.

Internship - Day 8.0

Published on OAC

A major milestone has been achieved by your humble intern. The finding aid for my first processed collection has been posted to the Online Archive of California (OAC). I'll describe the steps taken to make this happen, but first, here's the permanent link to the finding aid of the Environmental Coalition of Orange County records: http://www.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/c82806xg/
Very cool.

Electronic finding aids must be presented to OAC in Encoded Archival Description (EAD). Uploading EAD code to OAC is fairly straightforward, although it does require that your institution has made prior arrangements to contribute. UCI Special Collections and Archives (SC&A) is already an official OAC contributor so we were able to jump right into uploading the code.

Under the guidance of Library Assistant Alix Norton, I input the final data elements into Archivists' Toolkit (AT) needed to submit the ECOC collection to the OAC. With the EAD exported into a text file we made one minor adjustment to the code using a text editor called JEdit. Then, a tool called NetDrive was used to upload (or FTP) the EAD file to the OAC test site. Using the OAC Contributor Dashboard, I ran a verification script to confirm there were no errors in the EAD.

After the verification step was run, a copy of the EAD file was uploaded to the production FTP site using NetDrive. At that point the Contributor Dashboard was used to submit the EAD to OAC for posting to the production site. Alix got an email verifying the submission of the EAD finding aid.

OAC does not actually post anything immediately. The EAD was staged to a queue to await overnight processing. That night, the EAD was posted on OAC and a permanent URL was generated. I had to wait until the next day to actually see my handiwork on the Internet. Next Wednesday when I'm back at UCI I'll update the AT resource record with the OAC permanent URL so it can be included in the MARC record and UCI's OPAC.

Into the Stacks

Back in the material world there was still work to do. The physical boxes holding the ECOC collection needed to be shelved and the stacks locator updated. Interestingly, the finding aid tells a researcher what box a particular folder is located in but not where the box is located. When a researcher requests a particular box, the reference archivist will look up the physical location in the stacks locator. This decoupling between the finding aid and the stacks location allows the archivist to avoid rebuilding and uploading finding aids when collection locations are adjusted.

My supervisor and I trucked the five boxes of the collection down into the Langson Library basement where SC&A has two locked cages containing high density shelving. We selected an open spot and placed the boxes on a shelf. I noted the aisle, stack, and shelf and wrote the combination on the side of each box. That is how the reference archivist will know where to re-shelve the boxes should they be paged by a researcher.

The final task was to add entries to the online Stacks Locator for each of the five boxes as displayed here to the right. The location is read as (basement) aisle "BB10", the "C" (third)  stack of shelves from the left, and the "3" (third) shelf down from the top.

Next week, my goal is to perform all of the above operations for the second collection, the Fair Housing Council of Orange County records.

Internship - Day 7.0

Finishing Touches

The collection I processed at the start of the internship, Environmental Coalition of Orange County records (ECOC), came back from the student assistant. She had been assigned the task of refoldering and labeling the 85 or so folders spread across five Hollinger boxes.

As pictured above, there are three elements in labeling each of the new acid-free folders. On the left side is the collection number. For example, MS-R164 indicates this is the 164th Regional history ManuScript collection in the UCI Special Collections and Archives. The center portion of the folder tab is reserved for labeling the contents of the folder. The right side of the tab indicates this folder sequence in the box. This is folder number 4 in box number 1.

After checking the student's work, I had the pleasure of formatting,  printing, and applying the box labels to the ends of the document boxes. My supervisor had mentioned that she finds this one of the most satisfying steps in collection processing. I have to say there is a certain amount of pride one takes in seeing how a rag tag archives box of loose papers can come together into an organized and cohesive arrangement.

For finishing touches, I filled out the rest of the Archivists' Toolkit (AT) resource record for the collection, added the series and subseries hierarchy, added their corresponding box and folder range instances, refined the collection level finding aid data and notes, updated the work plan, and sent it off to my supervisor for review. This is exciting because we're getting close to generating the EAD and uploading it to the Online Archive of California (OAC) where the world will be able to find it!

And now, back to our other collection already in progress...

With the ECOC packed off to the archivist for review, I re-engaged with processing the Fair Housing Council of Orange County (FHCOC) records. In some ways this collection was more challenging intellectually. There were really only three categories, or series of documents, but almost none of them came organized. I started with an archives box containing a bunch of paper heaped in different directions.

Last week, when I pulled out the papers out of the bankers box, I did my best to maintain the original order. To make the papers easier to handle I placed them in acid-free folders while transferring them into Hollinger boxes. Since each folder can only hold about an inch thick of paper, the challenge was making decisions where to divide them into natural breaking points.

Handing off the folders to a student for labeling was out of the question. The papers are in no discernible order. So I took on the labeling task. I quickly reviewed the contents of each folder and labeled each with one of the three previously identified series titles; court documents, newsletters, or planning documents. I whipped through all folders in all four document boxes before the end of the day.

Next week, my goal will be to pull together the FHCOC collection into the same state of readiness that I got the ECOC into earlier today. Whew!