Internship - Day 13.0

Quality Control

The task today was to begin executing on my quality control (QC) recommendations for unfinished collections started by student assistants. The student assistants are not expected to have a foundation of archival theory or experience. Mostly, they are instructed on how to perform repetitive tasks such as refoldering, labeling, and rehousing materials. So that's where I pick up on the first two of five such collections.

I'm pleased to find mostly tidy and neatly labeled materials, although I'm not sure if the students were instructed to maintain original order or how they made their refoldering choices. I'm guessing they maintained original order -- if only by default.

The first thing I did was compare the folders and their labels with what was input into Archivists' Toolkit (AT). Right off the bat I found the collection number was missing from all of the folder labels. Also, there was a date range mismatch between what was on the folder labels and what was input into AT. Some materials genres were misidentified, such as calling a pamphlet or report a booklet. There were no names or subjects selected for the collection nor were there any notes other than a Content and Scope note, and that probably migrated from the accession record. In one case, a too-large sized box was used for a thin stack of folders.

This all may sound a bit nit-picky, but the procedures and expectations for the quality of arrangement and description at UCI Special Collections and Archives is high. And the things I'm catching and fixing are really the realm of an archivist. It was heads down, intensive work, but this exercise was good practice and reinforcement for me.

Internship - Day 6.0

A different kind of day...

Today, I was not heads-down in collection processing as I have been in previous weeks. But it was an interesting day nonetheless.

Ayala Science Library at UCI

UCI has four libraries; the Medical, Science, Law, and Main (now Langson) Libraries. Special Collections and Archives (SC&A) is in the Langson, one of the oldest buildings on campus at the ripe old age of 47. Today, I had the pleasure of walking over to the Ayala Science Library and visiting with two of our catalogers. Sarah Wallbank does the cataloging of items (rare books) for Special Collections and Carole McEwan edits the EAD and MARC catalog entries for collections entered into Archivists' Toolkit. Both ladies were very welcoming and generous with their time providing me with an overview of how they support SC&A.

Back at SC&A, my supervisor and I interacted with the student assistant who has been assigned the work tickets for the Environmental Coalition of Orange County (ECOC) collection I processed. We realized that the re-foldering process was causing the collection to outgrow the four document storage boxes, so I incorporated a fifth. Unfortunately this caused a little extra work for the student as it messed up the <box : folder > numbering work she had done. I saw how my inexperience in extrapolating how re-foldering would add a bit of length to the linear footage, and therefore the number of document boxes. I immediately applied this lesson-learned to the current Fair Housing Council of Orange County (FHCOC) collection I'm currently processing.

As far as deliverables today, I handed in three to my supervisor:

• An updated Accession Checklist for the FHCOC collection which corrected the extent's linear footage.
• An updated Processing Work Plan for FHCOC to  eliminate the sub-series level I had proposed for the filing unit organization.
• A revised Accessioning Manual containing several suggestions for improving this useful document for a newby like me. (My supervisor has encouraged any suggestions to improve SC&A procedural manuals.)

Internship - Day 5.0

Second Collection Accessioned

The Environmental Coalition of Orange County (ECOC) records have now been delegated to the student assistant force here at SP&A for labeling. So I began work on the second collection assigned to me.

The Fair Housing Council of Orange County (FHCOC) is a similarly sized collection as the first; one archives box full of paper. I was determined to leverage the knowledge gained from working on the ECOC records to process this new collection more efficiently and in much less time.

Fair Housing Council of Orange County

The Fair Housing Council of Orange County is a private non-profit organization formed in 1965 in the wake of the civil rights movement that resulted in the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The Council incorporated in 1968, the same year that Congress extended civil rights protections to cover housing with the adoption of the Fair Housing Act. The FHCOC is apparently still going strong at 44.

The contents of the archives box were a bit of a mess. Unlike the ECOC records which were already sorted into 87 labeled folders, the FHCOC papers were loose with nearly no folders at all. The papers were stacked in two piles within the box which made determining the original order a bit of a challenge. I pulled all of the papers out of the box and placed them on my desk maintaining the original order as best I could.

I quickly reviewed each of the piles of paper on my desk taking quick notes about the types of documents found. This general inventory is a good way to begin to organize the documents intellectually for a proposed arrangement. The good news is that the contents pretty much fell into only three major categories; court documents, city planning documents, and FHCOC newsletters.

To save time I simultaneously filled in both accession documents I needed to generate; a new record in the Archivists' Toolkit accession module and an accession checklist in Word. Since the FHCOC is still in business I was able to cut and paste administrative history data directly from their Web site, wordsmith it in one place and copy and paste the new blurb into the other. There were no preservation issues, no non-paper items, nor content needing to be restricted. I made good time and moved right into spawning the AT resource record from the accession record and began filling out the processing work plan.

At the end of the day I was able to submit both the accession checklist and processing work plan to my supervisor for review. A very productive day in which I easily halved the amount of time it took me to do a similar amount of work on the first collection.

Internship - Day 3.0

Two Deliveries

Today my efforts resulted in the delivery of two documents, an accession checklist and a collection work plan. Both of these forms cover my first assigned collection; the records of the Environmental Coalition of Orange County (ECOC).

ECOC Accession Checklist

Here is the header portion of the ECOC accession record. The Accession and Collection Numbers are determined by checking Archivists' Toolkit (AT) for the next available numbers. The purpose of the checklist is to make sure that a new collection that has come into the Special Collections & Archives (SC&A) is properly received and accounted for even if it is not immediately processed.

I started filling out the checklist and inputting the accession record in AT back on Day 2, but I had not quite finished. I realized that my initial cursory review of the folders in the ECOC box was not thorough enough to provide the necessary detail on condition, disposition, and restrictions. So I took the time to review the contents of each folder at a very high level. I made notes on candidate materials for the following four areas;

• Separation
• Disposition
• Restriction
• Preservation

I'm glad I did the more thorough review as I found more mailing labels than I found the first time. My supervisor advised that these should just be discarded / shredded. I also found correspondence between elected California officials and the ECOC containing original signatures. I asked if they should be restricted to avoid potential theft. (It's not like I found Abraham Lincoln's signature, but I did note that a page with Senator Alan Cranston's signature was already missing.) My supervisor advised that SC&A tends to not restrict correspondence to that level. Additionally, I found a small box of 35mm color film transparencies that constituted the visual portion of an educational slide show. These will receive special sleeving attention but will otherwise not be separated from the paper script found in the same folder.

ECOC Work Plan

Here is the header portion of the work plan developed for the ECOC collection. Some header data overlaps that of the accession checklist. The main purpose of this document is to communicate the significance of the collection to the archivist. This is accomplished by the accessioning processor answering a series of questions designed to assist the archivist with determining how to prioritize the processing of the collection and the level to which it should be processed.

As I made my high level review of the box contents I noted the label text and original order of each of the eighty-five (85) folders. The contents of each folder seem to agree with its label. This indicated to me that, overall, the collection came fairly well-organized. The condition of the folders is another matter. They exhibit some past, light water damage and would benefit from refoldering.

One set of questions on the work plan is; "How will you organize the collection? Is there any existing meaningful order? What series will you use?" Although this was not a difficult question, I found that answering it was the same amount of work as just reorganizing the folder labels I had already captured electronically. Using the suggested series groupings in the Processing Manual I was able to quickly  organize the 85  folders intellectually in the following proposed series and sub-series filing units:

• Correspondence [4 folders]
• Operational records [3 folders]
• Program records
• Air Quality [12 folders]
• Conservation (Energy, Water) [12 folders]
• Educational [6 folders]
• Transportation [5 folders]
• Water Quality [1 folder]
• Project records [26 folders]
• Public relational records [16 folders]

All this fun work was topped off with generating  the AT resource record from the accession record.

Towards the end of the day I presented the above two forms to my supervisor for approval and consulted with her about next steps. She suggested that I write up work tickets for the preservation activities, refoldering, labeling, and reboxing so that the work can be assigned to a student assistant.

Another next step will be to review and complete the resource record. My supervisor advised that she has the student assistants perform the data entry of the filing unit information in AT resource record. That would be the series, sub-series, and folder children. All of the data entry is the realm of the archivist processor.

We also discussed that I would update the estimated time frame for processing based on guidance provided in either the Processing Manual and/or the UC Minimal Processing Guide. Also, I'll look at clarifying the series/sub-series filing unit, and determine if I'll do folder level descriptions.

Internship - Day 2.0

First Accession - ECOC

It's appropriate that my first UCI Special Collections and Archives (SC&A) accession on the records of the Environmental Coalition of Orange County (ECOC) coincides with the 50th anniversary of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, a foundational document in modern environmentalism. In 1972, ten years after the publication of Silent Spring, the ECOC was formed by environmental activists to bring visibility to issues, concerns, and threats to the region's ecology. The ECOC communicated to its membership and the public by way of its newsletter, Environmental News.

A sister division within the UCI Libraries recently found a box of ECOC materials while cleaning out a long term storage area and passed it along to Special Collections. Because I expressed an interest in regional history (as opposed to University records), the collection was set aside by my supervisor as one of the collections for me to work on.

Documentation

One of the advantages of interning at UCI SC&A is the excellent documentation available on internal archival procedures. The document I'm using today is the Accessioning Manual for Archival and Manuscript Collections (AM). The Accessioning Manual is a 17-page accompaniment to the larger Archival Processing Manual (APM) and provides guidance for the initial handling of materials that come into the custody of  SC&A.

Accession Checklist

My work day started with filling out an online Archival Collection Accession Checklist that captures the output of work guided by the AM. Since I'm already comfortable with Archivists's Toolkit (AT), and my supervisor granted me access, I began inputting data into a new AT accession record while using the checklist to as a road map. As I made a quick pass through the unprocessed folders in the ECOC box, I made processing notes on the following areas to help me gather my thoughts about a processing plan and to ask questions of my supervisor :

• Principal names
• Separation candidates
• Restriction/destruction candidates
• Preservation/handling candidates

Paging from the Stacks

I knew I needed to develop a succinct description of the collection's provenance, which is why I asked my supervisor last week about paging copies of the ECOC's newsletter from a processed collection in the stacks. Even though it would have been easier to have one of the student assistants page the specific container, I asked to be shown how to do it myself. My supervisor cheerfully guided me through the steps of finding the container location in the online stacks database, and then walking me into the stacks to find the row, cabinet, shelf, and box. I filled out a paging flag to take the place of the paged box and hefted the box back to my desk. First retrieval accomplished! Later in the day when I had finished using the paged material, I returned the box to the stacks and put the paging flag in the tray to be tallied for reporting purposes.

Accession Record Review

Towards the end of the day, my supervisor and I got together to review my progress. My previously stated goal of having a processing plan ready for her review was not so much overly aggressive as it was inexperienced. I didn't have a processing plan yet, but I had accomplished inputting the accession record in AT. My supervisor made a suggestion on improving the accession description to make it conform to repository standards. She also provided guidance on filling out the access restrictions note. Other than that, I'm ready to move on to developing the processing plan next week.