Hold on to your digits!

The WWC Archives is getting ready to go digital. Sort of.

We, as in the college, is a member of the Appalachian College Association, a consortium of 24 (or so) small colleges up and down and near the Appalachians. It maintains a website and the Digital Library of Appalachia, and other programs.  But for our purposes the DLA is the focus of our attention.  Heretofore, WWC has participated by uploading 60% of the Mountain Music College, full-length or partial clips of singers, songwriters, instrumentalists who are local, traditional musicians or who performed in music halls/festivals/venues here in the area. 

The DLA is now requesting members upload photographs from the collections.  I attended a training session on using the software to do this last year, except them I got busy and didn't have an opportunity to use it.  That, and Amanda is very excited about doing this kind of data work. 

Because when you digitize and add photos to a collection it's not just the digitization, it's the creation of metadata.  This will be a slow process with lots of edits and checks and re-checks along the way.  But soon enough we'll share our fabulous photograph collection with the rest of the world.

The people demand archives!

I don't think the archives has ever had 10 researchers in one day.  Fortunately (for them) they didn't all come at the same time because there's only 5 chairs in the reference area.

Proposals for the senior history theses are due Friday, and two students showed up for the first time today.  Awesome.  One of the topics won't be too difficult to research/write.  The other one will be.  The time to decide has passed this student by.  She's locked in and barely loaded.

I'm pretty sure I said in my intro to archives presentation "Come early, come often, stay late!"  I meant that.  The people may demand archives, but they'd better get there early enough to do the research.

In the hot spot...

We've reached that point in the semester where I am completely overrun--with reference, with students, with requests for my time and my brain and our records.  Working part-time when there are full-time demands is definitely not the way to go.  Not this week.

Fortunately, my student archivist has become bored with sleeving photographs, her current project, and eagerly took on two reference requests.  One was on the history of the lately departed Carson Hall; the other, how the furniture pieces in the Farm School's woodworking shop were sold or marketed.  Her attention to this level of detail and research will serve her well, as she is patiently sifting through a huge folder of financial records.  Awesome. Because I'm sifting through a pile of Henry Randolph correspondence from 1928 for a lecture I'm giving next Thursday.

And that means, of course, records go unprocessed, undescribed, uncataloged.  How to balance the life of research with that of making the records available.  The eternal dilemma of the lone arranger.

New year, new projects

It's the first full week of new semester at Warren Wilson.  The Archives now has a new student archivist, since Max graduated and left in the spring.  Amanda is a sophomore who worked on the library circulation crew.  She's picking up the photograph rehousing project started by Max; that job is a little more than half-finished.  She's also going to be doing data entry for uploading photos to the Digital Library of Appalachia and is learning how to scan images.

Speaking of scanning, IT services will be giving Archives its dedicated slide scanner sometime soon.  This will be a great addition as the Microtek 800 is fine for photos, it's not so hot for slides.  The Archives will become slide scanning central for the college community.  But not yet...

The other project that will consume a lot of time, especially for me, will be the reorganization and inventory of the Ben Holden presidential papers.  I've started some processing of this important collection, mostly in response to students looking for records to document papers from the 1970s & 80s.  This huge collection needs the work, but it may be some time before  I can finish.  Many, many more things are in the way.

No word yet on the integration of Archon and Archivists' Toolkit softwares.  Still waiting for this blessed event to occur so that archives can use ONE ultimate archival database.  Won't that be fun?

Full house!

It's not often the WWC archives gets enough visitors to fill all 5 chairs, but we did it last night.

The History 480 senior seminar proposals are due this week, so people are getting it in gear.  Suddenly, the archives has become the place to spend your Tuesday evening.

Awash in a sea of stuff

Ever have one of those days (weeks, months) when you feel like you're a total FAIL at being an archivist?

I'm having one of those weeks.

My desk is a wreck. A complete and utter mish-mash of clutter. How did I allow it to get this bad?

It happens. The detritus of others conspires to make us liars and cheats. Of course, most of the drips and drabs are of my own making, but I can blame it on the wee bits of stuff that comes at me through campus mail and the door and by the hands of others.

Get down with it, get dirty, get small. Make piles, then smaller ones, then tiny ones. Get up, move around, filefilefile, processprocessprocess. Some of it finds its way into the round file--hate to see you go, but that's where you belong. Sorry. Not everything is permanent in this impermanent world.

And, little by little, the piles disappear and soon I find an expanse of brown once again. Ahhhh!

Back from ...whereever

After not being able to access our gmail account for ages, I think we've finally gotten it straightened out.

Back with Owl Droppings as soon as we create some. :D

Recently, the archives received from someone completely unaffiliated with WWC a friendship quilt that had been given to the Dorland-Bell School. [DB was a girls' school located in Hot Springs, about an hour north of Asheville. It was established in the 1888 by the Rev. Luke and Juliette Dorland, retired Presbyterian home missionaries. The school joined with the Farm School in 1942 to create Warren Wilson Junior College at the start of WWII.] The donor bought it at an auction near Cullowhee for $40. He then drove up here and gave it to the WWC Archives. I'm currently doing some research about the quilt and about friendship quilts in general. I hope to place the quilt on display during the final few weeks of classes. After that, I'll box it up for preservation.

What a wonderful gift! The donor did not ask for payment. However, he runs a non-profit shelter for cats, and he asked for donations to that. I gave him a donation. If you'd like to help our donor out, please contact me and I'll give you the information.

These unexpected moments of grace and gifts make being an archivist rewarding.

Cologne Germany

Such horrible news within archives world: the municipal archives of the city of Cologne, Germany has been destroyed. The building, constructed in 1971, collapsed, taking with it the buildings that sat on either side. Emergency personnel think three people may have been inside.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article5846343.ece

We don't often think about how much records weigh. When we apply for archival jobs, one of the requirements is that we be able to lift about 40 pounds over head, which is the average weight for a full cubic foot box (10x14). If you have a densely shelved storage space, that's a lot of weight for a floor to take. Add to that, a city that does underground blasting and building for a subway system and heavy construction in the area, you just might find yourself in such a predicament. What is really disturbing is that cracks were discovered in the lower levels of the archives and were found 'safe' by city inspectors.

The City Archives of Cologne held wonderful municipal records and private manuscript collections. The city council meetings, going back to 1376, were absolutely complete, a rarity for a city so old. The oldest records were from 922A.D.

One of the reasons why our archives is on the ground floor is because of the compact shelving system. It weighs significantly more than regular shelving. (And we all have to be careful not to roll the shelving onto someone.)

Be safe!

Thursday musings

Greetings! Since I now have entered the world of archives blogging, I suppose I should post regularly about our activities. For the first time since I've been at Warren Wilson College, I have two mostly full-time processors and one mostly full-time extra student who has been setting up our brand new, shiny website. This is really novel for me. When Max, Katie and Julie are in here with me, as we are on Wednesday afternoons and Friday mornings, it gets pretty crowded. Over the next week or so, I want to highlight what they're doing because lots of good things are happening. This week I've been concentrating on getting text written for the website. It's been nearly 4 years, so it's about time. I hope to put up basic html documents of the finding aids, some photo libraries, and an exhibit about the White Barn. But I'm working on getting the basic information and downloadable documents that I use most often. Keep checking the website for updates.

But first, a photo: This is the archives main work area. Katie works at the far end, and I'm closest in. I can spread out and write on the laptop and send things back to the main computer. If you squint, you can see Max's chair in the dark. He's the senior member of the squad so he gets his own office. :D It looks like it's a mess, but the stuff on the table is actually quite organized. Sometimes you have to have a little chaos before imposing order.

The archives has very nice compact shelving which maximizes our limited space. I've never been a huge fan of compact shelving, but it really is appropriate.