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Keeping the minimal processing dialog going

Tuesday, June 8th, 2010

Jack McCarthy brings up some good points about the challenges of minimal processing.  And it’s so great to get some feedback from an experienced archivist!  However, his blog post has brought to my attention a new concern; that our boot camp does not clearly express a crucial aspect of our methodology – that our processing plans are designed to be a starting point.

In fact, Jack’s concern about destroying important original order is already on our radar, and we work very hard to ensure that poor (and irreversible) processing decisions are not made.  That is why we create processing plans for every collection and why we do not treat all collections the same.  Sometimes, as in the case of Jack’s collection, we do advise our processors to separate materials by genre, other times we absolutely do not.  It all depends on our impression of each collection, information found in the survey, the collection’s custodial history, what the repository archivist has to say, and our time frame.  All of these issues are taken into consideration before we finalize the processing plan. In many cases, we work with whatever order is apparent to avoid separating materials in that manner, often advising our processors to resist the urge to over-complicate matters by trying to impose some complicated, unnecessary arrangement.  Before any arrangement decisions are acted on, the processors are instructed to read the entire processing plan and review the physical collection to form their own opinions.

We know, while we get it right a lot of the time, we are not right 100% of the time, and our processors are encouraged to talk to each other, repository staff, and us about the collections if they disagree with our proposed plan and they do.  In Jack’s case, if memory serves, we discussed his concerns and, for one of the folders in question, I felt he was correct; the papers should stay together and in the end they did.  In the other instances, I felt it was not as much of a concern for a few reasons: 1) At the moment we discussed the issue, he and his partner had not been able to identify a common link between the materials in the folder, 2) I did not believe that a decision in either direction would negatively impact the use or value of the materials for this particular collection, and 3) Holly had already seen the collection, created the processing plan, looked at the papers again, and stood by her decision.  In the end, I believe Jack decided to leave some of the folders intact and I am OK with his decision to approach the collection in this different way.

The bottom line is that nothing about our project is set in stone – it cannot be.  That is what makes training for minimal processing so difficult and why we are constantly looking for ways to make our training (and methodology, for that matter) better and stronger.  We can not provide an example for every potential scenario.  Nor can we allow our students to ponder every decision they will be asked to make, although we have them working in teams so that they can discuss issues such as this.  Minimal processing is tricky, especially at two hours per linear foot, and we know it.  That is why we create the processing plans and why we encourage and rely on our processors to express their opinions when they feel our suggestions are wrong or will negatively affect the collection in some profound way. By having these conversations, we hope that the best possible approach to processing can be identified and implemented.

Jack’s observations and concerns underscore the importance of keeping the dialog going; sharing our thoughts and experiences, as we as a profession continue to test the limits, and pros and cons of minimal processing.  His comments will certainly be taken into consideration as we move forward in our project, creating processing plans, guiding our student teams, and in future “boot camps.”

Posted in Minimal Processing, Project Archivist, Training | No Responses »

American Women’s Hospitals photo collection available for research at DUCOM

Thursday, May 13th, 2010
DUCOM - AWH_BeforeLeavingForEurope
  It seems almost impossible to believe, but EIGHT months ago, at the onset of our adventures in minimal processing, Eric Rosenzweig and I processed the American Women’s Hospitals (AWH) photograph collection, which is housed at Drexel University, College of Medicine (DUCOM), Archives and Special Collections.  Much to our regret, though processing was completed and a finding aid produced, no blog post was written for it at the time, which is a total shame.  It is a rich, evocative visual resource that uniquely documents the international work of the AWH from 1917 to 1982.

AWH developed out of the War Service Committee of the Medical Women’s National Association in 1917.  It was started to finance American women physicians for war work, offering medical and emergency relief to refugees and, later, to provide general public health services around the world.  Throughout its history, the agency focused its efforts on emergency medical care, maternity and children’s welfare, and preventive health-care programs.

In its earliest years, during and after World War I, AWH personnel labored extensively in France, Albania, Greece and the Near East to provide medical assistance to impoverished communities further devastated by the war.  Work in those countries continued throughout the 1920s and 1930s with added services in Serbia, Russia, Asia and the rural United States. The outbreak of World War II returned the agency’s attentions to Western Europe as projects of emergency medical relief were made necessary in war zones.  After World War II, the AWH shifted its focus from direct relief to financing training and employment of native female medical personnel in countries like China, Japan, Haiti, India, Southeast Asia and the Philippines.  Eventually, the organization curtailed its emergency medical services in favor of on-going prevention programs.  For example, AWH was involved in the study and prevention of pellagra, a disease resulting from malnutrition that effected the rural southern United States in epidemic proportions in the early to mid 20th century.

There’s no doubt that the women of the AWH were amazing!  And the photos found in the photograph collection evidences their amazing work in a way that textual documentation alone could not — together the photographs paint a very real and vivid portrait of the organization and its efforts over sixty-five years.

The collection is comprised of hundreds of photographs documenting field and clinic work conducted in Africa, Albania, Bolivia, France, Greece, India, Korea, Russia, Switzerland, Turkey, The United States, Vietnam and Yugoslavia.  A majority of the images depict AWH members treating patients whose health suffered from the devastation of war in Europe and elsewhere, especially after WWI, and issues of health resulting from abject poverty and malnutrition. Photographs of work conducted in the United States document the “Rural Services” division of the AWH. The earliest images in these files depict visiting doctors and nurses who traveled into remote regions of the rural south, administering health care and preventative health care education to families at their homes.  Later images depict health care provided in established clinics, like the Woman’s Maternity Shelter in Greenville, South Carolina.

As an MPLP candidate, this was a good choice.  A majority of the arrangement and identification was already done for us, which left a little bit of time to just enjoy the pictures!

Interestingly, during processing there was some healthy debate over the potential use and value of the collection.  It was argued, because the images were produced and used by the publicity department of AWH, that the composition and subject matter was likely carefully selected and staged to showcase AWH field work in an entirely positive light, and therefore the collection was not necessarily an honest or good or interesting resource.  It is true, many photos in the collection were obviously enhanced for printing in brochures and other AWH promotional materials.  However, I would argue, that most archival resources (whether written correspondence or organizational records or photographs) can offer only one point of view – that of their creator.  And what creator doesn’t have an agenda?  Furthermore, it should be noted that words can be and often are just as carefully selected as a photograph is staged.  In this case, realizing the images to be what they are – internally produced and maybe at times staged images – makes them an incredibly powerful resource that could be used to inform a variety of research topics.  Besides, images of injured and ill people are honestly revealing (and heart-wrenching) no matter what.  Whether candid snapshots or carefully constructed compositions doesn’t change the fact that the subjects were in fact starving, sick or hurt and that AWH tried to help them.

Needless to say, I personally feel that this is a fabulous resource depicting the work of AWH in a way that textual records can not.  For those of you out there who, like my colleague, do not always trust images, you’ll be glad to know that there is a complimentary collection of textual records of the American Women’s Hospitals that is also available for research at DUCOM.

Posted in All Posts, Drexel University College of Medicine, Minimal Processing, Project Archivist | 1 Response »

Woman’s Club of Germantown records at Bryn Mawr College

Friday, March 12th, 2010

During February, I devoted some time – 32 hours, to be precise – to processing a 16 linear foot collection at Bryn Mawr College: The Woman’s Club of Germantown records.  It was officially my first “mplp-2-hours” collection and I think it went quite well.

The Woman’s Club of Germantown (WCG) was a long-standing institution in Germantown, Pennsylvania, with an active membership from its inception in 1917 until around 1981.  Like so many woman’s groups created around that time, it offered a structured means through which women in the then growing northwestern neighborhoods of Philadelphia became better engaged with each other and in the social and civic activities of their community.  The women participated in war-work for World Wars I and II, hosted luncheons and other social events, assisted the American Red Cross and established a child care program in an under-privileged neighborhood, among other things.  In addition, for its clubhouse, WCG took charge of the Johnson House, a colonial era building, famous for its witnessing of the Battle of Germantown during the American Revolution and later for its use as a stop on the Underground Railroad before the American Civil War.  According to the organization’s records, it seems that the WCG assumed responsibility of all maintenance and historic preservation for this building for numerous years in the mid-twentieth century.

The Club’s records are not complete; however, there is a fair sampling of documentation evidencing its administration and work for most years of its existence.  In addition, the records offer a glimpse into community life in Germantown.  Broadly speaking this collection related to two major movements in early twentieth-century American life: the development of women’s groups and their work, and the communities that were created as a result of the mass migration of middle and upper class people away from city-centers.

With the exception of around 10 files that were already transferred to acid free folders, the collection was previously untouched by an archivist.  Materials were quite mixed up, but record types were easily identifiable and easy to move around and collocate.   Additionally, because the collection contains straightforward documentation – meeting minutes, yearbooks, annual reports and scrapbooks – folders were easy to title and arrange within series as well.  There are only a handful of files in the collection that would benefit from further arrangement though I am not sure the quality of documentation in those particular files warrants that attention.  What this collection does need are phase boxes for the many oversize scrapbooks that are unfortunately in poor repair.  It also would have been nice to have a couple more hours (really, just one or two) to read through some of the papers, especially the meeting minutes, to determine how extensively the Club women documented their meetings and activities.

I’d say this collection was helped immensely by minimal processing and I think it was an excellent candidate for our project.  I believe it is now to a point of near-complete accessibility and I probably would not recommend much more in terms of processing for this collection.

Posted in All Posts, Bryn Mawr College, Minimal Processing, Project Archivist | No Responses »

Processing plans for minimal processing

Monday, March 1st, 2010

You haven’t heard much from me in the past month or so because I have been out in the field on a reconnaissance mission, so to speak.  Since the middle of January, I visited Independence Seaport Museum and Presbyterian Historical Society, and Holly joined me at The Library Company, Free Library of Philadelphia, Historical Society of Pennsylvania and Chester County Historical Society, to gather information about collections for the creation of processing plans.

Our processors do not have a lot of time to think about their processing decisions and once those decisions are made there’s no turning back.  Not to mention, we are working with students, who are learning the art of archival processing as they go and therefore do not have a lot of experience to draw from when making decisions about arranging collections.  Even so, because of the nature of the project, we need our teams to work independently.  As such, the processing plan is a very important part of our work flow.  It is completed prior to the processors’ arrival, provides them a place to start, and guides them in their decision making as they begin to divide collections into series and subseries.

ISM - PRR
I spent from one to four hours with each collection, its accession file (if there was one), and collecting biographical information about its creator(s). Taking this information (and lots of photocopies) away with me, I created processing packets.  Each collection’s packet contains the processing plan, a preliminary biographical/historical note (written by Holly or me), copies of useful documentation from the accession file, a copy of the PACSCL survey record, and copies of any historical/biographical information we found about the creator(s). The processing plan itself identifies basic information about the collection, including its date range, linear footage and container count, and a basic list of supplies needed for processing.  More importantly, the plan offers a list of proposed series and subseries as well as specific processing instructions for collections that are especially unique or potentially problematic.  For example, at the Independence Seaport Museum, numerous collections contain large numbers (1000s, actually) of rolled ship’s plans, which will present significant problems in terms of time–the students will not have time to unroll the plans in order to identify them nor will they have time to figure out how to effectively deal with them.  As such, Matt Herbison, the Director of the Library at the Seaport Museum, and I took some time one afternoon to figure out the best way to handle those collections that would enable both greater intellectual and physical access.  The systems we came up with are outlined in the processing plans for those collections for the students to replicate.

Our teams are instructed to completely read all the materials in the processing packet prior to processing.  In doing so, the teams quickly become acquainted with the collection and its creators and are made aware of the various types of records to look for and how to group them.  Additionally, through the packets students gain a sense of the historical context in which the records were created—information that they do not have enough time to uncover on their own and that we believe to be essential in understanding archives and their value.

Since the students will ultimately devote a lot more time to the collections than we can, we do allow them to adapt the processing plan as they see fit.  If they feel additional or different series are necessary to maximize the collection’s accessibility, they may make those decisions on their own.

At all the repositories I have visited thus far (there are a few more stops along the way) I have gotten quite an in depth “sneak peek” at what’s in store.  Based on my experience over the past couple of weeks, we have some exciting collections coming up that are sure to be both interesting and challenging from the perspectives of history AND minimal processing — so stay tuned!

Here are some teaser snapshots of what’s to come:

Posted in Chester County Historical Society, Free Library of Philadelphia, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Independence Seaport Museum, Library Company of Philadelphia, Minimal Processing, Presbyterian Historical Society, Project Archivist | 1 Response »

Finding Gold

Monday, January 4th, 2010

As I mentioned in my last installment, I have been working at Haverford College on the Sarah Cooper Tatum Hilles family papers.  This was my first real experience with a true family papers collection, loaded with handwritten correspondence, and I am dazzled and delighted, and exhausted by it!  So, please excuse my reflections on the collection, which may not seem so novel to those of you already indoctrinated in the family papers world.

This collection ranked 8 on the survey and I can see why – it’s pretty amazing and though I admit I have not read most of the letters, the collection seems thorough, at least for a period of time in and around the 1850s and 1860s.  Though the collection is named for Sarah Hilles, as she was the compiler and primary recipient of a majority of the letters, the collection actually provides evidence of the lives of dozens of her family and friends through the letters they wrote to her.  Not only do they speak about the goings on in their own lives, they often reflect on the happenings in the world around them.  For starters, this is a great Civil War era resource.   Sarah’s husband, John Smith Hilles, who wrote often, was a Quaker involved with helping freed black men and women in the South in the 1860s, and at least one letter written to Sarah by a friend or cousin reflects on the death of Abraham Lincoln.  Another potentially interesting topic evidenced (though possibly only slightly), is John Hilles’ work managing shipping operations for the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad Company in the late 1860s and early 1870s.

This is also a good collection about family relationships.  For me, one of the most striking relationships in the collection was that of Margaret Hill Smith Hilles with her son and daughter-in-law, John and Sarah.  Margaret Hilles wrote with incredible frequency, always expressing deep pride and affection for her children and grandchildren.  My favorite parts of her letters, however, were her (dare I say) complaints, intermingled among the declarations of love and family news, to her children who did not write frequently enough.  Just goes to show that some things don’t change—family relationships, even in the most obviously loving and attentive of families, are very familiar throughout time.

Most of the letters are between women, from friends and cousins of Sarah, but there is a fair amount of correspondence from John to Sarah during his seemingly frequent times away from her and their family.  The letters are written with the casualness of speech and, more than anything, this collection has made me want to pick up a pen and start writing to the people most important to me in my life.  I have been thinking a lot about email and telephones, and what will ultimately be missing in the archives someday about our world and lives because of these technologies–technologies which oddly enough keep us more in touch with each other than ever before.  I guess I am not bringing up anything new for those archivally minded readers, but this problem has been particularly apparent to me in the past few weeks.  As I said before this is my first real family papers processing experience, and one thing that I learned is that as personal as institutional or business records can be at times, they do not compare to papers and letters that were produced as intimate and candid communications between close friends and families.

Minimally processing this collection was a challenge, an admittedly unexpected challenge by me personally, but completely anticipated by others (a testament to my lack of experience with such collections).  What I have learned is that simply removing nineteenth century letters from envelopes and unfolding them is time consuming.  Even more than that, correctly identifying correspondents and dates is even more time consuming.  This is ALL I had time for.  What’s worse is that I have no idea the scope of information that may be obtained from the collection.  Based on what I know now, this could be a gold mine or it may just be another collection of correspondence written between family members with only one or two truly insightful or especially telling letters.  My gut tells me that this collection is a gold mine–but, I cannot say for sure.

Posted in Haverford College, Project Archivist | No Responses »

The Hering-Knerr family papers and a peek into the Hilles family papers

Friday, December 4th, 2009
DUCOM - Hering
A big part of my job here is to tackle some of the more complicated collections that have been included in the project but that absolutely require more than the allotted two hours per linear foot.  Over the past few weeks I have been juggling two collections; the Hering-Knerr Family Papers at Drexel University College of Medicine and the Hilles Family Papers at Haverford College.  Though both have been deemed family papers and both are nineteenth century collections, the two could not be more different.

The first, the Hering-Knerr family papers, I actually finished on Wednesday this week.  It measures 6 ¼ linear feet and processing was completed in approximately 38 hours.  Physical processing took about 19 hours, data entry and description took another 19 – TOO LONG.  It sounds silly but data entry was slow going because there were a lot of files containing German language articles, which were difficult for me to type into the AT fields.  Description was slower because of the need to learn about Calvin Knerr, a large contributor to the papers, and include a short bio on his life, and to fully describe the nature of the series within the collection, which were not always completely straightforward.  Much of the collection was housed in envelopes and identified though it required quite a bit of arranging and foldering for almost the entire collection.  Papers, especially contemporary newspaper clippings, photocopies of related archives from other repositories, notes and other miscellany were also added to the collection over time, and needed to be removed.  In this case, those items were given their own series at the end called Reference Materials.

Though considered a collection of “family papers,” it is actually primarily a collection of papers of Constantine Hering, none other than the “father of homeopathy in America.”  What ultimately makes it officially a family collection are the discrete groups of material of Calvin Knerr, Hering’s son-in-law and a homeopathic physician himself; Hering’s and Knerr’s children; and correspondence of Hering’s wife’s family.  The collection content is reflective of family relationships as well as Hering’s and Knerr’s medical careers.  Hering’s career is especially showcased as it was lived and seen by himself, Knerr and his son Carl.

DUCOM - Hering 203

There are a few gems in the collection, all connected to Constantine Hering.   There is, a letter (pictured to the left) written by Hering as a child to his mother on her birthday; an uncut telegram tape, supposedly measuring NINE yards long (MPLP does not allow time for double checking such claims), that describes the symptoms of a patient to Hering for consultation; a manuscript written by Hering about the issue or possibility of cholera contaminating New York City harbor; and a letter about one of Hering’s patients requesting exemption from military service based on his contraction of “National Hotel Disease” in 1857.  What’s National Hotel Disease you ask?  That year, at the National Hotel in Washington DC, hotel guests, including soon-to-be president, James Buchanan, were stricken ill with a gastrointestinal ailment from which numerous people died.  I am not quite sure exactly what was decided to be the cause, but many theories, some citing foul play, were discussed at the time.

The Sarah Cooper Tatum Hilles family papers still have a LONG way to go!  As you can see from the picture below, this is a collection of unidentified bundles of letters from the nineteenth century (and that is only a small sampling of the number of bundles actually in the collection).

HC - Hilles

It was quickly established, both from the survey and from the correspondence itself that a majority of the letters were addressed to Sarah Hilles, but beyond that identification required considerably more effort.  And since the whole point of this project is to provide even greater accessibility to these hidden collections than the survey did, I started to open envelopes, unfold letters and sort them by correspondent.  Phew!  What a task – especially at this rate!  I think Holly already alluded to this when discussing the Rhoads family papers and I am sure any of you who have been in my shoes will not be surprised, but these families were big and they all wrote to each other and they all had the same names across generations.  Needless to say, this has been going FAR SLOWER than two hours per foot, but it still feels like rapid fire when you consider the condition of the materials.  More on that later…

In the meantime, here are a few more snapshots from the Hering-Knerr family papers.

Posted in Drexel University College of Medicine, Haverford College, Project Archivist | 2 Responses »

George A. Hay at DUCOM

Friday, November 13th, 2009

DUCOM - Hay - Training
I am pleased to say, about two weeks after-the-fact, that our training collection, The George A. Hay Collection of Administrative Records of the Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania (I know, it’s a mouthful) is finally finished!  As I alluded to in my previous entry, this collection was a bit of a beast and perhaps, in hindsight, not the best candidate for training.  Even so, I think it turned out really well all things considered and now the Drexel University College of Medicine Archives (DUCOM) has a much, much better idea of all the goodies they have in that collection!

Essentially, what we learned through processing the collection and from the accession record is that DUCOM archives has George Hay, who was the comptroller for the Woman’s Medical College in the mid-twentieth century, to thank for ensuring the survival of these records and their disposition in the archives.  Not only did he turn over his own materials, but he also made sure to hand over records that came into his possession over the years of other important personnel.  As a result, the collection, though roughly 30% is in fact Hay’s papers, is an assemblage of institutional records produced by leading administrators of the Woman’s Medical College throughout the mid-twentieth century.  There are records for Sarah Starr, Dr. Ellen Culver Potter and Vida Hunt Francis, and within these groups researchers will also find correspondence with and other records related to Dr. Martha Tracy—all notable women in institutional history as well as the general history of women in medicine.

*For those of you who don’t know, the Woman’s Medical College was an amazing institution founded in Philadelphia in the mid nineteenth century to train–you guessed it–woman doctors!  More on that and other related collections can be found here: http://archives.drexelmed.edu.

All in all, I think the Hay Collection is pretty good and it has some noteworthy documentation, especially records relating to proposed institutional mergers with other hospitals and schools in the Philadelphia area.  Taken together, the records shed light on a few key events in institutional history and may inform study of the history of medicine, especially the administrative side of medical education and, to a lesser extant, how related cultural changes affected the education of women in medicine.

An especially fun file, titled in a manner to pique any researcher’s interest, “the Louise Wright ‘Incident,’” details a student’s efforts and publicized fight against her suspension from Woman’s Medical College in 1891 (Hay also somehow acquired a handful of very early institutional records and gave them to the archives as well).  What the “incident” was exactly is not quite clear, though it received much publicity.  Louise Wright, I assume, contacted the local press, and the story as well as a chain of correspondence between Wright and the college regarding the matter was published in the newspaper.

As far as minimal processing goes, the Hay Collection definitely deserved more than our allotted two hours per linear foot — in the end, I think I gave it closer to four hours though I can’t say for sure and it probably could use even a little more TLC in a perfect world.  When we found it, the collection was pretty mixed up (thank goodness for that accession file) and it was partially processed.  I still can’t decide if this partial processing helped or hindered our effort…  At least after processing the collection has a basic arrangement and is described fairly well.  A lot of individual files in the collection are still a mess and it could use some more re-foldering, but that’s nothing that a second go ‘round by the archivist (or a well trained student intern) couldn’t fix.  And anyway, I sincerely believe the collection is now usable in a way it was not before so from that perspective I think minimal processing did very well by it.

Posted in All Posts, Drexel University College of Medicine, Project Archivist, Training | No Responses »

3.5 weeks down, 100.5 more to go…

Wednesday, October 21st, 2009

Three and a half weeks down and FINALLY I have some time to write my first blog post—I initially hoped to write every week since September 28, my first day as Project Archivist!  That I did not write (or could not) is perhaps the best evidence of what can only be described as a total whirlwind since day one.  I dove right into a pile of student resumes; site visits at the Rosenbach Museum, Presbyterian Historical Society and Temple University; and editing manuals and training materials that Holly wrote over the summer and obviously put a lot of time and effort in to.

I also prepared a processing plan for our training collection, what became the George A. Hay Collection of Administrative Records of the Woman’s College of Medicine, which Drexel University College of Medicine Archives graciously provided.  That afternoon, I experienced the first of what I am sure will be many panic attacks about minimal processing and the work we have before us.  To put it bluntly, the Hay collection was messy and a great example of why maintaining good accession files and surveying collections are very important.  In this case, it was the accession file that enabled me to identify and retain some important but not immediately apparent provenance and is what made minimal processing possible in the end.  Even so, this collection required way more than our target two hours per linear foot and was a good lesson in planning for some things to take longer than they are supposed to!  It’s too complicated to get into here; you will just have to check out the finding aid when it’s mounted on Drexel’s website to see what I mean…

I’d say the biggest accomplishment of the past month was hiring our team of student processors.  We received the top 50 applicants—yep, that’s right, the TOP 50—from human resources.  We talked to a lot of impressive candidates.  In the end, we selected four who came with good experience and expressed genuine interest in the project as well as the archives profession.  I am looking forward to working with them!

Believe it or not, that all transpired during weeks one and two!

Weeks three and four, in my opinion, marked the real beginning of the project.  On October 13, 14 and 15, we held our first “boot camp,” providing instruction on minimal processing and Archivist’s Toolkit.  We were quite pleased with how everything went, though I’d bet that Holly and I learned more about providing effective training than the students learned about processing (and I think they learned A LOT)!  I’ll let Holly tell you more about that—let’s just say that our next training is going to be even better!

So here we are, in the middle of my fourth week on the job and the middle of the first week of official processing.  My team, Laurie and Eric, are doing great!  I am pleased to say that by Friday I expect Drexel University College of Medicine Archives will have three or four more processed collections complete with EAD finding aids and ready for research!

Posted in All Posts, Drexel University College of Medicine, Project Archivist | No Responses »