The issue is the difficulty of processing with a partner while trying to get a job done as quickly as possible.  Our method was to divide the work and conquer it equally and quickly.  This was not a good method because we were not coordinated with one another on what particular name a folder should be labeled or the type of series it should be placed under.  Do we call it financial, administrative, programs…etc.  Our vocabulary and thoughts on the overall collection and arrangement were not synonymous (how could it be) and without it, both of us thought of our own individual ideas and labels.  This is also problematic later on in the collection because as the records are processed, there are usually some preliminary ideas which do not always end up in the final product.  This led to a very large amount of rearranging and re-titling when we finally put the collection together intellectually.  This problem led me to realize that if an archivist is processing with a partner, almost all folder ideas, series ideas, and titles need to be discussed thoroughly while processing so that the two archivists are not processing one collection using two different organizational and title schemes.

Fortunately for both of us, the following records we processed, the Southeastern Pennsylvania Synod records at the Lutheran Theological Seminary were processed with much more discussion over what each of us thought were parts of the organization and we discussed titles in detail.  This made the processing and organizing less complicated and created more fluent folder and series titles.

Another interesting collection that we have processed at Independence Seaport Museum is the RTC Shipbuilding Company records. The collection covers the shipbuilding and repair history of the company’s work from 1934 to 1965. It contains a great number of design plans and photographs that help document the building process of many ships.

RTC was started by three men, whose initials stand for each letter in RTC. The company was based in Camden, New Jersey, right across the river from Philadelphia. One of the neat things is that you can see the area where RTC operated from outside of the museum. The heaviest building period for RTC occurred during World War II when they built oil barges, tug boats and oil tankers for the United States Navy. For their high quality of workmanship and fast rate of production, RTC received two Army-Navy “E” Pennant four star awards. Not only was this a proud achievement for the company, it also solidified their presence as a major shipbuilding corporation on the Delaware River.

The best part of processing this collection had to be looking at all the images in the “Photographs” series. There are photographs of christenings and launchings, shipbuilding, the employees, company social events and the yard. Out of all the other collections we have worked on, I have never seen such a thorough collection of photographs that cover a wide extent of the supporting paper documents. It is a great benefit for researchers that I’m sure will be taken advantage of.

Another interesting part of this collection are the J.J. Baugean glass negatives of French ship prints. All the glass slides are prints of engravings of various French and European ships from history. They are absolutely beautiful when seen and from some research that I’ve completed, they are also somewhat rare. It is a mystery as to whom they belonged or how they got to RTC. Dates written on their box indicate that the prints were made or purchased in the early 1920s, which is before RTC was created. Our best guess was that the slides were used to make large decorative prints to hang in the RTC offices, but we were just speculating for our own enjoyment!

Overall, the RTC Shipbuilding collection was a great collection to work with and a good candidate for minimal processing. The majority of the collection was foldered when we started, so the bulk of our time was spent arranging the material into series and entering in all the data into Archivists’ Toolkit. With the extra time that we saved, Forrest and I were able to research and analyze the ships more which helped us to have a better understanding of the company and the collection. RTC was a very active company in the shipbuilding and repair industry and I know that this collection will be extremely useful to anyone interested in their work.

The John H. Mathis Company was a major shipbuilding firm based out of Camden, New Jersey. Founded in 1870, the company built and repaired yachts, river steamers, tugs, barges, car floats, and other varieties of shipping vessels. The impressive collection of Mathis Company records available at the Independence Seaport Museum includes the business papers, photographs, and measured drawings.

The drawings, which number in the thousands, arrived at the Seaport Museum covered in soot and other dirt.  Apparently they had been sitting for years in the former Mathis Shipyard (closed in 1960), and were “rescued” from certain “doom by disintegration.”

While I have processed film reels, maps, and even medical instruments on this project, these measured drawings were a true test. We had to empty nearly 30 boxes of these plans, and sort them by design number. Just a few plans were enough to turn brand-new white gloves into the dirty mitts that looked like they belonged to a chimney sweep.  We ruined several pairs, but only after permission from the head archivist, of course!

After hours of sorting, we were able to arrange every measured drawing by design number.  Though our process was hardly an exact science, we laid dozens of boxes across three huge tables and assigned each box with a range of design numbers.  We then removed each plan from its original container and placed it in the corresponding box. Of course we had to make several adjustments along the way, but our final product imposes at least some order on the thousands of previously loose drawings.

Despite the dirt and grease, this collection taught me a great deal about minimal processing. It is impossible to apply “More Product, Less Product” to this type of material.  Because each drawing contains minute details of complex ship designs, it would take countless hours to open each roll and record these details. Therefore, we elected to simply record the design number and box location. This is not ideal, but given our time constraints, it was our only option.  However, not all measured drawings are described at this level. Researchers will find a couple hundred select plans from a few different Mathis-built ships described in greater detail in the library vaults. These plans had been processed by a past volunteer with substantial knowledge of the Mathis Company, and are included in the collection.

The following is a transcription of one of my favorite letters I have ever found in an archival collection.  Upon receipt, perhaps Dr. Rush laughed, or perhaps he responded with sensitivity and saw signs of madness in this fellow … certainly Rush’s work with the mentally ill is legendary, and as you can can see by the final document … in the late 1700s, love COULD lead to madness!

“Dear Sir,
I am now in a most dreadfull dilemma, will you be so favourable to give me your ingenious observations on the passion of Love, it will tend to extricate me from the dreadfull Situation.
To love and be disappointed [illegible] most unhappy dreadfull state! Advise how to forget a lady whom for years (think it not recent for it has subsisted four years) I had the most ardent passion. I enjoyed every promise and privilege, save only I can say we were not united? Teach me the noble science to forget? Teach me how to conduct myself when frequently in her company, she appearing in tryumph at my mortification.

Her company an arrow dipt in poison to my heart. How must I conduct myself? Can I hate when I once so passionately loved? Can I seek revenge? Or is it the refuge of a narrow depraved mind? Will it give any satisfaction?
Think not, Dr. Sir, my subject too frivolous for an answer, for remember what Solomon the wise man says: ‘Love is as strong as death, jealousy is cruel as the grave, the coals thereof are coals of fire, which hath a most vehement flame, many waters cannot quench love, neither can the flood drown it, if a man would give all the substance of his house for love, it would utterly be be contemned.’
Now, Sir, if you will be so kind, Mr. Cary’s Museum is where I wish to read your thoughts–if you will oblige as long as life remains a student of medicine and one of your class.”

From a quick Google search, I learned a few things … Mr. Cary is Matthew Carey (1760-1839), an Irish immigrant to Philadelphia who became a prominent publisher.  His magazine American Museum is almost certainly the one in which the Student of Medicine wished to have Dr. Rush publish his response.  He is also quoting the Song of Solomon 8:6.

Not long after finding the above marvelous letter, I found a “List of Lunatics in the Pennsylvania Hospital on May 1, 1784.”  At least two of the twelve “lunatics” listed are considered to be insane/manic because of love.  Since our Student of Medicine does not give his name, and his letter is undated, who knows?  He may be included on this list! I hope not …  I hope he wrote many more letters to Dr. Benjamin Rush and they are just waiting to be found!

At the Independence Seaport Museum, the first collection that Forrest and I processed was the Thomas D. Bowes M.E., Associates records. This collection contained design plans, measured drawings, photographs, printed materials, patents and records all relating to the naval architecture firm of Bowes. With 95 boxes and 4,123 rolled plans, it was also the largest collection that we worked on at the museum.

Known as “Tugboat Tom,” Bowes designed over 800 vessels during his sixty year career as a naval architect. He designed over eighty tug boats, several of Philadelphia’s fire boats and over 300 yachts. Bowes also held many different patents for various vessel designs, including the Bowes Drive, which reduced the speed between the engine and drive shafts in marine installations. He was known as a specialist in compressing maximum power and utility into minimum hull space for his clients that wanted compact crafts.

Born and raised in Philadelphia, Bowes grew up sailing on the Jersey Shore at both Cape May and Atlantic City. His father not liking the seafaring lifestyle, encouraged Bowes to become a lawyer or bishop to which he replied: “I have neither the brains for law not the goodness for religion. I will be what I have to be.” So hoping to give his son a reality check, Bowes’ father sent him out on square-riggers during his summer vacations. Bowes would join the ship in Philadelphia or New Jersey, sail around the Horn of South America and arrive in California with just enough time to take a train back East to start school again. The rigorous voyages did not deter Bowes from his dream of working with ships and by the time that he entered Cornell University in 1901, he had earned the rank of second mate.

An interesting aspect of this collection is how well it ties into the other collections that we are processing at ISM. Two other collections that we are working on, the John H. Mathis Company collection and RTC Shipbuilding Corporation records, actually built and repaired ships and yachts that Bowes designed. It is interesting to be able to track the history of some vessels through their different stages of life and use.

One of the most famous ships that Bowes designed was the diesel yacht Lenore II for Sewell L. Avery, the President of Montgomery Ward, Director of U.S. Steel and President of Gypsum. Finished in 1931, the yacht was Avery’s personal cruiser until the United States government loaned her during World War II as a patrol vessel. The Navy seized her in 1945 to become an escort and stand-in for the White House yacht Williamsburg for President Truman. However, when President Eisenhower came into office, he refurbished and rechristened the Lenore II as Barbara Ann and made the yacht the Presidential yacht. The next three Presidents renamed the yacht during their terms in office. President Kennedy named her Honey Fitz, which President Johnson kept in his honor, and President Nixon named her Patricia.

In 1970, the yacht was sold by President Nixon, who wanted a larger ship, to the Seaport Line in New York City where the yacht was used as a charter boat. For the next eighteen years, the ship bounced between owners and eventually was bought in 1998 by a business for $5.9 million dollars. The name Honey Fitz has been restored to the yacht and it is currently undergoing extensive repair and restoration, which you can watch here.   There are also great links to news stories and Kennedy home movies that feature the yacht.

When starting this collection, we had no idea how Bowes and his company influenced ship and boat design. Many of his ships are still used today in different ports around the country. This collection was a great way to get our feet wet in naval and maritime history at the Archives of the ISM.

Right now, the  site includes ten repositories–and largely, only the collections that have been processed via the PACSCL/CLIR project.  However, each repository has the mechanism in place to add collections that are already processed or will be processed in the future.  Half of the repositories have already added additional finding aids.  The collections available for searching provide a glimpse into just a few of the amazing primary sources available in the Philadelphia area.  Topics that are best represented are medicine, religion, science and women’s history; although other strengths include business and commerce, education, family histories and genealogy, history of Philadelphia cultural institutions, maritime history, military history, and the arts.  Each and every collection is incredible … the research potential is huge and now students, scholars, enthusiasts, and genealogists can get started, using the collection guides to discover new facets of our known history.

The creation of this site actually started before the PACSCL/CLIR “Hidden Collections” Processing Project began.  The University of Pennsylvania created their site on which the PACSCL Finding Aids site is modeled.  The PACSCL Finding Aid site would not be possible without the hard work of UPenn folk Delphine Khanna, Patty Lynn, David McKnight, Rachelle Nelson, Leslie Vallhonrat and IT staff, as well as UPenn archivists Maureen Callahan, formerly of the Penn Museum Archives; Michelle Chesner, formerly of the Katz  Center for Advanced Judaic Studies, Nancy Shawcross of the Rare Book and Manuscript Library; and Jordon Steele, of the Biddle Law Library.  After their site was live, the PACSCL group began tweaking the site to suit 23 (and hopefully more) repositories.  Thanks to David Conners, formerly of  Haverford College, Margaret Graham of Drexel University College of Medicine Legacy Center, Eric Pumroy of Bryn Mawr College, Nancy Shawcross of UPenn Rare Book and Manuscript Library, and Rob Sieczkiewicz of Drexel University Archives and Special Collections who volunteered their insights, time and energy to making the site work for the unique PACSCL group.

Thanks also to our Project Team who created the finding aids for many of these collections: Courtney Smerz, Project Archivist, whose work is essential to the success of the project; student processors Megan Atkinson, Megan Good, Becky Koch, Leslie O’Neill, Laurie Rizzo, Eric Rosenzweig, and Forrest Wright, whose energy and dedication have contributed greatly to this accomplishment; and Archivist’s Toolkit cataloger Garrett Boos, whose efforts have resulted in legacy finding aids available for research.

Visit the site and start your research … I am so excited to learn more about these collections from the researchers who will use them.

Hering’s Paracelsus collection’s finding aid provided many challenges.  First it was a card catalog that had to be converted into a finding aid that would fit nicely in Archivists’’ Toolkit.  The cards were scanned and then made into a PDF that was then made into a Word document from which I could cut and paste the information.  As many people know, the Optical Character Recognition (OCR) process creates some mistakes in the text.  Also, only one or two cards were in English.  Through the process, which was actually sometimes more entertaining than tedious, I became well acquainted with old German and I enjoyed the chance to practice some high school and college Latin that I haven’t used in a long time.

Once the container list was entered, I began to do some research on Dr. Hering and Paracelsus.  Dr. Hering, the “father of homeopathy in America,” was interesting in his own right and he is the topic of another collection at DUCOM.  The breadth of activities in which Paracelsus was involved make him a fascinating topic, and there is a surprising amount of information that has survived about him.  He lived his short life in the early 1500s, a time period when people considered the ancient Greek and Roman doctors, Hippocrates and Galen, the authorities on medicine.  Paracelsus challenged many of the assumptions and established practices of the time, and helped bring medicine as a science beyond the ancient traditions.  He is credited with being the first one to say “it is the dose that makes the poison.”  Understanding this about Paracelsus makes it easy to see why the “father of homeopathy in America” wanted to learn everything he could about him.

The Lida Poynter collection on Mary E. Walker is about an equally fascinating individual.  Mary Walker was born in 1832 and died in 1919.  Her father had all his daughters work in the field with him and his son.  Since they were working in the fields, he wanted his daughters to be able to move freely and comfortably, so he banned his daughters from wearing heavy dresses and corsets.  He was also an amateur country doctor who believed most women’s fashions at the time were bad for their health.  This idea stayed with Mary and she devoted much of her life to dress reform.  She first experimented with trousers underneath dresses, then short skirts, eventually she abandoned the dress altogether and wore men’s suits that she altered to fit her frame.  She even wore a short skirt over trousers and a frock coat at her wedding in 1855.  She also had the word obey removed from the service, which in 1855 was remarkable.

Her father encouraged Mary to study medicine when she showed a talent for it.  When Mary was old enough to go to college, she went to Syracuse Medical College, the first medical school in the country to admit women.  She graduated as an M.D. and went on to open her own practice, which was not very successful.  At this point, the Civil War was getting underway and this is when her life gets even more interesting.

First she served in Washington D.C. as a volunteer in the army hospitals.  The doctor in charge was so impressed with her ability that he recommended that she be appointed an assistant surgeon, but she was repeatedly rejected because she was a woman.  After leaving and then coming back, she was finally given a commission and sent to Tennessee as the first female doctor in the Union army.  While serving on the front lines, she would often go unescorted and unarmed into enemy territory to offer medical aid to civilians.  She believed by doing this she would help turn the civilians to the Union cause.  She was also acting as a spy for the Union and reporting Confederate troop movements.  Eventually she was captured by the Confederacy, and later released as part of a prisoner exchange.

For her work with the Army, she was the first, and only, woman to be awarded the Medal of Honor.  In 1917 her Medal of Honor was rescinded along with 910 others when the requirements for receiving the Medal were changed.  She refused to return her Medal and wore it until her death in 1919.  Often police would stop and question her because she wore pants and was considered to be impersonating a man.  During these encounters when they would ask for her name, she would point to it on her Medal of Honor that was always pinned to her lapel.  In 1977, after many years of work by her grand-niece and a distant relative, President Carter restored her Medal of Honor.  This blog post only scratches the surface of this amazing woman’s life.

At the College of Physicians we processed a collection of administrative records from the Office of the Executive Director of the College.  The collection almost entirely consisted of administrative records, and we came across everything from correspondence and memos, to meeting minutes and financial documents.

Processing this collection went relatively smoothly.  Very little refoldering had to be completed, and most files were already labeled and in some kind of order.  The records were in good condition so there was no major conservation or preservation issues to be concerned about.  We did need to go through an extensive process of reorganization though, as this collection was accessioned at different times and many records needed to be interfiled.  We also came across several boxes of files that were unlabeled, or not in files whatsoever.  Yet perhaps our most pressing problem concerned restricted records.  This collection contained donor information, financial and budget information, and copies of resumes and cover letters for applicants of past job searches.   As we processed this collection we marked anything we thought might be sensitive information as “restricted,” erring on the side of caution, thinking that it was best for librarians at the College to know that these documents exist and then decide for themselves the proper access policies.  Although we felt this was a good solution for restricting these records, in practice this policy was not entirely effective.   While some folders were obviously full of sensitive information (such as budget sheets etc) and were clearly to be restricted, we found other restricted documents mixed in with regular, non sensitive materials.  This fact brings up two issues: due to time restraints we could not take the time to separate these mixed folders into restricted and non restricted materials so we had to restrict access to entire folders, even if there was only one page of sensitive information.  This means that a significant amount of should-be accessible information has become inaccessible.  Secondly, there’s a very good chance that we did not see some sensitive information that was mixed in with regular records, and therefore this information will not be labeled as restricted.  Due to the mixed nature of these records and the guidelines of minimal processing, this was sadly unavoidable.  Using minimal processing techniques, it would have been impossible to examine every record in every folder, so some restricted information is bound to have slipped through the cracks.

After discussing the situation with the head librarian, it was decided that folders labeled as restricted will be examined by the librarian or archivist when a researcher requests access.  It will then be decided whether the documents are truly sensitive, or how much of the file is accessible.

Lubin created one of the largest motion picture production companies in the world from 1895 to 1916, all of which began with the purchase of a film projector. His biography truly spells out the American dream. Lubin emigrated from Germany to the United States, worked as an optician, and found his way into the movie industry solely by his extreme interest in film production. He was a savvy entrepreneur and a gifted marketer, but unfortunately, did not invest in the overall quality of his films or heed the copyright laws, all of which led to the company’s collapse in 1916.

A couple of photographs of one movie, ‘Disaster Movie,” caught us by surprise. We kept finding stills of a time progression of two trains colliding into each other, all with the title of the film penciled in on the reverse of the photographs. Deciding to do some further research into the movie, we found out that the train scene cost $20,000 to film in the 1910s and that two old scrapped engines were purchased to make this scene. Since it cost so much to get the train disaster scene and the audiences loved it, Lubin decided to use it in five different films to get the most for his money (again, he was a savvy business man). There is a clip of the train scene on YouTube and you can watch it by clicking here.

Starting the Lubin collection, we knew that we were going to have a fun time processing these materials. But one thing that I don’t think that we realized was the rarity of the collection and Lubin materials in general.

The Penn finding aids were all electronic documents that I could easily cut and paste into the appropriate fields in Archivists’ Toolkit.  The finding aids were complete with extensive biographical/historical notes, scope and content notes, and detailed container lists.  I began with these because they were so complete and posed few obvious problems.

While the PACSCL/CLIR project is using MPLP to process collections at the individual repositories, the legacy finding aids that I am dealing with are for collections that have been processed to a variety of levels.  At Penn, all the finding aids are for collections that have been processed to the folder and sometimes item level.  The problems that did come up with these finding aids resulted from how detailed they were.  One collection had a 45 page biographical note.  Archivists’ Toolkit would not save this massive note and kept showing a bug report.  Thinking it was a formatting issue, I copied and pasted a few pages at a time and saved each time, until it produced the error report.  I then typed the note in Archivists’ Toolkit and saved until it produced the same error report.  This way I was able to confirm it was the size of the note that was producing the problem.  Another problem, with the same finding aid, was footnotes.  This was a very detailed biographical note and it referenced items in the collection.  Archivists’ Toolkit’s text entry is very basic and keeping most formatting that is in the original document is very difficult.  I was able to solve this by making the footnotes endnotes.

Drexel University College of Medicine’s finding aids often had detailed container lists with clearly identified series, so the data entry was rather straightforward.  However, each finding aid had only sketches or timelines for their biographical notes so I had to do some research and expand on them, which turned out to be a lot of fun, and I want to talk about them at greater length in a future post.

The Historical Society of Pennsylvania’s finding aids are a mix of standard finding aid, narrative description, and inventory.  So far, I have only worked on three collections.  The finding aid for the Mutual Assurance Company records, better known as Greentree, was fairly complete.  The problem with this collection was that it was written as a narrative rather than as a standard finding aid.  Many of the paragraphs began with a box number and a general description, and then finally, a list of what was in the box.  It was fairly easy to extract the box number, a general title, and the container list.  However, because it was a narrative, what would typically be the biographical note was spread throughout the entire document.  I was able to go through it and put it all together for a more traditional note.  Some of the other finding aids are more or less just container lists and I will need to write notes for them.

One thing I have learned over the past couple of months is that standardization is strongly needed in the archival community.  Learning about different attempts at standardization and standards that have been created is one thing, but this experience has shown me why it is needed.  That being said, it has also shown me how and why it is so difficult to create standards for archival collections.

Legacy finding aids entered into the Archivists’ Toolkit thus far:

Drexel University College of Medicine

University of Pennsylvania

Historical Society of Pennsylvania

These collections will be available for research soon!