13:29:07 Yeah, let's do it. Come on.
13:29:11 Recording starting and going live
13:29:21 well. Welcome everyone, And thank you, Happy Friday and thank you for joining this session 22 restoring the harmony reestablishing order in the archives.
13:29:32 management integrated library systems and collections management software solutions that help you and your organization redefine how your knowledge is shared.
13:29:52 So before we get started, there are a few housekeeping notes. We will be utilizing the live transcript for this session for accessibility purposes. If you would like to hide the subtitles simply click the live transcription button at the bottom of your
13:30:05 application, and then select hide subtitles. If your zoom application is not maximized you may need to click on the three dots. The more icon to turn off the subtitles.
13:30:16 And finally, if you would like to pose questions to our panel please use the q amp a feature, and we will try to address as many of those questions as we can, or just feel free to comment using the chat feature.
13:30:28 My name is Chris amatory and I am the archivist at McDonough school Archives and Special Collections and I will be serving as the session speaker moderator, the panelists in alphabetical order are Brianna Asarco archivist at the Roman Catholic Archdiocese
13:30:45 of New York. Heather Perez Special Collections librarian at Stockton University, and Stephanie Samira Special Collections and Archives librarian at Westminster choir college.
13:31:00 College of rider University.
13:31:02 So, I'm to start each of our panelists will give a short introduction and slide presentation about the history of their institution in the history of their archives, and then the, then the panel will address a series of questions, dealing with some of
13:31:14 the challenges that we've all had encountering trying to establish professional archival standards in their respective repositories. So, with that, since we are going in alphabetical order.
13:31:27 I will be going first. So, Heather.
13:31:32 Rico.
13:31:35 So, McDonough school is a non denominational non denominational co educational College Preparatory School, educating students from pre kindergarten through 12th grade.
13:31:45 Next slide, please.
13:31:48 It is located about 10 miles northwest of the city of Baltimore on its original 835 acre campus.
13:31:56 Next slide please.
13:31:58 The school was founded in 1873 as a semi Military Institute, by monies left from the will of john McDonough.
13:32:06 McDonough, a Baltimore native was apprentice to William Taylor, a merchant in that city, when he was 16 years old. In 1800 at the age of 20 McDonough was sent to work for Taylor in Spanish New Orleans.
13:32:20 McDonough spent the bulk of his life as a sugar planter real estate investor and property landlord in New Orleans, and his home and plantations will work by slave labor.
13:32:30 Next slide please.
13:32:32 At his death in 1850. He left roughly half of his estate to the city of New Orleans quote for the establishment and support a free schools, for all classes and casts of color and quote, and the remainder to establish schools and his home city of Baltimore.
13:32:49 Next slide.
13:32:50 However, since the city of Baltimore already had an established public school system, McDonald's will stipulated that the money to use to establish quote a school farm on an executive scale for the destitute and the poorest of the poor youth and children,
13:33:06 and both. Next slide.
13:33:09 On November 21 1873 McDonough, educational funding Institute, opened its doors with Colonel William Allen as first principle and 21 boys from the city of Baltimore john Lee Baker, known as boy number one was the first student to be enrolled in the school.
13:33:26 Next slide.
13:33:29 During the early years, most boys lived at the farm school year round, with only short breaks at Christmas and during the summer, along with only a few higher farmhands the boys performed all manner of farm tours, they harvest students rest we picked
13:33:44 The boys performed all manner of farm chores, the harvest didn't rest we picked and chucked cord tended archers gardens and livestock. Next slide please.
13:33:50 kept beehives and pressed apples for cider.
13:33:56 Next slide, please.
13:34:01 In addition to farm chores and their academic work all boys were partially responsible for the general upkeep of school buildings and grounds boys were assigned chores such as hauling coal and working in the laundry room, as well as more skilled labor
13:34:15 such as setting type in the printing office and doing general carpentry on buildings. Excellent.
13:34:21 Over the years of school weathered many hardships including two world wars and the Great Depression. In 1928, the main building on campus, new building, as it was known built between 1882 and 1884 burn down the building house all academic departments,
13:34:39 offices, classrooms and the library at the time, next life.
13:34:44 Amazingly, many records photographs works of art and school publications were saved by the older boys who went to the building, who went into the burning building and carry them out when it became evident that the fire was out of control.
13:34:57 The boy started to throw papers and other items on the window and attempt to save as much as they could.
13:35:04 Next slide please.
13:35:06 Many of the materials the boys rescued that day are now house and the McDonough school Archives and Special Collections, the current archives established in 1989 was preceded by McDonough, historical room, which was established in the early 1950s.
13:35:25 Next slide.
13:35:25 McDonough school archives, is the official repository for hundreds of cubic feet of institutional records, as well as special collections, including manuscripts of photographic image collection numbering in the thousands artifacts and works of art of
13:35:39 national and international scope.
13:35:41 Special Collections, including set includes such materials as the papers and porcelains of world renowned American sculptor and former McDonough student.
13:35:57 Edward Marshall being as well as a collection of letters related to the creation of the bust of Colonel William Allen by American sculptor Edward Valentine.
13:36:01 This photo shows the state of the archives when I started my position in 2018, while still located in the basement of the girls dormitory two rooms served as a reading room office space and collection storage space.
13:36:14 Additionally, three rooms across the hall, were also used to store collections. Next slide.
13:36:22 my predecessors, there were two of them who worked in the archives from 1989 to 2017 had no formal archives training. Over the years archival records were pulled apart and mixed with manuscript collections subject files and other materials, various artifacts
13:36:41 including text files frame documents and photographs and assorted media, such as CDs, DVDs, film reels VHS tapes were stuffed into boxes along with paper records, there were no policies or procedures of any kind, and there was no records management program.
13:37:00 slide.
13:37:03 In the fall, 2019, the archives was moved across campus to a larger facility which essentially tripled in size. This move has allowed the collections that were once housed in different storage spaces in the girls dormitory, as well as records and collections
13:37:16 that were scattered and other locations across campus to now be stored in one location.
13:37:21 This new temporary space can accommodate multiple researchers are entire classes for instruction, and makes the processing collections much easier last slide.
13:37:33 During the past few years Plaza been underway to create a new archives facility to be located in a wing of the school's main academic and administrative building the new space was slated to be open to celebrate McDonald's 100 and 50th anniversary in 2023.
13:37:47 Unfortunately, as with so many things, the coding. The coven pandemic derailed this timeline. And although the new facility won't be ready for the school sesquicentennial, the current space will allow for adequate celebrations and programming.
13:38:07 Soon, So next up is Brianna
13:38:17 would help if I muted myself, I think.
13:38:20 So I'm the archivist for the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Newark, and I'm the first professional archivist to hold the Archdiocese network or disposition, and I'm just going to explain a little bit about how the archive started and where we are today.
13:38:31 Next slide please.
13:38:35 So the Diocese of Newark was established in 1853. And at the time it encompass the entire state of New Jersey over time as the Catholic population of the state grew additional diocese were added.
13:38:46 So that today there are five diocese Newark Trenton Camden Patterson and touching.
13:38:52 In 1937 the Diocese of Newark was elevated to an archdiocese.
13:38:55 The current territory of the Archdiocese of New York, which is in purple on this map contains Bergen Essex and Hudson and union counties in New Jersey, or the smallest Diocese of the state in terms of land area, but our four counties are very densely
13:39:08 populated. So we serve the highest Catholic population in the state with over 1.2 million Catholics. Next slide please.
13:39:15 The archdiocese and archives was established in 1969, under Archbishop Thomas Boland prior to that things were just sort of put into a closet and saved, so we do have materials in the archives going back to 1853, but it was not organized your managers
13:39:29 and archive until that point.
13:39:31 At that time the archives decided in the Chancery building in Newark with the other archdiocese and administrative offices.
13:39:38 Then in 1977 the Archdiocese reached an agreement with Seton Hall University, which is a Catholic University in South Orange, New Jersey, to the positive historical archives on the university's campus, alongside the University Archives.
13:39:50 Since then the collection has grown to over 2000 linear feet of material, including records from past bishops Archbishop's parishes priests and community organizations within the Archdiocese.
13:40:12 custody but not ownership of the materials, over the years, the line between the university and the Archdiocese and collections sometimes has become blurred and Seton Hall staff have often contributed to processing archdiocese and materials.
13:40:15 Next slide please.
13:40:17 So when the Archdiocese in archives were established in 1969 responsibility for them was assumed by the chancellor's office, which appointed Monsignor Francis see more of the Archdiocese and archivist in addition to his duties as a priest Monsignor Seymour
13:40:29 served as the Archdiocese an archivist for 49 years until he passed away in 2018 throughout that time he also held many other roles, often simultaneously including as Vice Chancellor administrative assistant to the Archbishop rector of the Sacred Heart
13:40:43 Cathedral, and director of ministry to retired priests, despite being pulled in so many different directions. He was very dedicated to preserving archdiocese in history, and was extremely knowledgeable about all aspects of it.
13:40:55 He was particularly engaged in documenting the priests community and created extensive vertical files and archdiocese and priests.
13:41:02 However, his focus was mainly on collecting materials and less on processing or describing them.
13:41:08 All you can see is quoted here saying that he knew where everything was in his head but that information wasn't written down the work of organizing processing and describing the collection was done mainly by Seton Hall staff who were also engaged in working
13:41:19 on their own archival collections. This sometimes resulted in a fragmented approach to the collection which something's being processed without a real understanding of the structure of the Archdiocese.
13:41:29 Next slide please.
13:41:31 After months in your car passed away, the Archdiocese decided to open the position up to lay people with education and training and archives rather than assigning and other priests to the job.
13:41:40 And at that time I had been working at Seton Hall University for five years and had recently completed my masters in museum progressions and become a certified archivist, so I was a natural fit for the role.
13:41:49 So I was hired in August 2019, and since then we shifted to really handling all the processing of archdiocese and materials with the Archdiocese and staff, which at the moment includes me and a part time or capitalist system,
13:42:05 the archives initially consisted of records from the Chancery are actually office and center, all created and used by Chancery staff, including the Archbishop's office the senate of priests and other archdiocese and offices.
13:42:17 However, after the move to Seton Hall and under the direction of months and you're seeing more of the archives begin to collect materials from other sources, such as the personal papers with priests materials produced by the over 200 parishes in the Archdiocese
13:42:27 and other donors and sources. The addition of these materials resulted in the creation of several artificial collections, into which all materials on a particular topic, but from different sources can be added.
13:42:38 In some cases this made sense central parish files collection is more user friendly than creating separate collections for each Parish, and arrangement like that facilitates the use of the collection rather than potentially having related items catalog
13:42:49 separately.
13:42:51 However, in some cases materials were separated based on format such as photographs and at materials, which were disassociated from the collection they came in with and put into a general Archdiocese of New York photographs or Archdiocese of New York
13:43:03 AV collection.
13:43:04 In those cases, the items was valuable context, to the extent possible, I'm hoping to reunite these kinds of items with their original collections.
13:43:12 Next slide please.
13:43:16 So some other challenges that I came across when I took over the position where the lack of description of the collection so only about 34% of the collection had any kind of finding aid or index.
13:43:26 And that means that most of the collection was not very accessible to researchers and it even was difficult for me to find things sometimes one project that I actually started while working at Seton Hall and then continued after I became the Archdiocese
13:43:37 and archivist was a complete inventory of the collection at the box level, which has helped us to identify everything we have and where it is another issue was it over the years, the Archdiocese and material had become mixed with the whole material.
13:43:51 So we also share the same collection storage space, but there's an area set aside specifically for the Archdiocese collections. However, at one point the space was reorganized to relocate all oversized boxes into a different area, and all AV and photo
13:44:05 material into another area. And that's, and they're there they were mixed in with Seton Hall materials.
13:44:11 So this resulted in the collections being split up and it made it difficult to find all of the materials associated with a particular collection in order to begin processing.
13:44:20 Because of the type of the shelving that was used to store the oversized boxes as well. It was a less efficient use of space, overall, so in summer 2020 I worked on a shift to bring all of the Archdiocese and Maciel together and that one area and court
13:44:34 bring all of our collections together so that they were contiguous.
13:44:38 Another big issue was that collection numbers were changed over the years, often multiple times and with for documentation of the changes and the reason behind them.
13:44:45 So for one example the Archdiocese of Newark hospitals collection of a small amount of documentation from when the collection was received in 1980, which says it isn't it isn't record group 13 institutions and agencies.
13:44:59 Then some unknown point it was moved to record number 10, and the number was changed to 10 10.8.
13:45:05 Then at another later point it was changed again to remove it from record group 10, and give it a separate number 1815.
13:45:12 There were actually a few number changes in recruit 10 which is shown on this slide. Um, I think my theory is that record for 10 originally was only parish records.
13:45:22 And then at some point, record route 13 which was institutions and agencies was merged into it. And then at some later point somebody tried to reverse that and pare it back down to only parish records again.
13:45:34 Um, and they removed the hospitals and Catholic colleges collections for maybe antenna and gave them separate numbers, that's just kind of my theory, it's a little bit undermined by the fact that schools and orphanages are still in a dn 10, but that's,
13:45:46 um, that's my best guess at the moment.
13:45:49 And then finally, there was a lack of policies specific to the Archdiocese and archives so actually ask you some materials were addressed and Seton Hall's collecting policy.
13:45:58 But since we're a distinct organization we should really have our own policies and forums and things like that.
13:46:03 Next slide please.
13:46:05 So going forward I want to place more emphasis on addressing records at the institutional level in the Archdiocese, So we currently don't have an archdiocese wide records management policy or guidelines, so really like to institute something like that
13:46:28 so that there's more clarity about which record should be permanent and it should come to the archives, and what can be disposed of already at the Archdiocese and Center also created records transfer form to document transfers from the offices, and then
13:46:32 since the, since the offices are the source of most of the records that we receive. I think this will go a long way towards more organized well documented collecting going forward.
13:46:43 I also mentioned earlier that I'd like to reintegrate the artificial collections based on provenance to the extent possible, and that's going to depend somewhat on how good the documentation is there, and how clearly we can figure out which collections
13:46:54 materials were disassociated from so that we can reunite them.
13:46:58 Um, but I'm hoping that we'll be able to do that to the extent possible.
13:47:02 And then finally there's a very large backlog of unprocessed materials that I would like to see at least minimally described in made accessible.
13:47:09 Next slide.
13:47:10 Thank you so much for listening.
13:47:13 If there are any questions please put them in the chat, and I will pass it off to Heather.
13:47:21 Thank you, Brianna and thank you everyone for attending today I'm going to be talking a little bit about two different experiences that I have had as an archivist, where I have had to establish archival order of where there was number four in both instances
13:47:34 I was the first professional archivist at the institutions.
13:47:38 First I'll be talking a little bit about the the two institutions. The first was the Atlantic City free public library. I joined the staff there in 2006 fresh out of library school from the University of Maryland, and the library itself though was established
13:47:52 back in the early 1900s it was a Carnegie Library. It had a building that was built in 1905 a beautiful building the library soon outgrew that building, and they move to a larger building.
13:48:04 Currently they have two branches and they also have a very large exhibit hall in the convention center of Atlantic City the boardwalk Hall, and I'll talk a little bit about that in just a minute also and what we had to do to get that.
13:48:16 The other institution where I am currently serving as the Special Collections library and is Stockton University, located in southern New Jersey. It's actually only about 10 miles away from Atlantic City, I moved just down the road.
13:48:30 In 2017, and Stockton is a mid size public institution in New Jersey. We reached university status in 2015, and currently have about 10,000 students we do have two campuses, including our brand new Atlantic City campus which is just opened a couple years
13:48:46 ago.
13:48:47 And when I joined the Atlantic City Library, I was a reference librarian slash archivist, and that I had about 60% of my duties were in the Special Collections room and the Atlantic City heritage collections, and about 40% of my duties were at the reference
13:49:02 desk. Soon that switched to be about 90% duties in the archives. And then finally towards the end of my career it's switched back to be about 10% in the archives and 90% Library administration, and I mentioned that just to kind of explain why it was that
13:49:16 I decided to move over to Stockton and to work in the collections there instead of staying in Atlantic City.
13:49:24 The two different special collections have some similarities and of course many differences Atlantic City heritage collections at the Atlantic City Public Library were started by a gift from one of the library board members, Alfred Heston in the early
13:49:37 1900s, he was a local historian, and he donated all of his papers and collections and books and things that had to do with Atlantic City history. He was also a prolific author.
13:49:48 And so many of the collections are focused around some of the things that he was doing, as he was preparing his books about Atlantic City history Atlantic City is a very small area geographically, but it has a lot of really rich history if you're not
13:50:00 familiar with it I certainly encourage you to pick up a book like Boardwalk Empire, which will give you a good overview of the city's history, or the north side which tells about the African American neighborhood of Atlantic City.
13:50:12 Some of the key areas in the heritage collections have to do with the city history of course but also with the history of casino gambling Atlantic City was the first casino location east of the Mississippi.
13:50:23 And of course now there's many more but there are a lot of collections that have to do with casinos and gambling.
13:50:28 And so there, it's a great resource for people that are researching that it also has a large collection of Miss America artifacts and memorabilia and photographs.
13:50:37 It's not the official Miss America archives, but it has quite a lot of material to do with Miss America, which didn't start there in Atlantic City.
13:50:45 Similarly Stockton University has special collections. We also have our University Archives and so I oversee both here at Stockton and the collection focuses here have to do a little more regionally the South Jersey history, and of course the university
13:50:59 itself which is getting ready to celebrate its 50th anniversary this year.
13:51:03 Some of the other areas that we specialize in here at Stockton have to do with the pine lands National Reserve which is a national forest here and it has its own culture and feel and history to it.
13:51:16 And so we have collections that have to do with that both collections are well, the Atlantic City heritage collections are heavily used by researchers from all over the world.
13:51:25 We get a lot of really interesting people that are interested in the Lake City history and in of course Miss America and casino gambling, the Stockton University special collections are somewhat more used by the university itself, both for the University
13:51:37 Archives but also for the regional history parts, we get a lot more student use, and we get a lot of local researchers doing kind of community types of projects that come in and use the special collections at Stockton.
13:51:50 Now both of these. When I started where I was, as I mentioned when I was the first professional archivist, and at the Atlantic City Library. I was fresh out of library school I really, you know, didn't know what I was getting into probably as a lone ranger
13:52:12 didn't really understand how to establish an archive and so there was, it was a lot of learning from the ground up I leaned heavily on colleagues, such as yourself. And also on Christina Simone's book and for Lone Ranger's.
13:52:17 And so one of the first things I had to do was create collect collections, everything had been lovingly cared for by librarians and care professionals over the years.
13:52:25 But I had to basically reunite collections, as I think Brianna mentioned, you know, things were separated out to move around and people had catalogued parts of them with Dewey Decimal numbers and other parts hadn't been.
13:52:36 And so I really had to create the collections from the ground up you know create the obsession files reunite these collections based on things like the annual reports of the library where they mentioned different donations.
13:52:47 I had to create create policies and procedures as we mentioned by both Kristen and Brianna and and bring physically collections together so that I could start to process them.
13:52:58 I also had to do outreach I had to do outreach within the library teaching, you know, the staff and the other librarians a little bit about archives and helping them to understand why it was important that no you couldn't take these things out of the
13:53:10 library or you couldn't just use them at your desk and encouraging people to use proper archival methods.
13:53:17 And it was somewhat of a challenge, you know, balancing all of those different tasks as a lone ranger as many of us. And as many of us have to do over the years.
13:53:27 You know, doing the archives management, together with the Library Reference and then of course the Library Management later on in my career there.
13:53:33 Similarly I, when I started at Stockton I was the first professional archivist, and it had the collections there. Oh, sorry, let me mention some of the successes I guess from Atlantic City first before I jumped into that.
13:53:46 Some of the things that that I was able to see over my time at Atlantic City.
13:53:50 The collection grew by three. We acquired the collection of the local Historical Museum, you can see, little, little bit of that on the lower right at an exhibit that we did there.
13:54:01 They, so we acquired a large artifact collection and then we also that the fire the collection of a large collection of a local historian. And so the question did grow quite a lot and that was really a great experience at but it also meant that we ran
13:54:13 out of space in the previous slide, you probably saw are here in the lower left you can see the tiny Reading Room slash office that I used in my first years there and later on, we were able to expand to encompass the lower, I would say the lower fourth
13:54:30 of the libraries, lower level or the fourth of the library libraries lower level, we were able to convert that into a reading them but you can see in the upper right center of the, of the presentation.
13:54:43 And it was, you know, it was all from the ground up, as we move through things and it was really a great opportunity for me to when we had students come in we had some archives and turns.
13:54:53 And in fact, one of the archives interns became or two of the archives interns became archivists in their own right, and had moved on to their other locations and then one of the our other interns Jacqueline has taken over my place, Jacqueline silver
13:55:06 Maria is now the archivist there in Atlantic City.
13:55:10 And then when I moved to Stockton I had a similar experience and that I had to also create those expressions files I had to write those guidelines again I had to establish collections reunite them.
13:55:21 And there was also quite a bit of a balancing act in terms of not stepping on people's toes as I mentioned the collections had been lovingly cared for by professionals and retired faculty members and things like that and of course they all had their own
13:55:35 ideas about how things should be done. And so I think one of the important lessons I learned from Atlantic City and I brought with me to Stockton is that you have to tread lightly, and carefully as you make some of these changes and and certainly communicate
13:55:48 as much as possible tell people why you're making the changes help them to understand it, and continue to provide all of you know the access and things that there are used to it as much as you're able to scanning things to give them copies, rather than
13:56:01 letting them take the originals with them, that kind of a thing.
13:56:05 And and again it stopped in, I used some of my outreach.
13:56:09 The tools that I have used from Atlantic City for outreach to be able to communicate to the university community and to the local community also, as we do have community researchers that come in.
13:56:21 And I was at a presentation. The other day I forget who the speaker was and she mentioned she was a lone ranger at a university, and it sounded like she had the exact same jobs description that I did in that there is this balancing act still, you know
13:56:32 there's there's the archival management, working with interns working with staff processing collections.
13:56:39 But at the same time I'm also a library in here, and I have to balance my teaching duties as the liaison to our history, American Studies languages and Latin American and Caribbean studies programs.
13:56:52 And so I have to balance all of that and then I have the added balancing act in that I am 1010 year track going through the 10 year process right now.
13:57:00 And so I'm balancing all of my teaching and archives duties with service and research and writing as I'm sure many of you are too.
13:57:11 So some of the successes that I think I have experienced here at Stockton in our that the collection has continued to grow we've had some really interesting donations over the last four years.
13:57:21 And we've also had a really big increase in class use, since I'm able to teach information literacy, based in the archives also and have students come into work with time resources, and I have had great support for our from our administration the faculty,
13:57:34 staff, students and the local community, I think part of part of my success is that, you know, coming from Atlantic City I had a lot of really great contacts with donors and with researchers here in the region and I was able to bring those with me to
13:57:47 Stockton to expound on those and to help people feel comfortable I guess also donating their things here as they related to our collections here, some of the goals you can see on the screen or I'm sure some of the ones that you all have to, we do have
13:58:00 our 50th anniversary coming up so we are in the middle of working on several things for that. And I do want to continue to process more collections and to expand our collections relating to the archives for our student organizations because that is an
13:58:13 area that we've identified that we do not have strong holdings in. And I also certainly want a reading room here too. We don't have a dedicated reading room and I would really like a reading room in a classroom space so that is one of our five year goals
13:58:27 and our administration is also helping with that. Luckily we have the support of them for that. So we will be talking I guess in our q amp a portion a little bit more about how we organize our collections and things like that so I'm going to hand it over
13:58:38 to Stephanie, to talk more about hers.
13:58:44 Thank you, Heather.
13:58:47 As we mentioned my name is Stephanie assessment, I am the Special Collections and Archives librarian at Westminster choir college at rider University.
13:58:54 Next slide please.
13:58:56 Westminster choir college, I was founded in 1926 in Dayton, Ohio, with the original mission of training ministers of music. In 1929 the college moved to Ithaca, New York, and in 1930 to move to Princeton, New Jersey.
13:59:11 In 1992 it merged with rider college now rider University, and in the summer of 2020 moved again to the rider university campus Westminster currently offers undergraduate and graduate degrees in music education theory and composition.
13:59:28 Vocal Performance sacred music choral conducting American public musicology and piano performance and Next slide please.
13:59:36 Throughout the years choirs at Westminster choir college have a participated in numerous tours nationally and internationally.
13:59:44 The pictures are on the right, or if Westminster's early days, which I've been 20s 30s and 40s.
13:59:50 Singing in Morocco Cuba Yugoslavia and Norway, just to name a few.
13:59:55 Westminster choir college participates in many festivals including both Spoleto festivals, the choral Institute at Oxford and art song before the move to rider University Westminster hosted the summer cooperative vocal Institute voice Institute and the
14:00:11 coral festival at Princeton campus with individuals attending from all over the world. Next slide please.
14:00:19 Westminster choir college is also known for its world renowned faculty guest conductors and alumni including and Copeland SAML barber Leonard Bernstein Robert Shaw, just a plumber felt James Jordan Yannick visits again and I apologize I'm probably pronouncing
14:00:33 that very wrong, I apologize. Julia Perry, Warren Martin George Lynn, and Norman Mackenzie just to name a few.
14:00:42 Westminster choir college is also known for its numerous Grammy nominations and awards for all the choirs vocal groups from alumni and faculty. This year seven Westminster alumni were nominated winning Best coral performance best offer recording and best
14:00:57 best classical solo Vocal Album. One alumni was nominated for five catalog categories alone. Next slide please.
14:01:07 As Westminster as a music college the archives is more aligned with a University Archives type and is located within Talbot music library Westminster archives has present presidential departments programs and alumni documents reality of photographs from
14:01:32 tours guests performers faculties and events. Princeton campus architectural plans faculty publications course catalogs yearbooks newspaper clippings and lots and lots and lots of sheet music and audio and visual recordings.
14:01:37 Next slide please.
14:01:39 The archives at Westminster wasn't really official or established until the late 1980s or early 1990s, um, it is a thanks to the late Nancy Wicklund gray who tirelessly work to keep the Westminster history collected and preserved and Nancy was a Westminster
14:01:55 alumni who received her library degree at Drexel. She was a self taught orchid archivist but took courses throughout her career and held memberships to several archival organizations.
14:02:06 She was also I would consider it our Eric Radley scholar and work with him, and after his death with his family. It is thanks to her and her endeavors that tell that music library holds the Eric route least like full library, totaling about eight linear
14:02:19 feet and then some.
14:02:22 And then after Nancy was Amy and she served as a Special Collections and Archives librarian, and she had specialized coursework in music librarianship and preservation administration and her a lot of her work was doing digitization projects and displays
14:02:38 with Julia, she's a was an archives assistant with more library, and she actually assisted a few days during the week on the Princeton campus, and just really helped keep everything going, and she also worked with processing digitization and displays.
14:02:53 Next slide please.
14:02:55 When I arrived. This was my first professional position, um, I have a master's in library science and I just graduated that time with the masters and Archives and Records Administration.
14:03:05 And I just feel the spot, the vacancy was vacant for two and a half years.
14:03:11 I also received during a pending transition or move to the rider university campus. This move was very contentious and political with the proposed new location, there was a lot of fear that it was not going to be enough space for the current archive collection,
14:03:24 collection, let alone new items. Plus preservation issues at the new location and overall just a massive lack of communication on every level. I was quite a crazy few first days and weeks and months.
14:03:36 Despite my searching I could not find any written procedures or manuals and past and current practices for the archives. So I really had no recommend written documentation on how things were done in the past.
14:03:47 I also found a bunch of multiple copies of files and items in different locations.
14:03:51 The pictures display really show the main archives room, known as a date and room and space was really, really small. So over the years they just tried their best to fit everything into nooks and crannies.
14:04:02 It was really just they did everything that they could. Next slide please.
14:04:08 So upon my arrival. My immediate reactions I wanted to hit the ground running. And I decided my immediate actions were going through the admin files to learn more about the archives.
14:04:19 Lori and review the archives and mission, and was constantly on my feet trying to find or figure out where everything was located.
14:04:26 However, in March through July, like many we encountered serious disruption do to cover night team, but also in March the lawsuit to help the Princeton campus moved to rider University failed.
14:04:38 And all my colleagues found you know we just found ourselves doing stagger visits to pack everything up as the move was slated in to start in July.
14:04:46 As I started packing the archives I found a lots of new undocumented items unprocessed items and did my best to earmark them to a designated spot to the new to go to the new location so they would not get lost again at the end of July in the beginning
14:05:01 of August, the move to the new location commenced all my attempts were really just to make sure everything arrived safely, including transporting items by myself and in my within my own car.
14:05:11 By September I started to unpack and get reacquainted with the collection and acquainted with the new items. I'm currently looking at certain collections that may need to be processed and also continue to unite items back together that were separated
14:05:23 before my first project was to work on the faculty publications backlog on Next slide please.
14:05:31 However, they've, we, we started off the you know the the faculty publications which mostly This was on piece pieces of music composed by staff or edited it, I thought it would be simple, and I discovered it was not.
14:05:49 I kept finding faculty publications everywhere, and no documentation on past practices.
14:05:55 I decided to hunker down and just catalog the unprocessed faculty publications, even creating original records when necessary. Assigning Standard Library of Congress numbers but didn't realize that, and Next slide please.
14:06:09 Faculty publications were given in house call numbers. And this was one me as an in passing I sold them labeled with Library of Congress numbers I just didn't.
14:06:19 I just assumed that they were just standard LC class, so sadly I spent weeks on creating cold numbers with this mindset and felt very foolish in the middle of a bit devastated when I discovered everything.
14:06:31 But it doesn't stop there also found that a majority of items had cold numbers and information written on them, including ink, and my absolute horror barcodes stapled onto the archival items, and to end it for the prolific composers titles were lumped
14:06:47 together alphabetically into the large envelopes and identified with titles for example a through I or a through n. However, this was not reflected in the catalog, so you might have to do some extra searching to find a specific item.
14:06:59 Next slide please.
14:07:01 And so I've come up with a new plan of action for this year, which includes adjusting the practice for faculty publications, of course, including the no stapling barcodes items into the guidelines.
14:07:13 I would also like to establish formal processing procedures create procedures and guidelines sheets for and manuals for student workers, clean up the paper files, start working on guidelines for digital archives and of course continue to process the backlog.
14:07:30 Next slide please. And that concludes my presentation. Thank you so much for attending and I'm going to hand this back to I believe Chris.
14:07:37 Well, thanks Stephanie Thanks everyone. Those were great presentations, entertaining. And so, though, you provided you know great platform so we can you know just dive into our panel questions so the questions are up on the screen so everybody can follow
14:07:54 along. And again, you're welcome to make comments or ask a question so.
14:08:01 So the, what were the particular issues or circumstances that you encounter that led you to processing a collection, or collect multiple collections.
14:08:13 What was there any particular criteria, or you know what, what did you, you know, was it was a time, was it money was IT staffing Was it a good enough product.
14:08:25 Was it none of those was something entirely different and also Were there any.
14:08:40 Were there any questions that were maybe half processed or kind of process but not processed enough, you know like, so you know what were your criteria. What did you do when you had to jump in there and get that done.
14:08:50 Can you read about start.
14:08:50 Sure I could start.
14:08:53 So the main factor for me generally is staff time because it's, um, there's just too many things to do and not enough time to do.
14:09:03 So usually that will drive my decision like what level to process the collection out of the box level or the file level we basically never do item level.
14:09:19 a little bit with processing. I have done some reprocessing in the collection especially to do things like remove duplicates. We have a ton ton of duplicates in the collection.
14:09:28 For example, in the priests vertical file. We're currently reprocessing that to take out duplicates within your team or put in 10 copies of a certain item and we only need to.
14:09:40 And then there's also some things in that collection like correspondence about research requests that aren't really appropriate to be, you know, in a collection of other people are going to use for research but that might be useful for us to have like
14:09:51 in our administrative files, and the decision to reprocess that was mainly due to the fact that it was taking up more space than was really necessary there was a lot of empty space in the boxes and then also with all the duplicates.
14:10:03 We've been able to reduce the actual footprint that it's taking up by quite a bit, which is a concern for us because we only have so much space as well.
14:10:11 So these are sort of the things that we're driving those decisions.
14:10:17 Thank you.
14:10:18 I'll offer a different perspective, I hate processing. And this is something that I discovered back in library school when I had an internship, and I just hated it.
14:10:27 I think it was all the photocopying of the newspapers the removing of the staple clips you know before MPL p was more accepted. And so, whatever I can do to get it done quickly and so a lot of times as Brianna says, You know, I bring in volunteers and
14:10:41 interns that are interested in doing you know a certain collection. But basically I have kind of a streamlined approach where I have a template that we use for inventory I have a template that we use for the finding aid I have a template that we use for
14:10:53 for the processing plan. And so if I'm doing it or if my intern is doing it or if a volunteers doing it.
14:11:00 We all follow the same procedure we inventory the box on the, on the inventory template we do the processing plan on the processing plan template, and we do the finding it all the time that you took, and we get it done.
14:11:15 thinking about best practices, I we brought those best practices in by using these templates that include questions you know about that we would need for these templates and for the processing.
14:11:28 But however we can get it done the fastest way possible. That's my philosophy.
14:11:36 Stephanie you want to jump in or I can jump in or you go ahead I'm still as I said like I'm still just beginning to get acquainted with the collections like there's a few that are on my radar that I want to kind of deep dive in and just kind of, you know,
14:11:55 fix or unite. So, stay tuned I think by next year hopefully you know I could be able to add to that so I will hand it over to you.
14:11:59 All right. Well, yeah, I mean I can jump in here.
14:12:02 So I have some similar issues to the rest of you know like the rest of the panel on the two big issues that I had when I first came on board were first of all, the coaches were pulled apart so they were archival records, and there were manuscript collections
14:12:18 and there were subject files, and there were archival administrative files.
14:12:25 They were all mixed together, like in a subject format and on top of that, as you saw one of my slides.
14:12:34 A lot of times it would be like a, like a VHS tape or cassette or you know some, you know, some textiles stuffed in to the box to, they all like that almost all like that here.
14:12:45 Um, and so the first thing I had to do is identify these are the archival records in these manuscripts, this is the subject file this is you know, and so I had to tease that apart first before I can even start the process.
14:12:59 And the second issue that I'm, you know, that we are dealing with, as we process is a lot of these in the school is you know we're almost a 150 years old, there's a lot of history here, and many of the record groups, we're not.
14:13:19 We're not separated so one, so So for instance, one headmaster administration will roll into another head minutes headmaster administration. So instead of having, you know, 30 years for one semester and 20 years for the other you suddenly have 50 years
14:13:34 of records that it's almost impossible to tease out, so they have to so.
14:13:40 So in this circumstance.
14:13:42 One of my criteria as well. It's almost impossible to separate that out, it's not going to make any sense it's gonna it's going to actually make it worse so what I do is I make copious notes on the finding eight so people understand that you know what
14:13:56 they're looking at and why they're looking at it the way you know because they were so commingled. So, and that is how I've been handling the administrative.
14:14:07 I'm sorry the archival records.
14:14:12 Today, so anyway, alright well that.
14:14:16 So collections processing Heather's favorite collections processing is a, is a core function of the archives, but there are others as well. And, such as the acquisitions and materials so can Who wants to go first to talk about a bit about how donation
14:14:34 to the transfer of materials, was handled when you first started at your institution Then have you made changes or I can start that one
14:14:46 donations were just piled up.
14:15:02 No forms resigned no letters are written. No, no indication of anything. And so it became a bit of a mystery and a little bit of detective work.
14:15:01 As I mentioned, I went back and use some of the annual reports for some of the early donations to the archives to be able to reunite, for example, Alfred Heston's papers, which have been spread every which way as tiny as the reading room was they were
14:15:13 in every corner.
14:15:15 And so I use the annual reports from the library to do that later, I was able to unite things based on notes in the library catalog, they would have in the 690 field I think it wasn't the mark records they would have a note like donated by.
14:15:30 And so I was able to search for all of those different donated by statements to unite some of the collections, and then putting in place immediately rules about, you know, if somebody dropped something off at the desk at least get their name and their
14:15:46 contact information, you know, making sure that everybody in the library understood that so that I could contact the people that were dropping off things we got donations, all the time in Atlantic City, people would just, you know, doorstep drops or,
14:15:58 You know they a postcard they sent us on them anonymously in the mail a postcard that they're great grandmother has in her attic about Atlantic City, and so it.
14:16:07 There was a lot of detective work involved in it I saw a question and I don't know if it was the q amp a or the chat and somebody said you know at what point do you just give up I'm reuniting things.
14:16:15 Yes, that certainly happened to and that's how we ended up with a lot of artificial collections.
14:16:30 Within Linux to begin here at Stockton, we do have a number of artificial collections that we just have group things together and said this is the pylons collection because everything has to do with the pylons and we don't know who gave it to us, or how
14:16:33 many different people gave it to us and so we have created some of these artificial collections.
14:16:36 Right.
14:16:38 So I can, I can, I'll jump in and again I had Heather a lot of the similar you know situations and circumstances that you did and probably brown and Stephanie also.
14:16:49 So when I stepped into the role. Like I mentioned, excuse me, there were no policies or procedures or workflow because there was there was nothing, including an acquisitions policy.
14:17:02 So donations were never handled formally, I found that out there's no records of anything and literally no records of anything.
14:17:12 So, when I started you know boxes of collections or materials would like appear in front of the archives door with no information whatsoever so there was no donor information there was no contact information there was no phone number, email there's nothing
14:17:24 so what I ended up doing a lot of the time is you know sending out at all Canvas email you know the archives just received a box of whatever. Does anybody know anything about it.
14:17:34 Did you deliver it you know who was from and you know sometimes somebody would say, Oh yeah, you know, this you know I got this from here or there, wherever and then a lot of times you know just as many times I got no response because nobody knew where
14:17:47 it came from, or nobody was admitting it. So that was one big problem.
14:18:02 So, um, the other issue that I had to contend with.
14:17:58 was that people would people on campus, were in the habit of accepting gifts on behalf of the archives, without contacting the archives, so people would, you know, try it on over to the archives and say here Look what I got from the archives so and so
14:18:15 gave it to me whatever and you know a lot, you know, sometimes it's like okay this is great, you know this is, you know, this is applicable but a lot of times it was like what are we going to do with, you know, this well just because some people think
14:18:26 you know just as you all know if it's all that must be the archives must want it.
14:18:31 So I think after.
14:18:35 So there were the two biggest issues. So obviously we you know established established acquisitions dollar gift all that now we have that all in place, and I think now people.
14:18:48 Because of you know continual education that people don't accept things I'll be happy the archives they know to contact the archives first which is a great thing, and say, you know, I know somebody that would like to donate such and such, the archives.
14:19:04 Would you in sound like great, this is great you know send everything my way and let me be the gatekeeper that is my job so I think a lot of the issues that I dealt with.
14:19:14 When I first came on board, those had disappeared happily, but it did take, you know, some time to educate and re educate and, you know, keep driving home that you know what the archives does what our what our job is so that was a happy ending.
14:19:38 I mean, for me, when I started the documentation I had been have somewhat haphazardly.
14:19:44 We had some control files for certain things that were accessing records in their catalog or kind of space, but they were really sparse and they were often not linked to the collection that they were referring to.
14:19:55 So you have an obsession record but you wouldn't know what collection and actually was part of.
14:20:01 So yeah and then there's just, I've been sort of finding documentation in different places as well, like in the priests vertical file once and you're seeing more would often if he received something for a priest he would file that documentation, with
14:20:13 the priests vertical file under that name.
14:20:16 vertical file under that priests name, but you wouldn't know to look for it there unless you already knew that that priests donated that thing.
14:20:20 So, yeah, I've just been trying to sort of track down everything I can. Um, and, you know, bring all that documentation together to try to figure things out for going forward
14:20:34 with me. I mean, it's just no real systematic record so we do have some data gifts, which that's that's lovely that's like, you know, wonderful, but a lot of times like I'll see like a file but really no info and it's just the file, and I might sometimes
14:20:51 some of my co workers will remember when the the donation was received or oh you know you should contact this faculty member. So, some of them still have a little bit of institutional memory of, you know, being there, but there's somewhere, no one knows
14:21:03 where, how we got this, so it's good times.
14:21:09 it looks like we have a number of people in the chat that are commiserating with us and I know yesterday and one of the sessions somebody suggested a support group for the, for for all of us that are, you know, trying to PCs collections together, not,
14:21:19 not a bad idea.
14:21:21 strength in numbers. Okay.
14:21:23 All right, well, so we we've established that all of us had to either create from scratch or heavily edited policies and procedures. So, um, you know, including.
14:21:39 You know, you know collection development policies or maybe even mission statement I mean we didn't even have a mission statement when I started so, um, what were some of the challenges.
14:21:52 When you had to, you know, either reinvent the wheel or create something from scratch, you know, did you get you know was your administration, supportive.
14:22:01 Did you get pushback Did you have questions you know what was your experience with that being a new kid on the block professional new kid on the block
14:22:10 wants to start.
14:22:15 Well,
14:22:20 um,
14:22:22 I can start so I'll start. Um, what when I, when I came on board, you know, again there was no policies, procedures, no, no, no records management program again so.
14:22:36 But I was hired as a consultant, and so they were, and eventually they created a full time position.
14:22:47 After came on board. So, I was very fortunate in the fact that I got no pushback they were, they were happy to have somebody professionally trained so when I said, you know, you know, we need a markers management program you need these policies you need
14:23:03 these procedures, you need to do this and here is why they were very happy and nobody second guessed me nobody questioned me walking question why we had to have it they just.
14:23:23 we doing it this way but in no way did I have any pushback so I got a lot of support from the administration here. And I don't know what some of your experiences with that.
14:23:31 I am certainly had a lot of support from the administration in both places I think it's because a little bit of the novelty factor, you know they've. I, as I mentioned, I was the first professional arguments in both locations, and so you know they're
14:23:42 excited they have a professional they have an archivist they can you know they're willing, the administration has been willing in both places. In my case to listen to what I have to say, and most of the time to take it under consideration and to follow
14:23:55 through.
14:23:57 In my current position I'm not allowed to create policies or procedures that is only done by our Board of Trustees, we can only create guidelines. And so, of course that doesn't have quite the to it you know when you're trying to get somebody to do something.
14:24:10 Somebody asked in the in the q amp a about, you know, I've mentioned that people were taking things out of the building or out of the locations. And that was a big struggle for us because here at the university you know they had 50 years worth of archives,
14:24:23 and the older stuff, we have some of our faculty members that go back those 50 years and they're very used, they were very used to just walking into the library walking down to the archives and taking what they needed and maybe bringing it back maybe
14:24:33 not maybe signing it out, maybe not.
14:24:36 And so that was certainly something that we had to overcome. And one of the ways that I think that we have gotten to that point now is just by making myself as available as possible to them, you know, whenever they email me I try to email them right back
14:24:49 and say oh let me get that scan for you I'll scan that and send it over to you, you know, oh you need the copy of such and such report from 1972 sure let me find that for you.
14:24:58 And almost dropping everything just to make that happen for them so that they knew that they could count on me to get them the information without them having to actually come and take it out.
14:25:07 Same thing at the library we had early on we had people taking out your books, the high school yearbooks were really popular collection. And so the reference librarians would just walk into the archives room and take the boat, and give it to the patron
14:25:18 and the patron could go wherever in the library they wanted they were told not to take it out of the building but because we have some missing now I assume people did take them out of the building.
14:25:27 And so it was, it was a matter of, you getting that support from the administration and explaining you know we can't replace these your books, they're not coming back to us again.
14:25:36 And so if you want them to be available for the future we need to make sure that they don't leave the room and and that's, I think, making sure that communication line is open and making sure that you explain what you're doing, not just like bringing
14:25:50 down the hammer and say no we cannot do this anymore. But, making it something that people can understand and doing it in a way that makes that provides access to the materials for them, even though they can't take the materials out that's that's the
14:26:03 way that we were able to go about it.
14:26:09 Anybody else want to jump in. Yeah, I mean, for me, when I started there really wasn't any policies that were specific to the Archdiocese in archives.
14:26:17 But there were policies of Seton Hall that referred to the Archdiocese in archives and kind of spoke for the Archdiocese in archives, which isn't an ideal situation but at least there was kind of something that's something we need to sort of separate
14:26:31 out and kind of clarify as we go forward. Um, I have created some we call them guidelines not policies but I've created some guidelines for things like respond to Sacramento records or class and things like that.
14:26:45 And I'm working on the guidelines for records management New York diocese right now which I think is going to be really important going forward on my direct supervisor is the chancellor of the Archdiocese and she's been really supportive of all that work.
14:26:58 So, I've been getting a lot of support from above, but we'll see when it's time to actually implement that throughout like the rest of the departments in the Archdiocese how much cooperation that will get I'm hoping that it'll go really well and we'll
14:27:08 be able to, you know, reach out to the different departments and, you know, help make this record man with the guidelines. Throughout the Archdiocese.
14:27:20 And I mean my seven pretty supportive.
14:27:24 I've needed a some funding for, you know, preservation measures and they've been really great about that, because everything so it was just so fragile and I, you know, they were very accommodating because as we all know the archival supplies are extremely
14:27:37 expensive and, and there's, you know. So, and then I just was not having anything really written or found anything yet.
14:27:48 I know one thing I'm going to be changing is that some I have some special collections are allowed to be checked out my professors and taken to classrooms and don't really want to do that, um, you know, maybe I will, you know, be you know I'm going to
14:28:00 try and ease that into not have that maybe I'll go and, you know, with them, or I can make it a special presentations or, you know, there's actually invite the class to come over and do that so I'm hoping to do that when the class or back on campus because
14:28:15 right now, with it being acquired college, no one's really on campus for Westminster so something definitely in the future.
14:28:27 All right, good. Um, so we talked a lot about we're going to hit it, and we because we talked a lot about policies, procedures and what we are, you know, we found when we first started.
14:28:36 But there are other aspects to working in our archives are running in archives and that is staff and volunteers are volunteers. So, um, what did you wear their volunteers when you came on board where their staff when you came on board.
14:28:51 Did you have student workers Did you have nobody Were you able to eventually you know what do you have now. Yeah, we have a higher staff, volunteers interns, how.
14:29:02 What's your setup now.
14:29:07 So I can start this one, we have.
14:29:23 We didn't have any interns specifically when I started, but over the years, there had been interns, or not interns and volunteers and interns sometimes and Seton Hall staff and student workers who all sort of contributed to processing some of the collections.
14:29:26 And I actually right now I have two volunteers and their duties are mainly sort of helping me out with data entry rehousing of some things you know like re folder and collections that are kind of straightforward and helping me sort of inventory things
14:29:41 sometimes. Um, so that's primarily what the volunteers are helping with and it's, it's been a huge help just to have some of that stuff sort of taken off my plate.
14:30:02 Well, jump in.
14:29:56 Well I love volunteers. When I came to Westminster there was one who was there for several years, who worked with Nancy who worked with Amy and Julia, and so I was able to get some info from there they were kind of helping me through the even though that
14:30:12 the dot you know process wasn't really written down as well this is what we did in the past, you know, um, but I look forward to having student workers in the fall to just tell me what the backlog, and just assist with processing and just.
14:30:25 I'm also part of the Special Collections and I'm also with 10 with Heather I'm also a tenure track so it's really really busy, so I really value.
14:30:34 Volunteers they're just, I just really value their services.
14:30:39 That's great Stephanie you had a volunteer with the institutional memory. That's really wonderful. Yes.
14:30:45 I mentioned in my presentation of course we did have, I do have student interns at Stockton and some student workers also that do a lot of our processing using this the templates and things at Atlantic City we did not have volunteers initially but we,
14:31:00 we ended up getting a few volunteers as well as some student summer workers that were helping with some digitization project since World History transcribing.
14:31:09 But we did have both institutions, I had, I had a part time left reference librarian at Atlantic City, who had been there for many, many years and she was, she had been tasked with answering reference questions in the archives before I started so that
14:31:22 was great because she had some of that institutional memory and she could tell me like this is why we do things this way. And then she was, she was very happy to learn how to do things other ways also.
14:31:32 So she was really a big help. And then here at Stockton I do have a full time archives assistant who has also been here in the archives for many years so she has some of that institutional memory which is really great for helping me.
14:31:49 And she's also been really excited to learn how to process, which is really great to her, so
14:31:52 far as volunteers go one of our, one of our largest one of the largest artifact collections or two largest artifact collections that we have our military uniforms and the military insignia.
14:32:03 I don't have any expertise in anything military So, but this is these are really popular collections, because the, the school had a military program for 100 years right, so it's a big part of the history.
14:32:18 So a colleague when I came on board suggested that I get in touch with a particular alum who went went to school during the time that the school had the military program it ended in 1971, and who has done a lot of research on the McDonough, military aspect
14:32:39 of things, and as actually a military historian
14:32:47 by profession. So, that was great. So, the first summer I was here, he.
14:33:02 We worked all summer, organizing and sorting military uniforms.
14:33:02 And it took us all summer but we were able to sort them we were so organizing session, we were able to create control vocabulary, you know, so it was, it was a really great collaborative effort and the following summer he came back to work on the military
14:33:20 insignia. and there are just thousands of pieces of that.
14:33:24 And it is maybe half to three quarters of the way finished.
14:33:30 But he's, he's, he has not only does he have this expertise but he has institutional knowledge so when I have trouble identifying some my new show some detail, especially the military photo.
14:33:43 He usually Can you know tease that out for me so it's great.
14:33:48 I've also used volunteers on a really basic level, for instance, you know we have a really large collection of institutional publications, and they, a lot of them run from, you know, the team at So, but they need to be you know we need we need to know
14:34:07 what we have and how many issues that we have each and so somebody needs to count those and put them in work and you know it by issue by addition or whatever so I use volunteers on that level, for those kinds of jobs that you really don't need any training
14:34:22 for.
14:34:23 I've also been lucky enough, you know, gotten support from administration to hire student interns and recently we were able to hire a probably a three quarter time archives assistant, and she's a recent grad and archival studies.
14:34:41 So that's, it's been fabulous so.
14:34:45 So, it was 02, you know, you know, to summer interns and, you know, the part time staff person so.
14:35:00 Anybody else want to didn't jump in or doesn't want to jump in or go to next question.
14:35:07 All right. Alright so,
14:35:24 I have not had a quick win, as of yet. I'm hoping for a quick win, but it has not reared its head yet so maybe some of you had better luck than I have had so far.
14:35:39 So I can share mine, my quick one is really more of a collecting quick one than a processing quick one.
14:35:58 files which are very useful for research, but I don't I don't have time to keep doing the clippings to that level with all the other things that I need to do so.
14:36:02 I found out that the communications department for the Archdiocese uses a media monitoring service which is basically like the digital equivalent of a clipping service, and I was able to get that data exported from media monitoring service on a regular
14:36:14 basis so that I can just capture that and save it in our collection and I don't have to do all the clippings myself so that was my kind of quick when my quick win but not really is like every other time I go to process the small collection and I think
14:36:28 is going to be quick and not too complicated and then I spent way more time on it but I thought because there's stuff in there that actually belongs with other collections and stuff that is labelled wrong.
14:36:39 Yeah.
14:36:45 I'll share mine.
14:36:48 A recent quick when was that using those templates and that I talked about with the processing.
14:36:54 I have to in person interns this semester, and usually in past semesters when I'm working with interns I taught you know I described how we process collections I show them, you know, using a couple different collections I showed them how we process collections
14:37:07 I showed them fully process collection I showed them one in the middle of the process and I usually show them. One that hasn't been inventoried and try to like talk them through how to do processing, before I before I have them actually fill out the templates
14:37:18 the templates and things, but this semester I decided to take a different approach. We had a number of small donations that have been made to us recently.
14:37:32 And so, I, there were just there were three there were very small collections they were only about half a box each. And so, I we each took one of those, and in the process of about 10 hours.
14:37:40 Over the course of several days, we process all three of those collections together. And it was perfect, it was the right size, and it really showed them from start to finish, how we do that you know we did the inventory we did the process of the plan
14:37:53 we process the collection, we wrote the finding and they're still tweaking the finding a little bit you know as part of their final project for their internship, but it really, I think it was really a great way to show the interns how to process a collection.
14:38:08 And the way that that we process collections in a way that got three two collections process very quickly and so I was really pleased with the way that went and not so great.
14:38:19 Well, and a quick one that wasn't, I guess, an Atlantic City we had created Atlantic City we get tons and tons of requests for photographs, you know, to use the Boardwalk Empire to us and you know this publication to us on the wall of this Starbucks.
14:38:34 And so we have all of these photographs they're really cool really great photographs. And so we came up with this policy that was like a scan on demand policy, and then we also were charging like a publication for you.
14:38:45 And very quickly that just became untenable.
14:38:48 We realized that we didn't own the copyright to most of the photographs and a lot of them were copies of copies and we didn't even know where the copies came from and where the originals were.
14:38:58 And so it just became very difficult for us to are ethically charged publication fee when we couldn't even say that we own the copyright to that.
14:39:19 And so, that, that one dragged on for quite a while we ended up in a lawsuit, you know, long story short, we decided to stop charging publication fees And just charge of scanning fee.
14:39:20 So that, that was my quick one that was definitely not quick with.
14:39:38 I obviously is like my one example that was what I thought would be a quick win and it was
14:39:37 time consuming.
14:39:38 So, I'm hopeful for a quick wind down the road, but so far that has been my experience, we'll we'll see how that goes.
14:39:48 All right, well, just I guess two for two into two quick things to us. Haven't had quick one so hopefully sometime soon, that would be great.
14:39:58 Alright, well, that cars.
14:40:01 So we've gone through our her bit or five questions that we wanted to get through, and we have about 20 minutes left, so why don't we take a look at the the QA and see if anybody wants to jump in and answer any of the questions that people are posing,
14:40:23 so.
14:40:27 So anything that is. Yeah, so I had a question from Michael and wreck, or the papers of priests considered property of the Archdiocese of the priest in terms of deeds of good stuff.
14:40:38 Um, so the answer is generally if it came from an archdiocese and office like if there was a priest working in the office of vocations and we got something from there it would be considered from the Archdiocese, but we received many sort of collections
14:40:50 of personal papers of priests that are just donated either through their will, or by their family after the person's passed away, and those who generally want to have a deed of gift for because they're, they're considered sort of the personal papers of
14:41:03 that person.
14:41:04 Whether we actually have a deed of gift for all the ones that we have, that is another question that I would not like to answer. Um, but yeah that's basically it.
14:41:15 So I see a question from Logan tasks got it and it says when you are reprocessing a collection or reorganizing or establishing the archives, were you try to keep the original order respect the Fonz and not pronounce friends respect of funds in mind, and
14:41:30 absolutely so I'm in our situation.
14:41:35 I was working with the archival records, I'm trying to the best of my ability to use the institutional organizational chart and organize things in record groups and series so I use that as my god and so far that has been working pretty well it is still
14:41:54 against flow going because every box I go through has you know records manuscripts, everything has everything so it's slower but I am able to fit most part, I've been able to piece you know chunk things back together, and hopefully one day, especially
14:42:09 with the, you know, with interns and volunteers will be able to have catch up with that sooner rather than later. So,
14:42:23 any other questions on here that anybody wants, I have a question from somebody asking about do we keep the archives locked up so that people can't get into them.
14:42:33 I'm sorry I'm paraphrasing question because I'm trying to share the slides the same time.
14:42:37 So, yes, the archives are like that's the short answer the long answer is I have no idea who has keys. I have no idea who does the codes.
14:42:47 I have not been able to get anyone to tell me that I have asked the library administration I've asked the lock shop, and I am told that I have a key, and that's all you need to do.
14:42:58 So unfortunately the bill yet yes the archives are locked but no I don't know who can get into them. That's here at Stockton, same thing in Atlantic City in Atlantic City, we had a little like punch code on the door to get into the archives, and everybody
14:43:10 knew the punch code, even some of the researchers seem to execute.
14:43:26 So that's the long and the short answer surprised, where I had experiences like you were so I had a key is maintenance, and so does the mail room, because, again, some of the surprise collections that you know, I would find it where it came from somebody
14:43:42 would drop boxes of things off to the mail room the mail room we bring them over to the archives.
14:43:46 I am
14:43:50 I am comfortable though. At least that I know who has the key who has keys or who has access to the archives and we have not had any issues everybody's really respectful materials, nobody you know goes and looks at anything.
14:44:09 So, um so yeah we were sort of in the same boat as you are and.
14:44:16 But it's been a problem, my successor Atlantic City just putting up the chat that that is not the case anymore so I am very glad to hear that I'm so glad that she has more control over you can go in and out that's really good to know.
14:44:29 So there any other questions on here anybody wants to jump in.
14:44:44 Okay.
14:44:36 I'm sorry. I'm Joseph Cohen asked if I had to adjust the record groups or the arrangement of agencies within a record group to reflect organizational changes within your diocese.
14:44:46 And that is something that I might do in the future, because I've had so much trouble with trying to de tangle, the changing of numbers in my collection I'm really really opposed to changing the numbers anymore.
14:44:58 But I do think that the way they are now doesn't really will reflect very well the structure of the Archdiocese, so maybe in the future I will do one more big number change and documented exhaustively, and then call it done.
14:45:13 Um, but yeah for that's something that might be on the horizon for the moment, I'm just sort of keeping everything where it is so that I can try to track down as much documentation as I can.
14:45:27 Um.
14:45:27 Well speaking of documentation. There's a question from Holly is deeply DNA. Not sure if I'm pronouncing the name right but, um, her question is did you end up posting you know as far as acquisitions like ask did you end up posting signs to notify potential
14:45:45 donors to leave contact info or creating forms for surprise donors to fill out when they stopped by with stuff. Well, forms are already ready. Now they are.
14:45:56 And again, I think I mentioned in, when we were talking about that earlier, what I did when I first came on board is send out multiple emails to the campus community say, you know, please just don't leave if you have something for the archives, at the
14:46:13 very least you know please leave your contact information so I can talk to you and get the information that I need or give me somebody contact information.
14:46:21 So, we Holly we don't have that issue anymore. And again, the other issue. We don't have really is anybody.
14:46:32 Most people come to me now say you know someone said would like to donate something.
14:46:37 And then I would, and then I'm in contact with the person, not, it just doesn't appear anymore so the surprise GIFs relatively few and far between, if any, so that an issue sort of result.
14:46:56 Questions.
14:46:57 Anybody wants to see somebody asked about creating a diva gift and yeah that was one of the first policies I create or forums, I guess I created at both institutions.
14:47:08 And actually, I took a class I with permission I took a flash drive and dislike two copies of all of the forms that I created a lake city brought them with me to stop them to get them approved here and just edited them slightly.
14:47:19 So yeah, that was really one of the first things I created was a DD gift and I leaned heavily, you know this is back in 2006. He leaned heavily on Christina Simone's book.
14:47:28 You know the Lone Ranger's book for templates and ideas of how to create that. And certainly, many of you who responded to questions on listeners and things.
14:47:37 When I was first getting started.
14:47:43 Are there any questions and we answered a lot of, you know, different questions, multiple times different ways, are there any other questions that you see here that we haven't answered, or one words.
14:48:01 Are there any temporary changes in processing that any of you had to make over the last year that you think you'll permanently keep post coven 19 I thought it was a really fascinating question for me I not really processing but I, we have the Julia a
14:48:14 Perry collection, and a lot of people were home, the entire world you know so they were doing a lot of the continued research on her and I had so many questions about the collection and in the end I decided where digitizing this that's it so that's what
14:48:28 I think, you know, I was very you know happy to be able to say, Listen, you know, we have this note digital and make it announcements and I think it's a really huge hit because she doesn't have a lot of materials out there there's only like one or two
14:48:39 other places that have some of our materials. So that's it's not something processing wise but it's definitely something I was, I was I just couldn't keep coming back, getting special permission to come in and scan certain items I thought I was just like,
14:48:50 All right, let's let's make this a digital collection. So, but I thought that was a really good question. I don't know whether you've had interesting with your student workers, keeping open, and, you know, yeah.
14:49:04 Previously we didn't allow our student interns and workers to work from home.
14:49:07 They had to be on site, you know, in order to get the credit for the class or in order to get paid. And of course, during coven that did not work and so we did create a few virtual internships and student worker opposite opportunities.
14:49:22 And so that has carried over and I think it will carry over to the future you know will require them to some some hours on on site so that they can learn more about how the archives are and things before we allow them to do some work at home projects,
14:49:33 but I can see us you know allowing more work from home, types of things. For example, us one of our interns right now her work from home project simultaneously with her on site project is she's cleaning up some transcripts OCR transcripts of old newsletters
14:49:47 that we're going to put in our digital collections. And so she's, she's just tweaking the the OCR so that they'll be easily more easily searched. Once we get them up online, and I can certainly see us having other types of things were particularly to
14:50:02 do with the digital collections, like you said, Stephanie.
14:50:06 Yeah.
14:50:19 So we have a lot of space.
14:50:21 We did have a summer intern last last summer. But this space it's an old house it's an old house but it is very large, and so but we were able to have the both of us working in the house in space because we could, we have an upstairs, we have a downstairs,
14:50:37 we have a hallway you know so we were able to stay, you know, yards and yards apart in separate rooms and work, you know, to safely together so although I did offer that option of taking collections home.
14:50:56 If you know the intern wanted to do that.
14:50:59 So, yeah, I think,
14:51:03 coven has made us reinvent the wheel.
14:51:07 Anybody else, I will just make a flip comment here and save it, because we didn't process physical collections for so long and that made me happy. Of course, not having to process I actually missed it, and I have since process to few corrections, you
14:51:22 know, you know, I guess absence makes the heart grow fonder.
14:51:30 All right. Um, so do we do we get through. Do we have we have about nine minutes left.
14:51:36 I think it looks like we're going to do you want to go ahead, go ahead. Oh no, I was just gonna say the same thing there's three more questions so I don't know if we want to just like read them out and then we can try to address them as a group or.
14:51:46 Okay, let's go with that. So the first the first one that's left is from an anonymous attendee, given the amount of time resources this work takes. How did you advocate for the necessity of reprocessing or processing for the first time to hire administration.
14:51:59 This is work that I would like to do but given I'm a lone ranger, it would mean ignoring a myriad of other responsibilities.
14:52:08 Are you gonna.
14:52:09 Are you going to answer Briana or, um, I mean I could try to answer so I mean for me, I'm.
14:52:18 I'm lucky because I've had good support from Meijer ministry, but I find that when people like from the Archdiocese asked me to try to find something, and then it takes me a long time to find it because the collection is not well described you're not
14:52:32 processed or, you know, difficult to access. Um, then that's a good time to kind of try to make the case like if I was able to put some resources into doing this, I'd be able to respond to your questions faster will be able to make things accessible for
14:52:45 scholarships and stuff like that.
14:52:47 So I think that's kind of, you know, keeping metrics about what you do and sort of emphasizing where you run into challenges.
14:52:57 You know, what's the value you're giving to your organization and the archives and like, we, we could do this even better if we did some pre processing, that kind of thing.
14:53:07 And I would think even making a coming up with like impossible proposal to submit, you know, formally, the you know why you want to, you know, invest in this and the reasons why and I think I had to do that one time and just it just provides documentation
14:53:22 like this is this is why and they have something formal to go on and if it has to go higher up for finances, you know they can just forward it.
14:53:31 Right, I yeah I, you know, if you, if your questions are processed or pretty impossible to use most of the time so I you know that that was the case I made and I really didn't have to make a case I just you know told them this is you know basically here's
14:53:46 what we need to do, and here's why we need to do it and you know I jumped in to, you know, the creating the policies, procedures workflows and processing collections because that's what needed to be done first.
14:54:15 If you're not based in the library I guess there's a different argument to the game.
14:54:20 But I think as Briana mentioned like making the case also about use.
14:54:23 You know you were you were talking about your users also being the people that are donating the records but you know if your users are able to find the information and use the integration your numbers are going to go up and you're going to be able to
14:54:33 show better use of the collections. And so that I think that's something that you can make a case where like if you have a small collection that's process that's being used more, you can show your administration like look this is organized now and you
14:54:47 know x number of people have used it since then. And so I'd like to do this with this other collection you know maybe start with a small collection that you can do quickly since you don't have much time.
14:54:55 And then you can use that to kind of expand out for other collections and make the argument.
14:55:01 Alright.
14:55:02 Alright, the next question on the list is Lindsay Meyer, can you give examples of items that fit in more than one collection or series and what choices you made regarding were to house them.
14:55:14 So I guess I haven't really had. So is regarding housing, you know, as long as you have intellectual control.
14:55:23 You know I usually you know like I would say the most archives would house things by by genre so like you know if you have all like, for instance, we have a very large media collection that was just scattered all over the place.
14:55:34 And we're finally, you know, we're invited we're in the process of inventory and that DVD see real real old tape everything, but it makes sense to house them together for for storage for preservation and access, as long as you have the intellectual control
14:55:50 over it through some kind of catalog or database and mean I just think that that's a good way to go about it done that other institutions that I've worked at
14:56:05 meals.
14:56:06 Yeah, I mean, um, we, we sometimes have things that it's questionable whether it's Seton Hall or the Archdiocese so like one of our previous auxiliary bishop john Joseph Doherty, he was the president of Seton Hall, and he was also an auxiliary bishop,
14:56:22 and he did both of those things at the same time for six years. So, there could be you know something from him from that time period that you know we're not sure does this.
14:56:43 should it go in because they have their john Joseph already papers and I have my john knows 30 papers in my archive. So it's, um, we generally try to figure out what capacity he was writing in if he was writing as the university president or if he's running
14:56:49 in those absolute bishop.
14:56:52 And if it's something kind of personal that's was sort of neither, then we just sort of have to make a judgment call and decide, we often don't have, you know, a source necessarily for this particular item.
14:57:04 So yeah, we just have to kind of make a judgment call sometimes and just document, you know what decision you made and why you made it, we use archives face you can add different notes in the collection, sort of explain your reasoning, we just try to
14:57:20 do that.
14:57:20 Yeah, notes, lots of notes, lots of notes and finding aid.
14:57:25 So, last question, experience with legacy finding aids.
14:57:31 They are there are no legacy at where I am there were no legacy finding aids you know I was lucky to find a list of something, maybe, you know, a list or, you know, some kind of document but that I mean, there was nothing, nothing that was processed,
14:57:46 nothing that I would want to edit any also
14:57:52 any buddy else.
14:57:54 Yeah, one of our co good projects for working from home was converting some of our old like Word doc or PDF legacy finding aids and getting them into archives space.
14:58:03 And the most important thing for me was to double check with the collection like if this information is actually still accurate, like the boxes and folder numbers and all that, because I found sometimes things had been reprocessed and what was in the
14:58:15 legacy finding a didn't actually line up to what was in the collection.