Week 12: It's So Hard To Say Goodbye

Today was my last day.  I had some loose ends that needed tied up and I wanted to tweak the arrangement on Media Manager a little bit more.  I had some boxes that needed re-shelved and I wanted to say goodbye to everyone.  I walked into the office and there was a card sitting by my computer and it made me a little sad!

Laura came in while I was beginning to do some work and she asked to see me in the conference room.  I wasn’t sure what she was going to talk about and figured it would be the evaluation portion of the practicum.  Instead, she completely surprised me and offered me a part time contract job!  I will be continuing my project after the New Year and I could not be happier!  I have grown to really love working at the University Archives.  I enjoy working with the staff and I really love the collections. 

We spent the first 15 minutes or so discussing the logistics.  Afterwards, we went back to the office and I continued on with my work with a giant smile on my face.  I finished uploading any straggling items in my folder and put all of my notes and worksheets in a drawer to be kept for a couple months until I return.  Laura gave me her evaluation and to say that it was a glowing recommendation would be an understatement.

At the beginning of this practicum, our timeline proposed a digital collection of 55 items.  As of the end of this practicum, a total of 161 items are publicly viewable.  I view this project as a complete success.  Not too long ago, I was researching something on Google and one of the artifacts from our collection was the 2^nd or 3^rd result listed!  I would say that the discoverability of the Byrd collection has grown exponentially.  Additionally, with the additions of stacks locations, box number, and folder/item numbers, the project has become a great visual finding aid for quick, on-hand access.  With the inclusion of external and internal links, many of the records also offer reference resources for additional research.  Along with all of these great benefits, going through the collection has been very beneficial for the preservation and longevity of the items themselves, as I was able to re-house many of the objects for long term maintenance.

 

In: 1:30 p.m.
Out: 5 p.m.
On-site hours completed today: 3.5

On-site hours completed total: 101.25

Week 11, Part 3: Not Quite The End Yet

I was intending on today being my last day, but I have a few more hours to complete.  Due to Veteran’s day next week, I’ll finish up my hours next Friday, the 13^th.

Today I uploaded many of the items that I had photographed and described on Wednesday. I spent last week (Week 10) photographing and describing by hand, then uploading the items and I found that I liked that method.  Whether I just needed a change or whether it actually was a quicker process, I certainly felt like I was being much more effective. 

I decided that I would photograph and describe one more artifact.  It was a Commemorative Rifle given to Byrd from the mayor of Philadelphia.  Though there is not a date located on the item (which is surprising, considering it has a plaque), it can be assumed that it was around 1926, since it refers to Byrd’s flight over the North Pole.

Overall, today was a short shift, but I got a decent amount done.  The gun took a long time to photograph due to its size and fragility. 

In: 1:30 p.m.
Out: 5 p.m.
On-site hours completed today: 3.5

On-site hours completed total: 97.75
On-site hours left: 2.25

Week 11, Part 2: Needing an Extra Hand

Today I worked on three boxes that included several large pieces, including several blueprints and a proposal for a Byrd Memorial Museum. Due to the size of the blueprints and proposal, I needed some extra hands to help me photograph them. Additionally, the large papers had been poorly preserved, as they were rolled and/or folded into boxes. I had two people holding the ends and I photographed the large pieces against a wall in the hallway. It was an interesting method and it was great that others were willing to lend a hand.

I came across several more paintings and illustrations, one of which was “Hope” by George Frederic Watts. When I come across a piece of art, I have been researching it heavily due to my own ignorance in the field. The finding aid simply named this painting “Woman with Harp.” I decided to do a basic search for “Blindfolded woman lyre” and came up with several hundred results talking about Watts’ “Hope.” It was absolutely clear that this was a print of Watts’ painting. It was also apparent that this is a fairly famous piece of artwork and I was happy that I identified it.

During the day, I brought up the question of original order and provenance in a collection such as this. I was wondering how important original order and/or provenance is when your collection has no sense of categorization or structure. Many of these items are related and they are housed in completely different boxes at different ends of the stacks. Laura thought that it is very difficult to abide by an original order or provenance organization with artifacts and that documents and folders are generally easier to keep in order.

With this in mind, Laura gave me free reign to organize the files in the Media Manager in whatever way makes sense. I put related items together (such as David Paige items) and tried to stack it so that the more interesting and relevant items were towards the front, while the redundant and/or less interesting items were towards the back. I realize that this order does not really matter unless the user is idly browsing from piece to piece, since most will arrive at the collection through search engines results for a particular item or through a related web page, such as another Media Manager record or the Byrd Polar main page. However, it was nice to rearrange the collection to also reflect on how I interpreted the collection.


In: 8:30 am
Lunch: 12:30 - 1 pm
Out: 5 pm
On-site hours completed today: 8
On-site hours completed total: 94.25
On-site hours left: 5.75

Week 11, Part 1: The Beginning of The End

Today marks my last week at the Byrd Archives. Though I had a short shift today (2 hours), I managed to finish an entire box of 7 items.

Two important discoveries were found in Box 464. First, I found two more paintings that may be by David Paige. The first one, Snow Peaks seems like Paige's style and was on similar material (oil on board and same size as others). The second one, Mountains and Trees was a little more difficult. It had the same material (oil on board) and it was the same size as the others (20" x 16"), but it was completely different artistically, both in content and in texture/style. Under Laura's advice, I chose to add a question mark to his name, just to be on the safe side.

The second discovery was another plate from the Flights, Unforgettable Exploits of the Air book. The painting is titled "The conqueror of one pole attempts the other. Commander Byrd, The Antarctic, 1929." Not only was this very exciting because I found another plate to the book, but because it finally made the connection as to why these pieces are in the Byrd collection.

Though it was only 2 hours long, I felt very accomplished today. I am hoping to still be able to finish this week, despite having a shorter than anticipated shift. Time will tell.

In: 2 p.m.
Out: 4 p.m.
On-site hours completed today: 2
On-site hours completed total: 86.25
On-site hours left: 13.75

Week 10, Part 3: Completion and Satisfaction

Today I finally finished Box 468. I spent the morning uploading the last items into Media Manager. It was a little difficult because it had been so long since I looked at the items. Though 4 days may not seem that long, since I was processing such a large amount of items, it was easy to forget exactly what they were. I relied heavily on the notes I took on Tuesday and kept referring to the digital images to jog my memory. It took a little longer than I had hoped, but I finished the last 10 items within an hour and a half.

Laura and I discussed a specific group of items from which I had drawn a very important connection. In Week 7, I found a collection of drawings by Frank Lemon and was very adamant in researching them in order to find their relevance to each other and to the Byrd collection. I found an additional plate (a new word I learned that describes these loose leaf paintings that belong to a book) that depicted Charles Lindberg's famous transatlantic flight in 1927. This week I found the actual book cover to Flights, Unforgettable Exploits of the Air. This is amazing!! It is such a rare book and the only other copy that I was able to find in my research belongs to the Library of Congress. The book cover is slightly dirty, though we are going to be speaking to a preservation specialist about cleaning it up. Laura and I both agreed that it could make a great exhibition piece. I felt so excited that I was able to find these seemingly unrelated 4 pieces that had been strewn randomly across the collection and was able to put them together into something more.

When I first found the book cover, I wanted to pull the other plates to compare them. The current method of finding stacks locations for the boxes is fairly arduous in that you have to open a very large Access database file and find the specific box number then copy down the location. This seemed overly complicated since I have already been including the Box and Item numbers on each Media Manager record. I came up with the idea of adding the location numbers to the Media Manager record in order to have all pertinent information in one place. I am beginning to not only see this project as a great access method, but also as a visual finding aid to the collection. I spent about an hour adding stacks locations to every Media Manager record, which will help immensely both for patrons who are interested in an item and for Laura who can visually see which item she wants to pull and have the information handy on the same page.

In addition to all of this, Laura also walked me through the steps of accessioning new material. She had a small box that had recently come into the collection and showed me how she processes it. It was a great learning experience for me, as I have read about how to do it, but have never seen it done.

All in all, today was a day of completion and satisfaction. It's been a long week, but I believe I can finish the rest of my practicum hours next week. Though it will be sad to no longer be a part of the Polar collection, I am excited to begin my thesis paper.


In: 1:30 p.m.
Out: 5 p.m.
On-site hours completed today: 3.5
On-site hours completed total: 84.25
On-site hours left: 15.75

Week 10, Part 2: Playing Catch Up

After all of the "analog" work yesterday, today was a "digital" catch up. I finished uploading all of the digital images and began looking at each one in Photoshop. Because I photographed each one before uploading any files, I took several pictures of each item to ensure that I got at least one good shot. My system to filter through the duplicates was to open every object in Photoshop, adjust the levels in each shot of the same item, then pick the best image. After I chose the file I wanted to use, I cropped the image (if needed) and did light modification. I included the filename tag, saved it as the JPEG, and moved it to the "To Be Uploaded" folder (that I had just created).

The reason I didn't upload it to Media Manager immediately is because I found it was easier to do all of the Photoshop-ing at once. As I went through 4-7 photos of each of the 38 items, I became very quick at it. By lunch, I had finished all of the image processing and was ready to begin uploading to Media Manager.

After lunch, I was able to upload the files very quickly. All of the descriptions and information were already written down in my notes along with the corresponding folder and item numbers. I made it through most of the files by the end of the day with only 10 files left.

I think today's methodology was much more streamlined than my approach has been in the past. I was able to quickly catch up, considering I was unable to connect to the Media Manager site yesterday. It was a very busy day and I achieved quite a bit.


In: 8 a.m.
Lunch: 1-1:30 p.m.
Out: 5 p.m.
On-site hours completed today: 8.5
On-site hours completed total: 80.75
On-site hours left: 19.25

Week 10, Part 1: Tech-less Tuesday

Today, the network gods were not on my side. I tried several different computers, several different user log-ins, and still, I was unable to log into Media Manager. It is difficult when a non-user has to use a computer that needs a user log-in. Nonetheless, I had work to do.

I decided I would go through and just do what I could. Since my shift was a short one, I figured I would just tackle one box. However, I soon found out that this one box was chock full of items (38, to be exact!). They were loosely categorized into folders, but the folders were not labeled and the finding aid did not reflect any of the box's contents. I realized that this would actually be a big project for less than 4 hours.

I began by photographing each item. I created a container list and documented each item and folder. I hand wrote the dimensions and descriptions and any pertinent information that I would want to include once I uploaded the object. I typed and printed the container list and began to upload the photographs.

By this time, my shift was over and I put away the box. I chose not to re-shelve the box in case I need to look at it tomorrow. Hopefully the network problems will be all sorted out and I won't fall behind this week.


In: 1:15
Out: 5 p.m.
On-site hours completed today: 3.75
On-site hours completed total: 72.25
On-site hours left: 27.75