Hello to all! First, I must apologize for my absence on this blog as our spring break was last week and it would have been unfair of me to create a post without any substance. This post will take a different tone than in my previous posts. This entry will be centered about the technical and organizational aspect of being an archivist, an often looked over area of the archiving world.
Me and my fellow CCEPS fellow, Sara, are closing in on the end of processing the IAC collection and we have discovered the second half of the archiving universe. The first half of this fellowship brought with it the excitement of learning about new areas of academia previously left out of my mind. However, the learning has not stopped, if anything it has continued in different directions. It has continued from the scholarly to the archival realm and it still contains the same level of excitement that I was able to translate onto paper (digital really). I have been able to connect to this area of the work because the German efficiency expert inside me loves the fact that I get to organize this collection in the simplest way possible, making it easy for researchers to find what they want. Since I am unable to change the world all on my own, conquering the archival world will have to do in the mean time.
O.K., so now to get down to the thick of it, the meat and bones of the Claremont Special Collections. The IAC collection is nearing its completion! We have placed (mostly) everything into neat folders and boxes just ready for research to be carried out on the extensive Nag Hammadi codices contained within.
Here you can see our folders, tucked away neatly into the proper boxes. The process was a long one but filled with interesting twists and turns that included finding pictures of Henry Kissinger looking at the pages of the Nag Hammadi codex. With the processing out of the way, I am now able to focus on developing a comprehensive finding aid. This includes taking all of the information from the individual folder titles and placing them in the correct order within Archivist’s Toolkit. This program allows for easy access to all of the finding aids for all the collections in the library. It also allows for me (or any archivist really) to fiddle around with the structure and content of the finding aid to ensure order and efficiency are achieved. With the toolkit, we are able to catalog all the files, maps, and seemingly countless audio tapes.
In the very near future, researchers will be able to look up the finding aid and find all that they need thanks to the tireless efforts of the CCEPS Fellows.