September 2017 - Page 2 of 2

September 7, 2017September 15, 2021 by cgu-natalier

The Final Count Down

This week is my last week working on the Roland Jackson Collection. I have corrected all of my errors in ArchivesSpace, polished up the finding aid, and have labeled my boxes.

This is a picture of the collection back in June before I started processing

And this is the collection now.

The collection went from having 7 records boxes, 8 document boxes, and 1 oversized box, to having 6 records, 2 document boxes, and 1 oversized box. The books in the collection were catalogued and binders in the collection were removed.

This fellowship has been an eye opening experience and I have gained vital archival knowledge which will come in handy in the future. In addition, my experience at the library has also taught me to ALWAYS bring a sweater (it feels like an igloo in here!).

Although this is my last post for my CCEPS fellowship, there are still plenty of CCEPS students working on different projects throughout the year. Shout out to the CLIR Water Project and the studnets working on the project. You can check out their progress by clicking here . Also for more posts about all current and future CCEPS projects, you can click here

Peace out!

September 6, 2017September 14, 2021 by cgu-kierap

California and Water: How Did We Get Here?

Hello everyone, my name is Kiera and I am new to the CLIR
Water Project. Moving forward, I will be updating you about my experiences with
this collection, but first I can tell you a little bit about me. I am a
graduate student at Claremont Graduate University in the Cultural Studies
program. Cultural Studies draws from a wide array of disciplines–from history
to sociology to literary criticism. Outside of school, I work at two different
museums in the area, the American Museum of Ceramic Art in Pomona and the
Bowers Museum in Santa Ana. I have come to Special Collections and the CLIR
Water Project by way of my interests in archival work, an interest I developed
while working at the Bowers Museum.

I’ve been here only a few days and already I have discovered
some incredibly interesting records in the collection. I am excited to share
some of my revelations about this archive. First, however, I thought I’d write
about the preconceptions I had as I approached this project.

If you live in California, particularly if you live in
Southern California, there is no doubt that water has been an important issue
in recent years. As a native Californian, I certainly have my own ideas on
water use in our state. As one of the most important resources for human life;
it is no coincidence that most major cities have historically been built around
bodies of water. This would make the settling of Southern California, most of
which is a desert, seem improbable. And yet here we are, thirsty and ready to
grow food, so water better keep flowing.

How did we get here? Many historians, environmental scientists,
engineers, politicians, and even members of the general public would like to
know and are working towards an answer. As I am being introduced to the wide
variety of records that we are working to digitize and preserve, I am realizing
that the CLIR project has an opportunity to contribute to the answer.

This is an awesome revelation to have during my first few
days working on the project, and I cannot wait to see what I dig up that might
be useful to future researchers and interested parties. That is one wonderful
thing I have learned doing archival work–the answers to life’s mysteries could
be a turn of a page away.

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September 1, 2017September 15, 2021 by cgu-natalier

My Struggles and Triumphs with ArchivesSpace (Pt. 2)

Archives space has been by far the most challenging part of this whole experience. Upon my return to work on Monday morning, I sat down with Lisa to look over the work I had down on ArchivesSpace. Overall I did a pretty good job of inputting all of the collections information, but there was one issue that put me back.

I myself am still unsure about what happened and I will do my best to explain what I did…

When inputting folders into ArchivesSpace, every folder needs a top container. A top container tells us where each folder can be found and in what series. For example if I had a folder labeled box: 2 belonging to series 3, the top container would say box: 2, series 3 (Simple right!). My issue came when was looking at the drop down options for the top container and there was no series 2. So what I did, unknowingly, was I created new top containers for each folder. I ended up creating 138 top containers when I only needed 13. Lisa noticed what I did and tried to fix the top containers, but she ran into the same problem I did. She was also not able to locate any top containers after series 1. The next day after some troubleshooting, Lisa was able to fix the drop down options and delete all 138 top containers. I then went back into ArchivesSpace and put in the new top containers which were now in the drop down options.

Although it took me a while to input the new top containers, I was grateful I did not have to redo the whole collection. Although I had to redo series 2-5, there were not a lot of folders within those series. I was grateful I did not have to redo series 1, which is triple to size of series 2-5 put together.