Back to Base!

One of the elements that played a key role in determining water supply to a majority of the cities in California between 1918 and 1930 was the distribution of water that was conserved from rainfall. Digitizing rainfall records from various places such as Santa Rosa, the Tenaja Station, the Pauba Ranch and the Nigger Canyon gave me a perspective on how water was distributed to various parts of California based on the regions’ seasonal rainfall. Regions with higher rainfall records would get lesser supply over a year compared to ones where the weather was mostly dry. Letters sent between the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce and Willis S. Jones was an eye-opener as to how the prices were negotiated.

Ordinary

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While I am not a code breaker trying to save
the world, I feel like I am on a journey of discovery. As I read Mr. Frankish’s
letters, I know that he was not an ordinary man. As Joan Clarke said in the
movie, The Imitation Game, “I know it’s
not ordinary. But who ever loved ordinary?”

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Xerox, the hero we deserve, but not the one we need

It seems a paper shortage was a thing a century ago since Willis S. Jones frequently recycled them, but in the worst way possible for archiving. So there’s a pile of spreadsheets of rainfall data for two sets of locations from 1912 to 1920, one handwritten and one typed copy for each location each year. Here’s the problem, half were written or printed on old letters or lists of some sort (marked 3, 4, 5, couldn’t find 1 and 2); the rest were on some random stuff like the pre-Internet spam mail from a movie theatre company (hope they fared better than MoviePass). This may not be the best use for a time machine but if anybody got one please throw Mr. Jones a pack of printing paper. Then again, at least he didn’t have to deal with Paper Jam (aka 2k Chaos God, aka 2016 Carly Fiorina).

Housekeeping

It’s true! The 13th annual Los Angeles Archives Bazaar is happening this Saturday, October 20, at USC’s Doheny Library. This will be my first time attending, and I can’t wait to explore what’s sure to be a diverse and exciting array of L.A.-centric primary sources. I’m also looking forward to hearing from our colleagues Lisa Crane and Sara Chetney, who will open the day with a presentation entitled “Researching L.A. 101.” You can find out more about the Archives Bazaar here.

 

Back here in CCEPS land, my work with the Wallace collection proceeds apace. The collection’s peculiar, library-style processing scheme–a legacy of Honnold Library’s initial foray into computers in the 1980s–requires wholesale reprocessing according to archival best practices. As you can see from my photographs, reprocessing for The Word series is just about finished, and we’ll soon have the finding aid online and the materials available for research at Special Collections.

 

The Wallace collection contains materials from dozens of more books, so our work on The Word represents just one small step toward the eventual goal of complete reprocessing. But it feels good to commence the stepping nonetheless!  

 

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The original processing folders and call numbers. Note the discard basket!

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Ahh. Much better.
The reprocessed series. Isn’t it pretty?

Women Who Shaped Upland’s History

This week I had the privilege of reading through transcribed interviews of two women who lived in Upland. Elizabeth A. Craig-Klusman and Margaret Bassett were the first two women interviewees who I have encountered. After looking over these documents, I reflected on the role of women in history. Women’s voices are often muffled because of their domesticated roles in the home or they are often silenced by the voice of their husbands. These interviews are important in gendering the history of Upland and further complicating how we think about the past. If we were to only hear the voices of men, it is dangerously easy to think that the history of Upland was only shaped by men. These interviews tell us that the history was importantly shaped by women, as well.

Lights, Camera and more..

In my second week as a CCEPS fellow, I got involved in digitization of over-sized archival items. This involved taking photographs of maps and diagrams. Being an avid photographer, I got the opportunity to use a Hasselblad 300CM camera in order to take pictures of the over-size items. Lighting and using various types of lenses was a key part of the process.
Apart from photography, I continued to work on the Willis S. Jones files, where reports on the Temecula project and well logs that were recorded by Willis S. Jones were digitized. Reports of various wells such as the Murrieta Valley wells and the Pauba Ranch Valley wells were particularly interesting considering the complexity involved in getting the readings accurately. Once the logs were recorded, soil and moisture determination using mathematical formulas were done by Edward S. Babcock & Sons, which was an interesting read.

We’ll just see about that

It is written that George Chaffey “viewed the
wastes known as the Cucamonga Desert and decided that this patch of land, if
properly watered, could become productive and profitable.”

I am sure
he was not the first person who looked at the Cucamonga Desert and thought
of this. What is the difference between dreamers and doers? Mentors tell us
that we
should work for our dreams. But a lot of people pass on their dreams and opt
for a more
comfortable life. It is tough to step out of our comfort zone and live the life
that we are
truly destined to live. Few of us go after our dreams. To be a dreamer is not
enough.
We have to be doers.

If you are
told that you can’t do something, just reply, “we’ll just see about that.”

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Missing Data: Origins

People a century ago, or at least Willis S. Jones and his associates, seemed to have an “interesting” habit of not including the legends and units in their charts and graphs. Usually, one might be able to guess the measurements based on the data points but if the title of the chart is also missing, well, might as well call the piece “something something numbers something.” Now that’s for charts and graphs, for maps, Jones and the gang probably thought giving each map a different orientation was funny: “Screw North arrow! Also, write the title 90° to the cross-section diagram then flip the values of the isolines just to confuse the hell out of folks in the future.” Lets’ take a moment to thank our other lord and savior, GIS.

Happy Electronic Records Day!

Did you know that October is both American Archives Month, as well as California Archives Month!?!? Even more exciting is that today is Electronic Records Day! Today is especially exciting considering the #CLIRWater project is an electronic project. So far, approximately 1500 #CLIRWater documents will join the numerous digital files already held at NARA. Not all digital files, however, are scanned. Some documents originate as electronic files. These files are held by the the Electronic Records Division of NARA. This particular division holds over 1 billion electronic files.

Digitizing records provides numerous benefits, such as making sources more accessible to researchers, preventing damage to original records by reducing handling, and allowing for easy addition of digitized documents to posters, projects, and presentations. Below is a poster celebrating the 2018 California Archives Month. Included on the poster are digitized photos of Hearst Castle. 
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Designing an Irving Wallace Book

The Irving Wallace collection is a rich resource for the study of American book publishing in the postwar decades. The series dedicated to Wallace’s 1972 novel The Word, for instance, contains five complete drafts at various stages, multiple folders of copy-editing notes, and extensive correspondence between Wallace and his editors at Simon and Schuster. These documents provide a granular picture of the intellectual labor involved in the publishing process. 

 

Yet publishing also involves questions of design, as evidenced by this mock-up made by the production department of Simon and Schuster in 1971. While not remarkable in and of itself, this item testifies to the full spectrum of processes–from writing to editing to design to marketing–which shaped an Irving Wallace novel. 

 

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These kinds of materials also offer fertile ground for historians of popular culture, who might question the aesthetic and political values embedded in the mock-up of the title page for The Word. What might the design reveal about the author’s (and publisher’s) intended audience? Do the design elements of Wallace’s books signal challenging polemical art or safe, middle-of-the-road entertainment? And was there a gap between the outward appearance of Wallace’s novels and the content contained within?