Today I began the major processing work on the Matt Garcia Papers. After completing my collection survey and processing plan last week, my first goal was to place all the loose materials found in the collection into archival folders. This will make processing go by quicker in the future, and it will help to preserve those materials until I can get to them.
The loose materials did present a bit of a challenge, as it takes time to separate out large stacks of documents from each other and differentiate reports and articles from correspondence and transcripts with no clear labeling or fasteners to combine them together. Overall, Garcia was well organized with his research and most of his materials are in file folders or clearly labeled. Where there is chaos, I will establish order. Such is the life of a lone arranger.
One quick note, we decided to tweak the processing plan a bit. Instead of treating this like an individual collection, I will eventually incorporate materials from this half into the existing collection (the processed first half). This will ease the efforts of researchers in the future. I was able to fully process one box today and made a significant dent in the second box.
I’m looking forward to next week when I will continue the first round of processing. For now, I am off to Germany. Until next week, auf wiedersehen!