“Foley followed Minna into a parlor that glittered like El Dorado. He stood breathless, gaping at what he saw. ‘The Golden Room,’ announced Minna happily. ‘You can see the furniture is all gilt, the hangings gold, the fish bowls edged in gold.” (8)
Just like in The Golden Room, when I first encountered a wall of yellow or “golden” boxes, I was lost for words. The Irving Wallace Papers collection included over 110 individual archival boxes that contained letter-sized manuscripts and galleys. However, various components required consideration including reviewing the condition of records, the archival quality of boxes, and their accessibility for research. All these considerations lead to a prominent question of whether these items needed to be rehoused into records boxes. Spoiler alert: yes!
The archival term “rehousing,” according to the SAA terminology, is “the physical transfer of archival resources into new containers.” Despite this term seeming rather trivial, the rehousing of records underpins preservation in operations such as arrangement and processing. Transferring items can valuably impact longevity of preservation, convenience of research, and allow for additional storage of records. Now that the manuscripts and galleys are rehoused, the records are more conveniently obtainable and no longer are entangled with paper clips and rubber bands.
Stay tuned, Chelsea Fox
Works Cited
Dictionary of Archives Terminology. SAA: Society of American Archivists, 2025. https://dictionary.archivists.org/entry/rehousing.html.