Author: pom-aaliat

Hi all,

Today I worked on scanning more documents from the Ontario Mutual Water Companies Collection. A lot of them were excluded from the digitizing process because they contain sensitive information. For example, I couldn’t scan insurance documents, tax receipts, invoices, and so on. This led me to think about whether the things I was leaving un-scanned would have an impact on the work of a historian or researcher. I sometimes like to think of these documents as puzzle pieces, or clues in an investigation, but it’s hard to tell how significant each one might be. I’m sure someone with more historical context would be able to distinguish this more accurately, but for now I’m left wondering!

Best,
Aalia

Hi all,

This week I continued working on the task of converting Chaffey Letters Book 2 into PDF/A format. On Wednesday, I also attended an appreciation event for students who work at the library, which was so fun! There was free pizza and candy, I met some new people, and we played Pictionary (my team won)! It was nice to see how much students do to keep the library running and to feel appreciated.

Best,
Aalia

Hi all,

There isn’t much to blog about this week. I just continued to make PDF/A’s out of PDFs. Some of the other material on this blog is really interesting, though. I’m jealous of the work that’s being done on the T.S. Eliot collection (never knew he frequented Claremont)! I wish there was more poetry to my work!

Best,
Aalia

Hi all,

Today as I was scanning the contents of one of the Ontario Mutual Water Companies Collection folders, I came across a scrap from a planner which caught my eye. It’s similar to the one I use to keep life organized, but it’s from 1952, which is so cool! Apart from a little calendar and dates on the side, it also includes historical facts. For example, on August 5th, it says “first Atlantic cable U.S. to England 1858.” What fascinates me most, though, is the quote printed across the top: “to know but one religion is not to know that one.” It’s pretty thought-provoking and encourages an open mind- not something I necessarily associate with the 1950s in the U.S. I wonder why this blank page ended up in a folder which mostly contains letters to stockholders and such. I hope to continue stumbling across little interesting tidbits as I get through scanning the rest of this box.

Best,
Aalia

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 Hi everyone,

I mostly spent this week continuing to convert files into PDF/A format and scanning documents from the Southside Mutual Water Company collection. Though these may turn out to be of great relevance to researchers in the future, I don’t quite have the context for what makes them significant. So, I’ll blog my response to a question my boss, Tanya, asked me about how the Chaffey letters fit with my understanding of their time period.

Although the Chaffey letters often
function as reminders of how much business, technology, and the Inland Empire have
changed since the 1800s, they also make me feel closer to their time period
when I read them. My image of California in the 1800s consists of Spanish
missions, Mexican ranchos, and the gold rush. The letters delve into a much
more specific aspect of this history, although they still fit within the
period’s struggles with contested land and colonization, which I’ve learned
about in history classes.

Til next week,

Aalia

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Hi everyone,

Today as I scanned and named documents, I thought about how my work might affect a historian’s research. A decision or error that I might make in the process could later determine a researcher’s access to, or understanding of, certain information. I tried to be very careful in my steps because of this. Although making one mistake on one scan of one folder of one box about California water history may not necessarily transform a historical narrative, it was interesting to think of how information is recorded and preserved, and the effects that can have on the way we understand the past.

I haven’t found anything too fascinating this week because, again, the folder I was working on was full of business-related documents, but I’m keeping an eye out for cool details.

Best,
Aalia

Hi everyone,

This week, due to some technological difficulties, I mostly just worked on learning how to scan and save documents. I then scanned a folder of documents relating to the Ontario Mutual Water Companies Collection which were from the mid-1900s. These weren’t very interesting to read, since they were mainly data and memos, but I still enjoyed working with the historical documents! I’m excited to be doing some work outside of naming and converting files.

Best,
Aalia

Hi all,

Today was my first day back at work after break, and I finished naming all the scans and transcripts from Chaffey letters book 2. As I was skimming transcripts to make sure they matched the scans and to record the relevant information in Excel, some interesting sentences caught my eye and made me think. For example, the brothers wrote a letter to “Wells and Fargo” about financial matters, and referenced “Proctor and Gamble,” in another. These are brands I come across in life today and it’s fascinating to see them talked about in letters from the late 1800s. It made me ponder how much they must have grown and transformed in the century that exists between myself and the Chaffeys.

The Chaffey brothers also wrote to San Bernadino County about a school district I believe they were trying to establish. I know there’s a Chaffey High School in Ontario now, so again I thought of the lasting presence of what these men wrote about. Furthermore, one letter mentioned that the brothers hoped to have a furniture factory, a drugstore, and a dentist in town soon, foreshadowing the expansion of the inland empire.

In January of 1884, William Henderson wrote to a business partner of the Chaffeys saying “a glorious rain has fallen… everything looks lovely.” Today’s forecast shows rain, too. I look forward to everything looking lovely.

Best,
Aalia

Hi all,

This week I continued my work on naming files from Chaffey letters book 2. I also got to see some documents being photographed and uploaded, which was cool because it showed me the earlier steps in the process of archiving these files. I’m learning more about the Chaffey brothers’ business as I go; for example, I found this week that they were involved in growing raisins through a letter in which they requested someone send them an “A-1 raisin man” immediately!

Happy holidays,
Aalia

Hi everyone,

This week I worked on naming files from the second book of Chaffey letters.

In a few of the letters from Book 2 that
I got to skim, I came across some business issues the Chaffey
brothers had to deal with. A common theme was that
the person they were writing to wasn’t writing back to them in time. The
brothers were dealing with pressing issues at times, but the speed of the postal service (and potentially the reluctance of their business partners to
answer) meant they didn’t always get a response when they needed one. For
example, in the file ont00017_0103_0002, George Chaffey wrote about rabbits
doing damage to trees on their land, and how the person he was addressing had
left his letter unanswered. This made me think of how nowadays we are
accustomed to instant responses, and if we don’t get them, we can often check
whether or not our messages have been received or even opened. People are also
expected to be accessible at any time because our cell phones are never too far
from us. This has changed business practices and customs so much. It was
interesting to read how it used to be in the 1800s, and how all the Chaffey
brothers could do to ensure a faster response was to perhaps insert some stern
words into their requests.

Speaking of the digital age, I also worked on posting to CLIR and Honnold’s social media pages today!

Best,
Aalia

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