CCEPS – Page 26 – Out of the Box

May 10, 2015October 21, 2024 by hmc-tamaras

Farewell!

This is my final blog post as a CCEPS Fellow. This semester I’ve had the privilege and pleasure of archiving the Ethel M. Reed Papers, a process that is almost finished. I’m going to finish entering everything into Archivists’ Toolkit (finally!) and then I’ll be done!

It’s been a great semester and I have learned quite a lot. I knew pretty much absolutely nothing when I started back in January, and now I’m a budding archivist. I learned not only about the physical preservation necessary for keeping the collection in good condition (all that Mylar sleeve-ing) but also the intellectual organization of the collection, to make it useful for a future researcher (all that reordering of my folders of Ethel and Nancy’s documents). And now, I’m putting it all into AT so that it can be posted online and used by researchers in the future.

Also, I realized that I was going to post sometime about Nancy’s work as a chemist, and I completely forgot. Nancy graduate from Pomona College in 1944 with a degree in chemistry. She worked for the War Department during WW II with another scientist who was working to better preserve food for soldiers. Check out the photo below–there’s some serious science happening.

There are problems and issues of all kinds related to equality of women in STEM fields in our own day and age. I can only imagine what it would have been like in the 1940s and 50s. Also, Ethel never married and adopted and raised Nancy by herself. I feel honored to have been able to process the documents of these women.

This Fellowship has been a fantastic hands-on learning experience. My eternal gratitude goes to Lisa, for helping me throughout this semester and always answering my questions. I’ll be starting a job full-time in the fall, but this Fellowship has made me consider going back to school for archival studies or a related field.

Farewell!

Tamara Savage, CCEPS Fellow Spring 2015

May 5, 2015September 15, 2021 by cgu-sarac

Encapsulation

Lisa showed us how to encase a photograph in mylar this week – the satellite photo I wrote about a few weeks ago:

The operation was successful. There are a huge number of photographs in the collection so we’re not going to have time to do that this semester, but we got to learn how to encapsulate a photo that doesn’t fit into any of the standard mylar sheets.

Other than that I’ve just been labeling the folders, adding last things to archivist’s toolkit and working on the finding aid.

Also, if you find yourselves in Claremont on Friday the 8th at 2:30, myself and the other two CCEPS students will be giving presentations on our work this semester. It will run until about 4pm, come check it out!

Later –

Sara

May 2, 2015October 21, 2024 by hmc-tamaras

Almost There!

I have (finally!) officially finished foldering and labeling everything. All of Ethel’s diaries, all of Nancy’s artwork and memorabilia from France, two scrapbooks, a collection of historical documents, and other miscellany. Below are pictures of my three doc boxes and a close-up of all of the labeled folders in one box.

This coming week, I’ll be putting everything into AT (and taking finals) and presenting on my work as a CCEPS Fellow this past semester.

Cheers! Tamara

April 21, 2015September 15, 2021 by cgu-sarac

Nearly there

Well last week all the maps got nestled into their giant folders, now all that’s left is entering a bit more information into Archivists Toolkit and some labeling. I’ve been working on excel sheets for the audio records and maps, but that’s not very interesting so here are some photos.

These are selected from the second series’ photo records of the 1975 Nag Hammadi dig:

Doesn’t seem like the easiest terrain to deal with – there are photos of caves they were exploring in the rock face but it looks like they were searching in the rocky area around the base too:

A meal break – that’s Jim Robinson in the center:

Here’s one of the things they uncovered, I’d guess you’d really need to know what to look for. The hieroglyphs are barely visible to me:

That’s all for this week, until next time!

Sara

April 13, 2015January 31, 2025 by hmc-tamaras

The End is Approaching!

As the title of this post suggests, I’m approaching being done organizing and foldering my collection. I have nearly everything sorted, and I just need to label the folders and decide which boxes they will go in. I have a few things that are in the oversized box that can be taken out (as they aren’t that big), but that’s it for the physical stuff (I think)!

Next week I’ll be finishing up and starting to enter everything into Archivists’ Toolkit. Here’s another action shot–I’ve since moved to a larger table. As you can see, this one is a bit small.

Until next week!

April 7, 2015September 15, 2021 by cgu-sarac

Now that’s thorough

Nothing new to report on right now with processing, so here’s something I found interesting while we were going through the maps and photos. One of the tubes that came with the collection was mailed from the Department on the Interior and contained a satellite image and its negative of the Nag Hammadi area.

If you can, why not get the best overview of your dig site as possible? From what I’ve made out of the numbers on the photo, it seems this was taken on the 21st of November 1981:

If that’s the case, this was taken near the end of the expeditions, maybe they were made because the option had just become available. A cursory look at satellite history says that there have been photo satellites from as early as 1946 (http://www.airspacemag.com/space/the-first-photo-from-space-13721411/?no-ist=), but the ability to order a photo survey from NASA may have been some time coming.

The weeks are counting down quickly now, just going to keep pressing on. Look forward to another piece of show and tell next week! Until then –

Sara

April 6, 2015January 31, 2025 by hmc-tamaras

Still Archiving!

I’m still organizing, sleeving, enveloping, and otherwise archiving Ethel and Nancy’s documents. I’ve come across more old family documents, some from as early as the time of the Civil War, which is pretty cool.

My somewhat-OCD impulses have gotten the better of me, and I’m rearranging things to try to have a more reasonable physical order, as well as a good archival order. Some of the main categories I’m using are older family/historical documents, Nancy’s artwork, and Nancy’s time in France. I’m also dividing up a few folders that were stuffed past capacity into much thinner folders, so none of the many photos get warped as they sit in the boxes. Once everything is satisfactorily organized, I’ll number all of the folders at the same time.

Below is an old family photo. There are no names or a date on the back, but someone wrote, “Spoiled print but will give you an idea.” I’m not sure if this is referring to a less-than-quality development of the photo (it looks pretty good to me, especially give how old it probably is) or the fact that no one except the young girl in the middle is looking anywhere near the camera. Anyway, I just thought it was a sort of funny and candid picture, especially since it was with a bunch of formal family portraits in which everyone
looks very serious.

Next week I’m (still) going to try to finish up with the doc boxes and get started with entering everything into Archivists’ Toolkit.

April 2, 2015January 31, 2025 by cgu-sarac

DSS in the IAC

Now that the bulk of the processing is done we’re just focusing on the loose ends and the little pieces that haven’t fit in anywhere else yet. There are a couple reels of super 8 film and an interesting notebook with images from an exhibition of the Dead Sea Scrolls. It’s put together in a way I haven’t seen before – the photos are in sleeves that are hinged so you can flip each one up.

They correspond to some of the index cards that came with the collection. There isn’t a huge amount of information on the Dead Sea Scrolls in the records, but there are some lectures, images, and info on the exhibition of the scrolls scattered throughout. The codices are much more well represented in this collection.

As for me, I’ll keep working on the data entry portion of the processing and getting these last few things all buttoned up. Until next week!

Sara

April 2, 2015January 31, 2025 by hmc-tamaras

So Many Mylar Sleeves

This week, I continued to organize, folder, and sleeve the contents of the three doc boxes I’ve been working on. I Mylar sleeved about 140 little photos… I got the hang of it after maybe 20 or so, and it went pretty quickly after that. Most of the pictures were from Nancy’s time in France. There’s a sampling of the photos (note how beautifully they’ve been sleeved) in the photo below.

Nancy also had a second scrapbook, which has photos from when she was a child and also when she was much older. And of course, photos of cats! Next week I’m going to try to finish up with the doc boxes and get started with entering everything into Archivists’ Toolkit.

March 26, 2015September 4, 2024 by cgu-jasonh

It’s Been a While

Hello to all! First, I must apologize for my absence on this blog as our spring break was last week and it would have been unfair of me to create a post without any substance. This post will take a different tone than in my previous posts. This entry will be centered about the technical and organizational aspect of being an archivist, an often looked over area of the archiving world.

Me and my fellow CCEPS fellow, Sara, are closing in on the end of processing the IAC collection and we have discovered the second half of the archiving universe. The first half of this fellowship brought with it the excitement of learning about new areas of academia previously left out of my mind. However, the learning has not stopped, if anything it has continued in different directions. It has continued from the scholarly to the archival realm and it still contains the same level of excitement that I was able to translate onto paper (digital really). I have been able to connect to this area of the work because the German efficiency expert inside me loves the fact that I get to organize this collection in the simplest way possible, making it easy for researchers to find what they want. Since I am unable to change the world all on my own, conquering the archival world will have to do in the mean time.

O.K., so now to get down to the thick of it, the meat and bones of the Claremont Special Collections. The IAC collection is nearing its completion! We have placed (mostly) everything into neat folders and boxes just ready for research to be carried out on the extensive Nag Hammadi codices contained within.

Here you can see our folders, tucked away neatly into the proper boxes. The process was a long one but filled with interesting twists and turns that included finding pictures of Henry Kissinger looking at the pages of the Nag Hammadi codex. With the processing out of the way, I am now able to focus on developing a comprehensive finding aid. This includes taking all of the information from the individual folder titles and placing them in the correct order within Archivist’s Toolkit. This program allows for easy access to all of the finding aids for all the collections in the library. It also allows for me (or any archivist really) to fiddle around with the structure and content of the finding aid to ensure order and efficiency are achieved. With the toolkit, we are able to catalog all the files, maps, and seemingly countless audio tapes.

In the very near future, researchers will be able to look up the finding aid and find all that they need thanks to the tireless efforts of the CCEPS Fellows.