Tag: Char Miller Papers

Well, this is it! My final week at CCEPS, and thus my final blog entry. As the case is in most summers, I must ask the question, where has the time gone?!

Remarkably, this entry will be one of the final posts I write for this summer’s CCEPS fellowship.

This week I worked on something completely new, signifying the final stages of processing the collection. Once I completed the foldering process, the next step was to transfer all of the info into Archivist Toolkit. Once this was done, I then had to arrange and review everything to make sure the collection was on its way to becoming ready and available for research!

This entailed many steps, some of which I am still working on currently. I had to re-arrange some of the folders and move them into different boxes, based on space availability and making sure none of the folders would either move around too much because of too much room, or become folded and potentially compromised because the box was stuffed too tight. As it turned out, there was more room in most boxes than I had foresaw initially, and therefore had to place some more folders in each, causing a re-arrangement of sorts for the folder numbers of several folders. Thankfully, I was told not to write the actual box and folder number on the folder themselves until the very end of this process. Therefore, while I had to fix a lot of the information on Archivist Toolkit, at least I then completed the folders’ titles with the appropriate information – saving a lot of hassle, erasing, and extra labor!

Now, I am working on the collection’s finding aid and Front Matter. It has been very interesting to learn as I go the proper ways in which to describe the various aspects of a collection and provide valuable details for future researchers. There is a template, thankfully, to use as a guide but I’ve had to read some of the guidelines and learn about the overall format prior to simply adding in the necessary information. This has truly provided a great learning experience in addition to the welcoming task of completing the processing of an archival collection on my own. It has also been neat to research a little further on Professor Miller’s career and notice some names of relatives, colleagues, and his published materials that I had come across multiple times while arranging the collection.

It will be extremely exciting to write the post next week, as I should be finishing up the work and therefore able to relay all of the information and lessons I learned while processing the collection, especially creating the finding aid, which will hopefully “tie it all together.”

Stay tuned!

I have (finally) finished the foldering process!

Another week gone by, and more folders to create. 

Greetings!

This week contained a lot of repetition in the re-foldering process. It has been really interesting to see from afar, so to speak, the various projects and writings Professor Char Miller has undertaken throughout his (ongoing) scholarly career. I am not able to deeply examine some of these works for myself, because it is my job to process the collection and make sure it is done in an organized and timely fashion, not to necessarily analyze what he has written or accomplished. However, I still get an idea of the materials within certain folders, since often I must create the new folder title based on what is inside the folder.

Sometimes the title originally given by Char works just fine, but more often than not I have to get a grasp of the folder’s contents and try to come up with a clear and simple folder title that is representative of the work but will also make a potential researcher’s life easier.

This is especially fun for his articles written for the Spanish-language newspaper Que Pasa, which often appear in a folder with similar articles written on the same topic but in English and meant for other publications. These articles, although generally the same as that in Que Pasa, almost always contain a different title. Therefore I try to find the most relevant and significant theme of the writings and create the folder title accordingly.

For these types of folders, this includes translating the titles of the Que Pasa articles. Since I don’t know Spanish, google translate has been a big help! (if only the articles were in French, I could simultaneously be improving my preparation for the language exam i need to take for my MA in the Fall! Oh well…)

Once I translate the title, with google’s help, I compare it to the English article’s title and then find the common theme throughout. In addition to the thinking required to devise an appropriate folder title, as necessary for many folders, the folders with the Que Pasa articles take the thinking a step further due to the translations.  It’s the little things that make the repetition not so… repetitive.

Here’s an example of a clipping from Que Pasa:

Who knows, maybe I will be speaking Spanish in no time! Next week, the foldering continues…

So, it has been a couple of weeks now and the work has really “picked up!”

Some excitement, some frustration, some fascination… all in a week’s work. The first major accomplishment following the completion of the excel spreadsheet (which on its own I think I can consider an accomplishment as well!) was to propose my arrangement scheme for the collection. This was done once I was able to take a step back and examine all that the collection entails and how its specific organization may prove most useful.

Following my initial proposal, Lisa looked it over and helped explain why some were good as is and others were necessary to change. Just like I had to learn the first week, again, the key to processing a collection is making it as simple and easy to navigate for the researcher as possible. Therefore, some of the subseries I proposed were deemed unnecessary, since it would simply create more work for me as well as a potential researcher.

Also, I now understand that even if a subseries is not made, certain folders can be organized together online in the Finding Aid once all the physical processing is complete. The majority of the collection consists of Char Miller’s writings. And he ha certainly written a lot! For one frame of reference, his CV (up until 2012) was 56 pages! Maybe this is more common than I think for a scholar of similar pedigree, but I still found it extremely impressive! Some of the other Series’ we came up with include personal materials, audio/visual materials, Pomona College, artifacts and awards, and correspondence.

Once the arrangement plan was in order and all of his original folders were placed into archival boxes, I began the process of re-foldering everything into our own archival folders, while trying to create folder titles for each. For some of the folders I kept the same title as that created by Char (as we are told to try to keep the original order as much as possible) but for the majority of them, I had to come up with a title on my own. The purpose of the title needs to not only provide a good and clear indication of the folder’s contents but it also must maintain a certain type of “standardization” for the entire collection.

Additionally, including a date or date range for each folder could be really tricky if the folder has a bunch of random materials, some dated, some undated, and others containing certain dates that may or may not be too relevant. This proved most challenging for the folders of his personal materials, especially those containing materials he gathered from his family. A lot of these folders included random materials that was difficult to “place” in order to create one title that could explain all that is enclosed.

But, I’ve been told to try and make it as simple as I can and not worry too much about these types of details – something not too easy for me, especially when working on something in which I have little prior experience! But, I will keep plugging away…

One of the more interesting things I’ve gone through so far while re-foldering was a scrapbook Char created for his mother in the early 1990s about a hurricane they experienced together. The old photographs, newspaper clippings, and primary sources of what was being written at the time proved fascinating. Plus, because the scrapbook was very old and was deteriorating in some ways, I had to replace the actual scrapbook by placing each page’s contents into a new sleeve. Overall, this part of the process was really fun!

The main focus right now for my work is to make sure all the folders are created accordingly and all of the boxes will be arranged, by series, with proper folders and folder titles, and with all of the contents either preserved correctly or separated to ensure its preservation, including older artifacts and oversized items that could be damaged in the regular folders and boxes (or could damage the folders and other materials within the box). Hopefully the next week will bring improvement in devising folder title and date entries!

For now, here is one box that is now complete with new folders!

Greetings! My name is Gary Stein and I am a 2nd year M.A. student in History at CGU.  My first week working for the CCEPS Fellowship served as a great introductory week to the type of work I will be doing over the course of the summer. As seen in the picture above, Professor Char Miller from Pomona College donated a number of boxes – of materials spanning throughout his life and career – to Special Collections in order to be processed and catalogued. (and apparently there is still more to be donated!) I welcomed the opportunity to go through this collection and process it according to archival standards.

After hauling these boxes up to the CCEPS room, I began reading through the CCEPS documents provided to understand what Archival Processing entails and began to become acclimated with the type of work I will be doing. As an aspiring historian, I’ve become fascinated with archives – not only archival materials, which I have fortunately incorporated throughout a lot of my work at CGU, but also the process involved in obtaining the materials and creating a collection that researchers will be able to use in the future. In creating the collection Char Miller Papers, I hope to become familiar with exactly what that process entails. I think it will not only prove enlightening but could also provide a greater sense of appreciation for archivists and those who work in Special Collections that continue to preserve important historical materials for future generations.

Dr. Char Miller is an historian who is currently Professor of Environmental Analysis at Pomona, where he first acted as visiting professor from 2007 2009. He is also a proud alum of Pitzer College. Within this collection are his various writings including his Senior Thesis, Dissertation, numerous published books and articles, and weekly newspaper and blog entries, among others. It also contains video publications and personal materials from his family.

Well, it did not take me long to begin to appreciate the work that goes into Archival Processing! After getting to know the type of work I will be doing this summer, I conducted an initial collection survey of each of the (12) boxes, going through the materials in each box and beginning to get a sense what type of materials are in the collection and how it will be organized, or arranged. Because this was just the initial survey, I did not examine each folder in each box thoroughly; rather, I took some initial notes regarding each box’s contents and began proposing potential series or groupings based on some initial reactions.

I then transferred the titles of each box’s folders into a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet, consisting of a brief description of the box’s contents and all folder titles, as they were created by Char himself, along with any dates he may have included in the folder titles. I also made sure to take relevant notes regarding certain folders and included them in the spreadsheet. For example, I had to take note of any newspaper clippings within a folder, because I will then need to photocopy them onto acid-free paper (once I go through each folder in greater detail later) in order to prevent any future damage to the other materials in the folder.

An important lesson I learned from my introduction to processing a collection is that it is recommended to try and keep any original titles or order that the creator of the collection (in this case Char Miller) provided. For this collection, Char in fact organized the different materials to a certain extent, which means I will have to try and keep it “as is” as much as possible, as long as it fits accordingly within the processing and arrangement plan I devise. At first, I was a little disappointed with this, only because I thought it would make the work simpler and perhaps not include many of the steps necessary while processing a more “haphazard” collection of materials.

But, these fears quickly went away once I really got started! I understand now that the key job of the processor is to arrange the collection in the most clear and simple way possible, so that it will be easier for researches to navigate through the materials and find exactly what they are looking for. I know as a researcher I would greatly appreciate this as well! Also, as I have gone through the collection initially and worked on the spreadsheet, I am gaining an invaluable knowledge of the work – even if I won’t necessarily have to complete each and every task imaginable!  I’ve created my initial arrangement scheme based on the initial survey, organizing the collection through different series, and some subseries, and I am very excited to see if these series will in fact remain or how they will change once I begin to go through the entire collection more thoroughly.

As a distinguished academic scholar, both in history and environmental analysis, and a contemporary writer, Professor Miller stands as a significant originator of the collection. His weekly columns mostly focus on environmental concerns, including Climate Change, and the relationship of the environment with other “hot topics” such as Presidential elections, immigration reform, and the drought in California. Additionally, the collection contains materials from Pomona college including correspondence regarding the hiring process, previous syllabi, and documents related to the development of the Environmental Analysis program at Pomona, a major he helped initiate.

The box of family materials he has donated also seem to be extremely interesting, filled with photos and artifacts! It has been an amazing first week getting acclimated with the process, and has only heightened my excitement for what more is in store the rest of the summer!