Today, I helped the curator sort through a ton of books on Black history. The museum used to have a library, but because of the 2008 flood and the 2023 remodel, that library has shrunk significantly. As a result, there were a ton of boxes of books in the collections loft that needed to be sorted through to decide which ones to keep and which ones to give away. The library had a collection of around one thousand books, and we had to shorten that down to around fifty, which was a huge task!
It took us all day, but we made really good progress on the project! We did a first pass today to decide which books to give away and which ones to possibly keep, and started on a second pass through the ones we decided to possibly keep. Since we’ve decided to give away so many, it will take a while for us to either get them on our used bookshelf in the lobby, or to find someone who needs them. But some progress in a project is better than none at all!
Just some of the many books we’re planning to give away!
I began my second pass on the Wynn papers today! A second pass means that I’m going through each archival box folder by folder. I’m doing this just to be sure that I haven’t saved any duplicates or put papers into the wrong folders. Once I’m sure I have things in the right box, I number the folders and the box for the finding guide that will be made for the collection.
A finding guide is more or less a road map for collections. A collection is first broken down into a few different series, which is usually a topic such as Personal, Business, Miscellaneous, or some other broad label. Then, we put the series together in an order that makes sense and number the boxes from there. We’re looking at around 36 boxes in the Wynn collection, so I have a bit of work ahead of me. I’m really hoping I can get done before my internship ends!
In the afternoon, it was Welcome Desk Wednesday! Recently, we got a stamp with the AAMI logo on it, so one of my jobs today was stamping all our paper bags for the gift shop. Other than that, though, nothing too exciting happened, unfortunately. But people did show up to the museum, so it’s most definitely a win in my book!
Our handy-dandy new stamp!
Just more second pass work today! It’s going much faster than the first pass, though, I’ve gotten through around 12 boxes today, leaving my current count at 17 out of 36!
I’ve also been taking paper clips out of the papers, as per the curator’s instructions. I’ve almost filled a small collection tray, and I’m not even halfway done! But the reason I’m removing paper clips is because some of them have gotten rusty, and that rust has gotten on some documents. Also, it is much easier to be able to find things in folders if everything isn’t paper-clipped together. Additionally, removing paper clips helps keep the size of the folders down, since paper clips are much thicker than actual paper, and stacking paper-clipped things on top of each other can take up space.
For things that absolutely do need paper clips, though, we have an alternative: the Plasticlip! It’s essentially a paper clip but made entirely out of acid-free plastic, so it won’t degrade the papers it’s holding together.
This is a lot of paperclips, and I’m not even halfway done!
In the morning today, I did my second and final tour of the Grant Wood window at the Veterans Building! This time, a small group actually came, and it was a lot of fun sharing some of the history and trivia behind the piece. It was a little nerve-wracking being up there and doing it for the first time, but I’m really proud of myself that I did it. In my personal opinion, it wasn’t bad for my first-ever time doing a tour.
In the afternoon, more second pass work! Since I had the tour in the morning, I only managed to get a few more boxes done, getting my count up to 21 out of 36. Now, I’m almost three-quarters of the way done! It is going so much faster than I thought it would, especially compared to the first pass, which took me a little over a month to complete. Hopefully, I can knock out the other 15 boxes this next week, scan the few photographs in the Wynn collection, and then start the hardest job of all: finding a place to put the archival boxes!
This is what (almost) 3/4ths of a second pass looks like. It’s much more organized than before!
I’m really happy with the work I did this week! I’ve found that work like sorting starts to go really quickly once I get in a rhythm. I’m hoping that next week, I can finish up my second pass and move on to scanning the photographs and finding the collection a home!