Week 6:
African American Historical Museum and Cultural Center of Iowa

July 2, 2013

Monday – Wednesday: Staff meeting on Monday, as usual. After finishing the Virgil Powell Collection photos, I can start on his papers. Now, that’s a very vague term because those six colored tubs of materials I mentioned last post? They were full of his papers. This means everything from invention designs and newspaper clippings to a fingerprinting game prototypes and land surveying maps. There were also several photo albums and a considerable stamp collection, but those I’ll get to later. I begin sorting and disposing the considerable amount of newspaper clippings first. Disposing seems like the opposite of what an archivist should be doing, right? True! Except in the case of newspaper. Newspaper is highly acidic, and with individual newspapers making efforts to digitize their publications, microfilm archives, etc. it isn’t practical to keep them in a larger collection like this. It is then my job to separate all these from the collection, photocopy them, and return to sorting the larger collection. The photocopies will then go into the working collection so that people can come in and study them. I become good friends with the copier again! If the newspaper materials are small (8 1/2 x 11) those can be placed in an archival folder and in a box with any other paper material that is relevant, much like what you saw the photos were housed in. If the material is oversized, it gets to go in an oversized folder for storage at a later time.

Thursday: A break from newspaper work, because I return to the display case. Lynn was out for a couple days at a conference, so the writing portion of the display never made it up. Once she got back, I got back to work designing an attractive and interesting way to display the information. I wrote some exhibit labels too. I recommend Beverly Serrell’s Exhibit Labels: An Interpretive Approach if you’re interested on what makes for a good label.

If you’re interested on the quick write up I did on the busts, there is an article on it in the Iowa Griot.
Friday: I work from the free newspaper clippings and much paper material to some of the scrap books Powell kept in the same containers. Scrapbooks are nice because they have a natural order, everything stays as is, nothing is dismantled, and my only job is to really look through, document anything that is missing from the photo collection, and house any loose items. Remember that tissue paper I was talking about a couple posts ago? That is where it comes into the process. Any free items in the book that are paper goods will be wrapped in that paper to help with the acidity issues of paper touching (often different kinds of paper too).  Loose photos are stored in a sleeve, just like all other photos, but inserted back into the book. After a book is complete, you wrap the book up and store that as well!

I make my way through a couple books and Claire Solak comes in, as summer camp is coming up and we may need extra hands on deck. While Claire works, and convinces Lynn to give me Monday off so we can go to Chicago, I work on journal of Powell’s. The journal was dated 1910 and stuffed full of folded up, delicate papers. This is kind of a treasure trove as far as archives go. Cool aged materials that sections may not have seen the light in 100 years? Perfect. Working through the book, which is small, you’ll see, takes hours. There aren’t any lost Cedar Rapids treasure maps, instead it seems to be a maths notebook from Virgil’s childhood. Still very cool.

By the time I finished the journal Claire and Lynn tell me that I get Monday off, because Claire and I are going to visit the Chicago Symphony Orchestra archive! Claire was making the trip to donate 95lbs of materials (handbills, mostly) from the  Cornell Archive to theirs, and they were kind enough to offer a tour in gratitude. Awesome, and definitely nerdy, weekend planned.