Week 6

1) What I have accomplished throughout the week:

Preservation

This week I finished finding notations in the donated journals of Jill Craigie. Now that this task has been completed, the journals are available for library patrons to use in their research. While looking through these journals I found artifacts that were sent to the archive deaprtment, including an eye glasses case used as a book mark and notes written to Jill and her husband. As well I continued sewing and cleaning pamphlets, and sewed together a large publication. I worked unsupervised this week.

Librarianship

This week I worked with various published lists of museum content, as well as the library catalog, to find items in the stacks that contain manuscript content. I then entered this information into the EndNote software to create a working bibliography of the manuscripts located at the museum. This will be used for those researchers looking specifically for manuscript material. I also began listing and describing unlabeled maps within the Oceanographic collection. There are many stacks of maps in the library that came from an unknown source, and these maps have not been cataloged. By listing and describing their contents, the library will be able to determine if they will keep the material or sell it.

Archiving

This week I created folders for photographs and slides located within Nan Berger's archive (which I have been working on for the past few weeks). I also completed the electronic finding aid that will be available online for users of the library to search. This finding aid will be the patron's method of searching the archive. Before completing my work on the archive, though, I copied all press cuttings onto acid free paper to prevent degradation of the content. This will allow users to handle the press contents without fears of damage due to fragile paper (newspaper is especially acidic and degrades quickly). As well, this week I was allowed to sit in on a brief meeting where employees discussed potential aquisitions. This was extremely interesting as I was able gain some insight into the thought process and logisitics behind purchasing archives.

2) What intersections I have seen between my job duties:

While completing my preservation work I found some materials located within the journals that were considered archive material. This shows that there is sometimes a fine line between regular library content and archive content, especially within a special library environment such as the Women's Library. The same was found when packaging my Nan Berger archive, as there was discussion as to whether her publications should be included in her archive or incorporated into the stacks. It was eventually decided to keep the items in her archive. Again, I could see strong connections between the listing and describing of my archive and the listing describing involved in my library work (while describing the maps in the Oceanographic collection).