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A website update, Oral History, Photo Digitalization and Farewell...

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Information sign outside on the doors of the building where Irving Archives is located. Photo by A. Blythe, 2018 Wednesday, July 25 Today, there was a little update that needed to be done to the Irving Archives before getting back to the Oral History interview I was working on.  There was one area that Kevin and I had forgotten to update on the website.  This was in the Processed Collections area and the finding aid for Collection 49 needed to be updated.  Kevin sat by me to make sure that the website behaved and watched me log into the website software account.  I then proceeded to break the hyperlink of Collection 49, locate the Collection 49 document, copy its link and re-hyperlink it to Collection 49.  Kevin asked if we had added Collection 96, the collection that I had been working on, to the Processed Collections area and I scrolled down to double check that it had been. After updating that one area, I started working on the Oral History in...
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Oral History and Updating the Irving Archives website

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Entering a record on the Irving Archives website Photo by A. Blythe, 2018 Tuesday, July 24 Today,  I started working on Oral History and transcribing Jerald Cannon's interview.  I went to the master document to copy his interview and discovered that the link did not work.  After trying a couple of times, I searched for his name in the document, located his interview, made a copy and began listening to the interview.   I worked on transcribing the interview for about thirty minutes when Kevin came by and asked if I wanted to continue updating the Irving Archives website that we had started yesterday.  I replied that I wanted to continue and put aside the Oral History until a later time during the day. Kevin and I had started updating the Irving Archives website and had gotten thru the C-D tab.  We created a chart showing what accession records needed to be updated.  The first thing that we did was check on the City of Irving tab ...
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Oral History and Irving Archives Website updating

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Oral History Tapes Photo by A. Blythe, 2018 Monday, July 23 Today, I worked on transcribing some of the Oral Histories that the Irving Archives holds.  I finished transcribing Bob Nelson's interview however I noticed that the cover of the tape did not have both interview dates on it.  I put it aside so I could ask Kevin if I could write the second date on the tape cover.  I put that tape aside and went to retrieve another tape.  The next tape was on George B. Nicholas, who was a World War I vet.  I went to the main Oral History file and searched for his transcribed interview.  I could not find it, therefore I asked Chris about it since this was the first tape I came across that did not have a transcribed interview to go with it.  Chris asked me if I looked in the Oral History main file and the folders around.  I replied that I did; then Chris showed me an Excel spreadsheet with all of the Oral Histories entered.  He located Geo...
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Accession objects, Oral History, and Photo Digitalization

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Irving Archives Accession log Photo by A. Blythe, 2018 Thursday, July 19 Today, I got to accession some items that were donated to the Irving Archives.  I had noticed that objects appeared in the archives room and would sit there for a couple of days.  I asked Kevin about this and he told me that there are some days that he and Chris would receive several items and then there were days that they would receive one or two items.  Since there are only two archivists, Kevin and Chris, that work at the Irving Archives there is a schedule that is followed.  Every Wednesday, Chris would accession the items that were received for that week.  Kevin explained that there were some items that are too small to create a collection but too important not to keep at the archives therefore those items are accessed and placed in a box until enough materials are collected to create a collection.  I inquired about the donation process and how the archives obtained t...
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Las Colinas Women's Association Collection Finding aid web posting, Oral History and Photo Digitization

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Slides from 9900-140, Box 2 , Folder 1 Photo by A. Blythe, 2018 Wednesday, July 18 Today,  there were a couple more details relating to the Las Colinas Women's Association Collection.  Kevin had looked over the finding aid that I had created (two set of eyes are better than one) to make sure everything sounded good.  There were a couple of tweaks that I had to make to the finding aid  before printing it out.  Many archives have physical and online copies of finding aids.  The Irving Archives have both.  Once I did a final look over the finding aid and it was printed twice.  One copy was placed in the Holding Folder that I created the day before and the the other begin a new Finding Aid binder starting with the Las Colinas Women's Association Collection 96.  The Finding Aids binders and the accession logs are kept in Kevin's office on one of the bookshelves.  After creating the Finding Aid binder and placing the other copy ...
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Re-housing film reels and details of the Las Colinas Women's Association Collection

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New housing of the film reels Photo by A. Blythe, 2018 Film reel from Las Colinas premiere Photo by A. Blythe, 2018 Plastic film reel container Photo by A. Blythe, 2018 Tuesday, July 17 Today, I got to work with film reels, which I did not even know that the Irving Archives housed.  Kevin had brought them down to show the museum director and noticed that there was some moisture on one of the reels.  He asked me to create a box out of cardboard that the reels could be stored in, instead of the plastic containers they were in,  to allow the reels to breathe.  I used several cardboard boxes to create a box for the reels to be stored in.  I couldn't remember if there was any discussion about film storage in any of my classes, so I asked Kevin about film storage.  He told me that film storage was not discussed in his classes but he told me that the archives at SMU had a cold film storage that housed several reels of film....
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Finding Aid creation and Oral History

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Las Colinas Women's Association Container List Photo by A. Blythe, 2018 Monday, July 16 Today,  I created and typed the finding aid for the Las Colinas Women's Association collection that I have been working on.  I asked Kevin if there was a template for the finding aid and he told me that there was not one.  He directed me to several finding aids that had already been completed and told me to use them as a guide to create mine.  I had noticed that there were two parts of the finding aid: the container list and guide.  I had remembered the basic parts of a finding aid from several classes and asked Kevin which part should I start with and he told me that it doesn't matter.  I then asked if I should complete the finding aid as one document.  Kevin replied that it would be easier to complete the finding aid in two parts, then merge the two documents so they can be uploaded on the website. I had all of my notes that I had taken while workin...
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