Welcome to the Irving Archives, let me introduce you to the Las Colinas Women's Association...


Old central library building where the Irving Archives is located
 Photo by A. Blythe, 2018

Friday, June 8


Today, was my first day as an intern working at the Irving Archives.  The archives is located in downtown Irving in the old central library building.  The doors are locked therefore I called Kevin Kendro, who is the head archivist at the Irving Archives.  He let me into the building and guided me to the archives.  I entered a small office area where Kevin's and Chris's offices are located and pass them is the room where many of the archives is stored.

The first item of interest that Kevin showed me was how to locate the items within the archives.  There are two ways to locate items.  The first way is an excel spreadsheet that is handwritten with where the materials are located.  The second way is on the computer, which is alot easier to use.  The boxes are marked with Accession numbers, then I had to go find them on the shelves.  One of the boxes, for example, was marked with Accession number 089-125, which was located on Row 5, Sec 3, Shelf 4.  I found the box fairly easy, however, Kevin told me that that are six boxes in total that I would be working with, one flat box and five cubic foot boxes.  Each box I retrieved, Kevin would take them to the second room where they were lined up ready to be opened and examined.  All the boxes were opened and I was told that I would have to examine all of the contents to be certain that those materials were in those boxes.

Once everything was verified, I would create a collection out of those materials within the six boxes.  I asked Kevin if there was a scope and content already written, he replied that there was not one and that I would have to write one as I go through the boxes.  If there was any information that I was missing I could check online to see if there was a website for the association.  I would be creating a collection with finding aid from scratch.  He loaned me the binder with all of the finding aids that the Irving Archives have for their various collections and those finding aids will be the model for mine.

I worked for the rest of the day until closing examining the content of the boxes.  Three of the boxes contain scrapbooks and the remaining boxes contained records, minutes and financial records from the Las Colinas Women's Association.  By the end of the day, I had completed the first three boxes and created a rough draft of the contents within them. Kevin would come by periodically to see if I had any questions, concerns, and made a few suggestions to assist me in creating my collection.



Las Colinas Women's Association
materials
Photo by A. Blythe, 2018

   
 Entry into the Irving Archives
  Photo by A. Blythe, 2018
  
Inside the Irving Archives
Photo by A. Blythe, 2018

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