Tales from the Irving Archives

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...

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 ...

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...

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...

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 ...

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....

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...

Labeled folders with collection #, box #, folder #, folder name and dates Photo by A. Blythe, 2018 Friday, July 13 Today, I worked on the Las Colinas Women's Association Collection.  I had finished combining all the folders into boxes that had space remaining and creating two new boxes.  The next step was to label the folders.  Each folder while I was working on the collection had sticky notes on them with the following information:  Collection #, Box #, Folder #, Folder name and Date.  I had remembered from a class discussion that it was important that each folder had this information for it would identify which collection these folders belonged.  I used a pencil to write the information on the folder tabs and made sure that all of the information that I had wrote on the sticky note was on my finding aid rough draft.  As I was labeling the folders, I removed all the stickies from the folders. I realized that it was time consuming to make s...

The Final Box of the Las Colinas Women's Association collection, the Financial Records box Photo by A. Blythe Monday, July 9 Today, I worked on combining the Financial Records into Box 3, 4 and 5.  The goal was to finish combining the materials so I could start naming the folders so I could create the finding aid.  I had been working steadily on the collection and Kevin mentioned that I was on schedule to finishing the collection and complete the finding aid before the end of my internship.  As I did before, I made sure that the folders that I used had sticky notes on them just in case I had to renumber folders, place the folders in a different box than originally thought or if I had to combine materials into one folder or two.  Most of the folders that I created went into Box 3 since there was still some room in the box and I remember from a class discussion that most archives want to use every ounce of space before using a new box.  Of course, th...

Edgar Seay Interview transcribed, ready for final audit Photo by A. Blythe, 2018 Friday, July 6 Today, I took a break from working on the Las Colinas Women's Association colleand work on the Oral History project instead.  The Irving Archives has over 374 interviews that make up the Oral History project.  Each interview has to be audited by someone then a final audit by either the archives staff, Chris or Kevin.  Each interview that has been taped has had a copy made so that the master tape does not get damaged.  I asked Kevin if they would ever copy the master interview tapes over to CDs but Kevin didn't think that would happen anytime soon. The interviews have been transcribed by an outside vendor that created a master document that one can go look up the name of the person and Ctrl+click on the number which will take the user to that particular interview.  Then one would select everything for that interview and create a new document just for that...

Box contents/rough draft of finding aid. Photo by A. Blythe, 2018 Thursday, July 5 Today, I updated the rough draft of the finding aid that I am creating for the Las Colinas Women's Association.  I had been continuing to add to the finding aid as I completed the combination of boxes within the collection.  I had not had time to update the finding aid draft on Tuesday since it took me the entire day to combine the materials and files into Box 3.  Once I had updated the draft of the finding aid, I took a break from working on the collection and worked on oral history. I begin working on Jean Haley Wilson's interview that I had started on June 29 and had finished transcribing the interview.  The next interview that I worked on and finished was Essie Jones Keeling's interview.  I started and completed Robert M. Nelson's interview which was somewhat difficult to transcribe since the interview was held at a country club in which the background nois...

Meeting minutes folder with the information that will be written on the folder tab. Photo by A. Blythe, 2018 Tuesday, July 3 Today, I worked on removing the materials from binders in Box 5 of the Las Colinas Women's Association collection.  This was a continuation of Series II which contains Records.   The meeting minutes contained notes from each general and board meeting that the Las Colinas Women's Association has held since 1981.  The problem with the meeting minutes was that they were presented to the Irving Archives in reverse chronological order, meaning that the years began with the most current year then went backwards, i.e. 1997-1994.  This reminded me of a class discussion about ascension order and does one maintain that order if it was given to the archives in that particular order.  Kevin and I discussed this topic several times and decided to leave it in the order that it was given to the archives.  However, on the folde...