Accession objects, Oral History, and Photo Digitalization


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 the rights to items donated.  Kevin replied that if someone wants to donate items; they would fill out an accession record giving the rights over to the archives.  If a person wants to donate items and Kevin or Chris cannot accept them for some reason then they offer to dispose of the items for the individual or they can take them back home.  Most of the time the individual chooses to have the items disposed of.   I accessed some folders, a picture and and a statue.  The folders were stored in a box.  The picture and statue were wrapped in bubble wrap to prevent dust and protect the objects.  The statue was placed on a desk in the annex (the room that I worked in) and the picture was placed against a wall in the main archives room.  After accessing the objects, I worked on some of the Oral Histories, specifically Bob Nelson's that I had started the day before.

I ran into a snag with Bob Nelson's interviews that I was transcribing.  I had copied the interviews from the main interview list and created the oral interview transcription document to work on.  I didn't think anything about it until I had to save the document the day before.  I asked Chris what to do if there was more than two interviews on the transcript.  He told me that the interviews could be broken up into separate interviews.  Kevin came by to ask if I wanted to finish the Photo Digitization of the slides that we had started the day before.  I asked him about the interviews first which he agreed that they should be separate from each other.  Kevin showed me how to create a separate interview within the main oral history interviews and how to link it within the document.  I went back and saved the interviews separately then started working on the Photo Digitization Project.

Kevin and I discussed some of the problems that we ran into the day before with scanning the slides.  We had tried scanning three pages at one time but found out that when renaming the digitized slides the order of the slides changed.  We, also, discussed that when naming the digitized slides that we should put the box number, folder number and the page number on the slides.  We, also, decided to create folders that related to the folders that were in the box.  That way it will be easier to locate the digitized slides in the future.  Kevin and I used the same process as the day before to digitalize the slides.  We worked for the reminder of the day and completed the digitalization of the slides in three folders of Box 2 of accession 9900-140.  


Some of the digitized slides
Photo by A. Blythe, 2018



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