Las Colinas Women's Association Collection development

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 folder Kevin and I decided to write the years in reverse order, i.e. 1994-1997, since the other way read strange to Kevin and I.  A note will be added to the finding aid explaining the reverse chronological order, that one will find in the folders, of the files to maintain the order that the files were given originally by the Las Colinas Women's Association.

I started placing each year's meeting minutes in their own folders, however, I was reminded that there were a limited amount of folders that were to be used on the collection since the Irving Archives has a tight budget.  I started putting several years together in the folders, which was about an inch of materials that should be placed into each folder.  I was thankful that I had not written anything on the folder tabs since I was rearranging materials into various folders.  I would cross out the previous information and write the correct information on the sticky note so I would not have to erase the information.  Once I finished, Kevin came and looked over my work and suggested that several folders could be combined into Box 3 so it would be a full box.  Again, I had to renumber and rebox several folders to fill up the box, which I was glad for the sticky notes and not having to erase anything from the folder tabs.

I worked on Box 5 for the entire day but finished removing materials from binders and old folders and placing them into new folders for the collection.  I had combined the materials from Box 5 into Box 3 which freed up a box and left Box 6, which was the Financial records, to work on next.