Re-housing film reels and details of the Las Colinas Women's Association Collection

July 17, 2018

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. Of course, the Irving Archives is a small archive therefore it does not have the budget to purchase a cold film storage. I asked Kevin why he didn't send the reels out to get them digitized. He replied that he sent the reel out that was used at the Las Colinas premiere to be digitized but the two reels that I was re-housing were early copies of the Las Colinas premiere. I created some new cardboard boxes and re-housed the film reels in them. Once I finished re-homing the film reels, I worked on several details of the Las Colinas Women's Association Collection.

There were several details that I had to finalize before the Las Colinas Women's Association Collection was considered completed. The first thing that I did was rebox the collection; this was because the boxes were torn and looked raggedy on each side where temporary labels had been placed before the materials had been merged into a collection. Once the new boxes had been assembled then the materials were transferred into the new boxes. The next step was to create the labels that were going to be placed on the boxes labeling the collection.

There was a label template that I used since there were official labels that the Irving Archives uses for their collections. Each label had the following information for the collection; the collection title, dates that the collection spans, collection number and box number of the collection. Each box had their own label and since there was a 1/2 manuscript box the label had to be trimmed to fit. Once the boxes were labeled; they had to be placed together somewhere within the Irving Archives. Kevin and I searched each shelve looking for a space large enough to house to entire collection. I had remembered learning in one of the classes that a collection, once processed, must be housed together, not separated. There was one shelf that was perfect for the collection; however there were three boxes already on the shelf. I asked Kevin if the boxes already on the shelf could be housed on another shelf and that shelf be used for the Las Colinas Women's Association Collection. I discovered another shelf that the three boxes could be housed together. Kevin looked at the shelf that I discovered and saw that there was enough room for all three boxes to be placed there. Kevin removed the three boxes from the shelf, placed them on the other shelf, then placed the Las Colinas Women's Association Collection on the empty shelf. Once the collection was placed on the empty shelf, Kevin told me that every box that was moved had to be updated in the accession logs to make sure the boxes could be located in the future.

Kevin showed me the accession logs and asked me to update the location for the rearranged boxes and the Las Colinas Women's Association Collection. I updated the location for every box on the handwritten accession log and the computerized one, as well. The new home of the Las Colinas Women's Association Collection is Row 3, Section 5, Shelf 6. Then Kevin told me about the next step in finalizing the Las Colinas Women's Association.

The next step for the Las Colinas Women's Association Collection was to create a holding folder. I tried to remember if this was discussed in any of my classes however I don't think it was. The Holding Folder is a folder that has correspondence, accession records and a hard copy of the finding aid for the collection. Kevin showed me where all the Accession records for every item is located in the Archives. He told me that once the materials are processed and a collection created; then the accession records are pulled for those materials. The accession records are then placed in a holding folder from oldest to newest. All six accession logs were located and placed within the holding folder, along with some correspondence from the Las Colinas Women's Association. Kevin explained that the holding folder is used for the collection's future donations so everything is in one place.

After completing some of the details with the Las Colinas Women's Association Collection, I worked on Oral History, specifically Eleanor Corry Bell's interview, for the reminder of the day.