Entering the plastic room for the first time and seeing that all the boxes on the 11 shelving units were specifically for this archiving project initially induced shortness of breath, a racing heart beat and a numbness of the left arm. After taking a few ohm like breaths, and figuring the numbness was from lugging a heavy bag for 10 blocks from Fenway and carrying a large iced tea, I realized that a heart attack was not in the immediate future... just an overwhelming archiving project. Thankfully I was not alone and had someone else to share my confusion with.
Sari and I started off the first week by jumping into the project and seeing what types of documents were being stored, how things were stored and what the heck the difference was from a star, a circle, an X and all the colored post-its on the boxes. Figuring that they really didn't make much of a difference and that the spreadsheet was something that you needed a cereal box decoder ring to read, we decided to start from scratch.
Going box to box, and writing in our own chicken scratch we detailed where things were, in what state the different boxes were in, and pretty much how much trouble (work) we had signed up for. Surprisingly, starting over calmed our nerves and allowed us to focus not on the plastic room as a whole, but on each shelving unit, then each shelf, and each box. Concentrating our efforts from trying to breathe and not freak out to processing (and re-processing) the materials box by box into folder by folder.
As I sit down in the plastic room and write this now, Sari and I can confidently say that over the course of this semester we have taken the collection from being about 50% processed and organized to a solid 75 to 80% fully processed, foldered, labeled, condensed and organized into appropriate boxes. Our work could also be measured by the staggering amount of trash that was produced (old acidic folders and files), and the six boxes of acid-free folders that we used. In addition we have gotten rid of the no longer color-coding and symbol organization scheme, and simplified the spreadsheet that is working as a box container list. Finally, the spreadsheet has been put into both excel format and a format for Google Docs to allow multiple people to work on it at the same time.
As of right now there is still work to be done for the next round of interns, but with clear documentation and instructions on where and how to start it will hopefully not be as overwhelming of an experience for them. There are two and a half shelving units left to be processed, and the final arrangement and finding aid to be written. While this probably will not be completed with one more round of interns, most likely the processing will be. And here's some luck to the people for next semester.
-Christopher Stowell
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