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| Chicago Skyline at Night |
This week I have
been playing “catch up” with my evaluations.
Unfortunately, I did not get as far ahead as I had hoped. The good news is that I am no further
behind. Third-grade teacher turned yoga
instructor Rebecca
Love’s Eastern-centric beliefs were fascinating even if her explanations
were a bit extraordinary. Entrepreneur Delories
Ricks-Wallace’s interview was rich with names and places about her family history
and her life. While I enjoyed evaluating
her interview, trying to record the pertinent details in a timely manner was a
challenge. I am now in the process of
evaluating Bonita
Gooch’s interview. She is a
businesswoman in Wichita, Kansas, who owns and runs an African American
newspaper called The Community Voice. By the end of the week, I had also received
feedback on my previous evaluations, so I now have two fully completed EAD and
EAC-CPF finding aids. Yay! I have made two more finding aids for further
review and have one left to finish on Monday.
It feels good to be able to see the whole process complete. I am still working on increasing my speed,
but I am afraid that I am getting a little “burned-out” listening and typing,
listening and typing, so next week I will be alternating my schedule to include
sorting my special collection boxes for my An
Evening With collections of Colin
Powell, Della Reese,
and Richard
Parsons.
After another
discussion with Dr. Jessie
Smith, the dean of Franklin
Library at Fisk University, I found out that the collection I will be
processing for the university is the William McKissack papers. He owned and ran McKissack & McKissack
Architects, the oldest African American architectural firm in the United States, until his wife took over as CEO in 1975. McKissack’s wife, Leatrice
McKissack, and daughter, Cheryl
McKissack Felder, are both HistoryMakers and I will be evaluating Felder as
one of my assigned interviews. How
serendipitous! Dr. Smith and I also
discussed other aspects of my upcoming presentation on July 9, so I have now
created a slideshow for it. Now if I can
just get in touch with Meharry Medical College’s
special collections, I will soon be ready to present. They called Friday while I was out touring
the University of Chicago Special
Collections Research Center so I will have to call back on Monday.
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| UC Special Collections Gallery |
Speaking of touring the
University of Chicago Special Collections Research Center, I was extremely
impressed! They have five archivists
(almost unheard of in many academic libraries), a beautiful new research center
and gallery area, and an expedient tiered processing system that allows for ALL
of the collections to be accessible, even those that have not yet been fully
processed. They even have many digital
collections that can be accessed online. We were running low on time so we were unable
to peak into the Mansueto Library
which uses an automated system to pull books and collections from their storage
underneath the library. They are truly
innovative!
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| Archival Studies |
We had our usual Tuesday
and Wednesday lectures with Dr. Cecilia Salvatore, our archival sciences instructor, and Dr. Christopher Reed, our historian. Dr. Salvatore’s archival instruction was
helpful although I must admit that it can be a little confusing to discuss
archives in the traditional sense while we are working in one that has such a
modern and innovative twist. I
understand Dr. Salvatore is preparing us for our host institutions so that is well
and good. However, my age-old gripe
about our literature being old is still a pet peeve that I have about archival
science in general. I know there is
something to be said for understanding how procedures and theories evolved to
be what they are now, but that will not stop me from being slightly annoyed
that we read and discuss 20+ year-old articles that influenced a process that
is now somewhat different. Yes, I am
talking about documentation strategy. Okay,
okay, I know it has its merits and that I may be exaggerating somewhat. Believe me when I say that I realize there is
something to be learned from everything and so I will continue to read and
learn and grow even though it is not always fun and exciting.
I really enjoyed that Dr. Reed brought in
some of his family’s pension request records from the Civil War. It really seems to solidify my understanding
of the past when I can see preliminary source materials such as these pension
records. That is why I love archives. I have read about the Civil War from a
variety of perspectives now and I must admit that I always learn something new. I will never forget learning in my women’s
history class that women would dress in uniforms and hide their gender so that
they could also fight in the Civil War (and Revolutionary War, at that). Intriguing!
I guess that about
covers this week. Next week we have
Independence Day off so I am looking forward to a mid-week break and possibly
some fireworks!
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| Navy Pier from the Museum Campus |
Until next week…
Amanda J. Carter
Franklin Library, Fisk University
2012-2013 The HistoryMakers IMLS Fellow
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