During the second week of my fellowship at Franklin Library, Fisk University, I continued to process the William McKissack Papers. I had developed a tentative outline that focused heavily on the individual projects found within the collection and, upon the archivist’s recommendation, I had begun separating out the largest of the projects from the rest of the materials. I outlined an Office Files series, a Projects Series with each project as a subseries, and a Personal series. The Office Files series would contain all of the information pertaining directly to the workings of the office such as payroll and tax records. The Projects Files series would be separated by projects in chronological order with each project containing sub-subseries such as Specifications and Receipts. The Personal series would contain personal photographs and correspondence.
As the week progressed, I realized that there was a plethora of payroll and employee information throughout the Office Files and Project Files series that contained social security numbers. After speaking with the part-time archivists, I decided to add another series of employee information which would be restricted due to the sensitive personal information. Further into the week, I spoke with the head archivist via telephone who suggested that I pull all of the correspondence and make a separate series for that information. This had also been suggested by the part-time archivists, but I had hesitated since I thought that much of the seemingly limited amount of correspondence relating to the project files might best fit within that series since it often related to invoices and receipts. I postulated that a researcher might prefer to have that information together thus more easily accessible. However, I do not want to create a finding aid for this collection that is remarkably different than the other finding aids at the university because consistency is also helpful in expediting research. Therefore, once I finish separating the largest project materials from the collection I will then go back through it all and remove the correspondence into separate boxes. I then expect to go back through and arrange all of the employee information together before I get back to the projects, office files, or personal materials. This will then create a few more series as follows: Correspondence, Employee Records, Office Files, Personal Information, and Projects. These headings will be arranged alphabetically, according to the advice of the archivists and along the lines of the other finding aids found within this archives. Within the Correspondence series, the letters will be arranged by McKissack, since multiple McKissacks have correspondence in these files. Then the letters will be arranged chronologically under each man’s name. All other series will more than likely be arranged chronologically.
Also this week, I create a timeline for the completion of the William McKissack Papers. According to my timeline, it will take nearly the entire nine months to complete this project. This is due to the amount of materials, the condition of the materials, and the amount of rearrangement advised to create easily accessible research materials. There are at least sixty-two boxes and multiple rolled blueprints within the collection. The papers are extremely dirty and often folded and bent, all of which inhibit access and therefore must be made more accessible.
Interesting finds
 |
| World War II-themed Christmas letter, 1944 |
I found a few groups of Christmas cards in the collection
this week. The most interesting set was from
1944, during World War II. Many of the
cards were war-themed and one even noted that the sender bought war bonds for
everyone for Christmas. I also found a
letter to Mr. Moses McKissack from Mary McLeod Bethune discussing whether or
not he might be able to attend a mid-nineteenth century conference at
Bethune-Cookman College.  |
| Even Santa was concerned with the war, 1944 |
Amanda J. Carter
Franklin Library, Fisk University
IMLS HistoryMakers Fellow 2012-2013
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