I have completed processing, arranging, and writing the scope note for all of the Memphis projects boxes. These projects are now divided into eight sections: Combined or Other Memphis projects, Lauderdale Church of Christ, Metropolitan Baptist Church, Mississippi Boulevard Christian Church, New Bloomfield Baptist Church, Riverview Christian Church, Rock of Ages C.M.E. Church, and Universal Life Insurance Company. I was able to reduce the number of boxes by one, so these Memphis projects now encompass ten boxes, two of which are oversized. Once the collection is completely processed and the arrangement is finalized, I will be merging more boxes together, especially the oversized ones. However, I am waiting until the end to merge the boxes because it will be easier to finalize the arrangement. Currently, only a few of the projects are stored in the same box. This separation of projects will allow me to more easily rearrange the projects series chronologically once documentation for all projects has been fully processed.
So far, I have processed about fifty boxes and numerous blueprints. The current arrangement includes the following series: Correspondence, Office Files, and Projects. Within the Projects series, there are ten subseries so far: College Hill Apartments and Housing, National Baptist Bathhouse and Sanitarium, and the Memphis projects listed in the previous paragraph. More subseries will be added under Projects and other series will be added including Blueprints, Community Service, and Photographs and Realia, among others.
Out of the sixteen boxes left to process, approximately ten of those contain more project files so I have pulled those boxes and will be working on them next. A few of the projects to be processed include jobs for the Cotton Brothers, Fisk University, Tennessee State University and other smaller projects in Nashville, Tennessee. Aside from the Lincoln Park project in Alabama, all of the remaining projects have a very limited amount of documentation. Therefore, I will probably include a subseries under projects titled “Smaller projects” where each folder contains all the documentation available within the collection for the specified project.
Challenges
The most recent challenge is determining how to include the projects that are referenced on only a few documents. For instance, the “McNeil job” that I mentioned last week is now going to be included in the tentatively named subseries “Smaller projects” along with other projects that have very limited documentation.
Blueprints
Last Wednesday, volunteer Evelyn Jones and I spent another morning flattening, dusting, and recording the metadata from about eight sets of large blueprints. Fortunately, last week’s processing went a little more smoothly than the previous week simply because the blueprints that we worked with were not quite as fragile as the ones on onion-skin paper.
We found some blueprints for a women’s dormitory at Fisk University called Scribner Hall. The building is no longer standing, but the blueprints are still a piece of Fisk’s history. We also found blueprints for a Fine Arts Building on Fisk’s campus, Mound Bayou Hospital in Mound Bayou, Mississippi, a Nashville sanitarium, and an AF & AM Mason’s lodge for Nashville, among others. I estimate that there are about fifteen more sets of blueprints to process but they will be much slower since most of them are on onion-skin paper.
Challenges
As always, fragility is the primary challenge when working with these blueprints, some of which date back to the 1920s. It is entirely too easy to cause further damage, but that chance must be taken in order to obtain the vital information that they hold. Otherwise, we would be left with inaccessible documents which defeat the purpose of preservation.
Interesting Finds
While all of the blueprints are always fascinating, finding a handwritten list of other McKissack projects was like finding a sliver of gold in the bottom of a creek. It adds another piece to the puzzle of the span of projects in which the McKissack brothers were involved. Along with the blueprints, we ran across a color drawing of the proposed Scribner Hall for Fisk University. It is very pretty and still in good condition. I hope to be able to get permission to take a photograph of it so that I can include it as one of the images for the virtual tour I will be adding to HistoryPin.
Site Visit
Monday afternoon, Julieanna
Richardson visited
Franklin Library for a site visit. She
toured the facility, spoke to the dean and to my supervisor and then spoke with
me. I showed her what I had processed so
far, what I have left to process, as well as my approach to processing the
collection. I also took the opportunity
to show her some of the interesting find I have mentioned in this blog, such as
the Poro College leather wallet and the postcard for
the National Baptist Bathhouse and Sanitarium.
I appreciated the opportunity to show my progress.
Workshop update
The sustainable community
workshop in Lynchburg, Virginia, has been rescheduled slightly. Rather than the weekend of April 12-14, it
will now be held May 17-19. While this
was unexpected, it is also serendipitous because it gives me a little more time
to get further along in my collection as well as allows me more time to
research resources and develop my talking points for my community archiving
presentation. Until next time…
Amanda J. Carter
Franklin Library, Fisk University
IMLS HistoryMakers Fellow 2012-2013
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