Week 33 at The Mayme A. Clayton Library & Museum

Last week was busy,busy, busy! The UCLA service students are rapidly helping the collection move along .  I have two students processing a particularly large collection, The Marilyn White Collection. 

To successfully have two students process one collection they first must; confirm that they will come in on different dates, adhere to the same processing standards, and complete the box they started that day.  So far, 10 boxes have been processed in 18 hours, an excellent rate! The processing procedure I developed for this collection is based on the fact that MCLM is a library.  Because MCLM is a library we must know exactly what type and quantity of book is in each collection that is donated.  In order to determine this the procedure is to create an excel sheet only for the books, pamphlets, brochures and other printed matter (excluding correspondence) that details the title, quantity and year of each item.  This excel sheet can then be compared to our current holdings and then a weeding process can then occur. 

An interesting item that I found in the collection yesterday was some of Mayme's water color paintings. She made these drawings in a class that Avery taught, MCLM currently has the paints and the works she created.  A fun little piece of institutional history!

Alyss Zohar
The Mayme A. Clayton Library & Museum
IMLS Fellow, M.L.I.S

Week 29 at The Mayme A. Clayton Library & Museum

Last week, I was given the honor of accepting an award on behalf of The Mayme A. Clayton Library & Museum.  The award was posthumously presented to Dr. Mayme Agnew Clayton for being a champion of Black History & Museum Founder. The event, hosted by The Museum of African American Art, focused on African American women in honor of  Women's History Month.

The next day, MCLM hosted a disaster preparedness workshop.  This type of workshop occurs in many locations and is funded through a NEH grant. Westpas, a preservation assistance service, is the grant writing agency.  The event opened my eyes to the amount of planning that must go into preparing for a disaster, especially earthquakes. 

On the collections side of events from last week,  I have assigned a group of volunteers to inventory the entirety of the James Jeffery,  Jr. collection. James Jeffery's Jr. was a Southern California based artist, he also served on the advisory board of The Western States Black Research Center.  This collection consists of photographs, prints, and some mixed media paintings. Once the inventory is complete it will be pushed into the database.     

Alyss Hardin
IMLS Fellow, MLIS
The Mayme A. Clayton Libray & Museum