Ruth Engs Finding Aid

Now that the processing of the Ruth Engs collection is finished and the container list has been compiled and completed, one of the last steps of my work on the collection will be to complete some of the additional elements of the finding aid.  Aside from providing a list of the archival materials that are contained in a particular collection, a finding aid should also provide the proper amount of contextual and background information about a collection.  This information allows an archives patron to better contextualize the information contained within the collection and both archivists and patrons alike to more easily identify which collections may contain material related to a certain subject, trend, event, person, or organization.

This past week, I spent some time working on completing this contextual information for the Ruth Engs finding aid.  The sections of this part of the finding aid (for collections of an individual) that are typically the longest are the biography and scope and content notes.  The biographical section provides a thorough account of the professional activities of the individual, and, for an academic, should provide a summary of his or her notable publications, professional activities, education, and teaching career.  Providing details and dates is important; someone reading the biography should be able to get a basic understanding and outline of the person's professional career.  Some information about the personal life of the subject should also be provided.

The scope and content note should provide a description of the collection itself.  Someone reading this section of a finding aid should gain an understanding of the various types of records that can be found within the collection as well as an understanding of the organizational structure of the collection.

For some collections, writing a biography can be quite challenging, while for others, it can be a much more straightforward process.  If the collection contains CV's, resumes, autobiographical or biographical write-ups, or obituaries that are clearly marked and well organized, compiling biographical information can be relatively simple.  If a collection does not have a wealth of this sort of material, the processing archivist must to considerably more synthesizing in order to produce a detailed, helpful biography.  Thankfully, the Ruth Engs collection contains a subseries dedicated to resumes and CV's as well as a short autobiography that is several pages in length that she wrote near the end of her career.   

Keeping Busy at the Archives

Things have been quite busy over the last few days at my internship at the archives, so I have taken a brief hiatus from working on the Ruth Engs collection to complete some other small projects at the archives and assist some patrons who are currently working on research.  While working on the Engs collection is enjoyable, it is also nice to have a bit of a change of pace and to also have the opportunity to assist patrons in person.

Yesterday, I helped locate relevant materials for a patron conducting some research about the history of Finnish Studies and scholarship related to Finland at Indiana University.  Dina had done the actual research on the question, and had identified boxes with folders related to the topic, and it was my job to physically find the folders, present them to the patron with some basic contextual information about the collection to which they belonged, and generally attend to any questions or requests that the patron had.  I was glad that I got asked to help in this way because I enjoy attending to patrons.  For any department of a library that interacts with patrons, it is absolutely essential, I feel, to establish a friendly, attentive, and accommodating manner of service, and I was glad that I was able to contribute in this way at the archives.

Additionally, I have been working on creating a basic folder list for an accession of papers donated by Denis Sinor, a former professor of Central Asian Studies at IU.  The term accession refers to a set of records received from one individual or organization at one specific time.  At an archival repository, records are organized according to accession number prior to their being processed.  Since backlogs of unprocessed records often exist, it is important to create some sort of record of the material contained in an unprocessed collection.  That way, archivists can identify records that are useful to a specific topic even if they belong to an unprocessed collection.

Week 7: Finding Aid Progress

When I wasn't spending time working on the student records project last week, I was making progress towards the completion of the container list for the Ruth Engs finding aid.  While the creation of this list may sound like a relatively simple process (and it is), a great amount of attention to detail is required.  For any file that contains the name of a published article, essay, book, or document, it is always important to check to make sure that the file name in the container list contains an accurate transcription of the proper title.  Secondly, the creators of archival collections often use shorthand or abbreviations when naming files that would have served as a useful description for the donor when he or she used the files but would be confusing to an outside user.  Therefore, it is sometimes important to decipher these abbreviated titles and create a clearer title for the file.  Finally, it is important to include a date or date range for every file or item in the container list.  When dates are not included on the folder, the processor should browse through the file to obtain a date or date range.

The purpose of taking these steps is not to nitpick, though.  Creating a finding aid that describes files accurately and in a reasonably detailed manner assists users in finding files that pertain to topic of interest.  If a container list is created in a haphazard or sloppy manner, it will likely not communicate its contents and usefulness very well.

I have also been ensuring that all restrictions placed by Ruth Engs on her collection will be honored accurately and thoroughly.  Folders that are restricted in an archival collection are usually placed in this category because they contain sensitive information of a personal, legal, or business nature.  Also, donors may want to restrict materials related to ongoing, unpublished research if they wish to publish on the subject in the future.  In order for an archives to maintain a trusting relationship with faculty and administrative donors, it is extremely important to ensure that donor wishes regarding restrictions are honored.

To do this, it is important to clearly communicate which materials are restricted and include information about the conditions of the restriction and the end date of the restricted period (if applicable, some files or restricted permanently).  In the last week, I have been taking this step by closely reviewing the collection to make sure that every file labeled "restricted" is described as such in the container list.  Furthermore, I have been removing the restricted files and placing them in a separate box that goes at the end of the collection.  Although the restricted folders are physically moved, they will still remain in their original intellectual order and structure within their series and sub series in the finding aid.

Collecting Student Records

Aside from processing the Ruth C. Engs papers for my internship, I will also be spending a significant amount of time working on a project to collect the records of IU student groups.  The student records project is a collaboration between the IU Archives and the IU Student Chapter of the Society of American Archivists that gives SLIS students the opportunity to get first-hand experience in seeking out records, participating in records appraisal, and processing collections.  Since I am also the Outreach Chair for the IU SAA chapter, the archives has asked me to spend some of my time at my internship organizing this project as well, and this has been especially helpful and convenient, considering that the project is a collaboration between the student chapter and the IU Archives.

Yesterday, we held our first general meeting for the project.  Students who expressed interest in participation met with me, Amy Jankowski (our student chapter president), Dina, and Phil Bantin, the head archivist at IU.  Dina spoke to all of us about some of our general objectives and more specifically about what types of records we are most interested in collecting.  Then, we established that our first goals would be to revise our form letter used for contacting student group representatives and to identify a list of student groups that we would like to contact first.  Focusing on smaller groups of organizations at one time makes the project more manageable.  We also got a chance to brainstorm and discuss a variety of organizations we would be interested in approaching.  We have an enthusiastic group of students interested in working on the project and it promises to be a successful year of student record collecting!

I will also be creating a video that will be used to help students understand and become familiar with the concept of an archives and to persuade members of student organizations to consider donating their records.  After discussing the video at the meeting yesterday, we have established that the video should be relatively short (3-5 minutes), show students the repository itself, show students interesting records of student organizations and student life from the past, and explain to viewers the value of student records in general.  If any archives friends or general readers have any further ideas or suggestions about any aspect of the video project, feel free to comment on this post.  It would be great to have feedback and ideas from others! 

Week 6: Description of the Ruth Engs papers

Now that all of the separate files and items in the Ruth Engs papers have been physically arranged in order, the next task in the project is to create the finding aid.  Basically, an archival finding aid is a document designed to communicate the nature and usefulness of the collection to a potential archives user.  In order to do this, a finding aid will include narrative biographical information about person whose papers are being preserved, a narrative description of the scope and content of the collection, and a list of all of the folders or items in the collection.  In the case of the records of an organization, the biographical section will discuss the history of the organization.  Finding aids also contain some other basic information, including the size of the collection, the date span, and subject terms used to describe the collection. 

Here is the SAA Glossary definition of a finding aid, which provides a similar basic description of these documents. To get a better idea of what a finding aid is, check out this page which allows one to browse all finding aids for archival collections held at IU.

The IU Archives creates all of its finding aids using EAD, or Encoded Archival Description, which is a standard for creating finding aids using XML.  A primary benefit of putting finding aids online using this standard is that it can improve the ability of a patron to find specific archival material of interest.  For more information about EAD, here is the Wikipedia entry on EAD and the official EAD homepage.

At the IU Archives, EAD finding aids are created based on initial finding aids that are created by the processor after the arranging of the collection.  These initial documents are created in Microsoft Word, and then, once the Word document has been complete, the information is plugged into the XML document.  At the moment, it is the creation of this initial finding aid that I am working on at the archives for the Ruth Engs papers.  The process is pretty straightforward; I am completing a list that includes the name of every folder or item contained within the collection in the order in which they appear in the boxes.  This container list includes indicates the names of series and subseries and also indicates the physical breakdown of the collection by box number.  Once I finish the container list, I will complete the narrative sections of the finding aid which provide biographical and contextual information about Ruth Engs and her papers.