Processing

I walked into the Bellevue Alumnae Center for Nursing History unsure of what to expect. My classmate and I were welcomed by the archivist Trudy Hutchinson and shown around the center. We were then led to our office for the next couple months. Two collections sat on desks, carts, tables and the floor. Nursing uniforms hung on the door and laid on a filing cabinet. We had the semester to make this mess into two coherent collections, with appropriate finding aids, MARC records, EAD encoded documents and this website. Of the two collections, I was given the records of Eileen Bonner. Under the care and guidance of Trudy I began processing my collection.

First, it was necessary to get an idea of what exactly I was dealing with. I began by going through each box to get a sense of what materials they contained, if there was any original order, and what condition the collection was in. A number of boxes contained uniforms. Some contained medals and other artifacts and the rest were paper records. There was no order, so I knew an order would need to be imposed on them otherwise users would have a difficult time finding the desired records or even knowing they exist. This is an important part of an archivists job.

After the first go through, I began separating the materials and developing series. Some repositories will not separate series in smaller collection while others will create series intellectually but box them within the same containers. The latter being the practice at Bellevue, I chose my series with Trudy’s help. We decided to separate the materials into Military Associations, Professional Associations, Nursing Career, Education, and Photographs. I then went through the task of putting the right records into the right series.

Part of my collection had been refoldered previously and an inventory list was created.  As part of the process it was necessary to interfile this part of the collection with the work I had done.

Luckily, Trudy is a nurse and was able to help me with the specialized language of nurses. Once the materials were separated then were refoldered into acid-free files. The artifacts and awards were separated into oversized boxes and the uniforms wrapped in acid-free tissue and boxed.

Throughout this process, my professor gave us assignments that are necessary parts of an archivists job. First we created a processing plan. I have since realized that my estimated time for processing was far off. Even mundane things like refoldering takes time, if not brainpower. We were then required to make a finding aid. This is where we get to describe our collections. This is how users find materials so it is important to really spend time thinking about what the collection contains, who the creator is and any other important information that would be helpful to users. Next was the creation of a MARC cataloging record and then an EAD encoding write up. These last two were very difficult for me but the experience was well worth the time and headache.

This learning process was invaluable.  It’s given me hands-on experience working with a collection. I was glad that the collection was pretty disorganized because that gave me the opportunity to learn all the steps and techniques used in collection processing, especially since I had a guiding hand. Trudy was a wealth of knowledge and experience. She was willing and ready to answer questions, impart knowledge, offer encouragement or a joke. It was also helpful to hear about classmates’ collections and the problems or situations they encountered. This class was a great way for us to learn from our Professor, supervisor’s and each other.