Day 20: Wrap-It-Up

Well, the past months have been challenging to say the least. Balancing a full-time job with learning brand new skills at what amounted to a new part-time job was both amazing and exhausting. Keeping two organizational calendars straight at the same time is no small task and I have a new respect for those who do consulting work as they need to balance multiple calendars and schedules at once.

But honestly, I would not have traded my time here for anything in the world... well except for a bungalow on a Caribbean beach.

The people here at Cold Spring Harbor are wonderful, smart and talented people who did not hesitate to both challenge and inspire me. These warm professional archivists and librarians welcomed me and invited me out to lunch on a daily basis. I really felt like I was a part of the organization. Not just a gofer (meaning "go for" this). All projects were explained and put into context according to how and why they were important.

Each of my 4 learning objectives were met and exceeded during this internship:

• 1d: Students will use effective communication skills applicable for specific audiences and user groups. (Assessed through pre-internship activities, such as finding an appropriate site, developing a learning contract in partnership with the site supervisor, choosing appropriate student learning objectives, etc.)
•  2a: Students will use professional standards to organize, manage, preserve, evaluate and deliver information resources in a variety of formats 
•  2b: Students will apply systems for organizing and structuring information and knowledge, such as cataloging, classification and other metadata formation standards  
• 4a: Students put theory into practice interning in a library, archives, school, museum or other type of information organization. Assessed through internship activities and a reflective essay.

The internship was divided into four portions that ran concurrently or semi-concurrently:

• Part 1: Archival Work – processing of an untouched collection. Create a Processing Plan, Finding Aid and Inventory for the Clarence G. Campbell Collection. 
• Part 2: Digitization of Archival Photos – Photograph, crop, label and upload digital images to CSHL digital Collection.    
• Part 3: Library Reference – Research and find sources of information on Legal professionals, Journalists, and Ethicists involved with the Human Genome Project (related to follow-up work on a NLMS grant).
• Part 4: Digital Archiving and Records Management – using ArchivesSpace and the Clarence G. Campbell Collection as an example, create a EAD finding aid and then create supporting documentation on how to translate traditional finding aid terminology to ArchivesSpace terminology.

 Now it is time to enter the wonderful world of Archives and Special Collections!

Day 19: CSHL Finding Aid - ArchivesSpace Translation Cheat Sheet

Today's task was to finally complete the cheat sheet I started a month ago.  And I did!

To view the document, click on the ArchivesSpace Cheat Sheet Tab.

Day 18: ArchivesSpace Clean-up

On today's to-do list:

• Fix the Subject Agent overlap

So after watching a few how-to and summary videos on ArchivesSpace and reviewing the finding aid that Tom had imported into ArchivesSpace, It became apparent that there is a strict divide between subjects and agents.

I figured out that:

• Agents are people or organizations
• People and organizations can take actions and have an active role in the creation of documents in the collection
•  Agents have a direct connection to the collection as either creators or correspondents
• Subjects cover everything else and are taken directly from the Library of Congress's (LoC).
• Subjects can be a document genre such as a manuscript, a typescript, correspondence, or even a holograph.
• Subjects can be geographic locations or area.
• Subjects also cover historic topics and ideas such as Genetics or Heredity.
• Subjects may be used for events as well.

Based on this, I returned to the ArchivesSpace finding aid and reordered the agents and subjects. While doing this, I noticed that you can add the LoC identifier (well actually the web URL associated with that LoC subject heading.

Day 17: ArchivesSpace XML and Oxygen

So in the last post I discussed in brief, EAD and XML. ArchivesSpace makes XML EAD documents by exporting the completed finding aid and selecting the XML coding format. There were a few surprises along the way.

When I exported the EAD for the Clarence G. Campbell Collection, I saw the EAD element tags selected. As Tom explained to me, you always have to run an XML document through an editor program ti validate the coding. This ensures that other machines can read the document and that the document can be translated into a web document so that web browsers can access the document. For this task, Tom selected Oxygen Editor (more information on Oxygen Editor's validation component).

While running the Clarence Campbell finding aid through Oxygen, we found that certain parts of the document were not recognized by the validation process. The interesting part was that the tags marked invalid were system generated IDs. These IDs are alphanumeric character strings. When the string began with a number, it was marked invalid; when the string began with a letter, it passed validation.

To check if this could be a bug in the ArchivesSpace system, we decided to contact the help desk and see if anyone else noticed this bug or if we did something wrong. Either way, the simple solution for the moment was to alter the system generated IDs.

Stay tuned for the results of the help desk email.

Day 16: Back to ArchivesSpace

After a short break, it was time to return to my work on ArchivesSpace. While working on the grant-funded research project, Tom, the ArchivesSpace administrator had time to review some of the work that had been done on ArchivesSpace and figure out some new aspects and features.

For most of the day, Tom walked me through exporting the ArchivesSpace finding aid into an XML format EAD finding aid and showed me how to read the scripting. I noticed:

• it is a very similar format to HTML coding, only easier to read and more user-friendly
• Certain tags cannot occur within others. For example: 
• the publicationstmt tag can hold
• publisher
• address
• addressline
• (PS: these tags are flanked by "<", ">", and "</"  I cannot use these here as Blogger translates them as xml commands and they disappear. For more information on this particular EAD tag, visit the LoC site on publicationstmt.
• What is even cooler about ArchivesSpace is that certain information is auto-populated into the xml EAD finding aid based on repository information  entered when setting up the platform.

• Certain EAD tags do not work if entered in the wrong section and field. 
• Because of this, you need to know EAD description best practices as well as how they translate to the ArchivesSpace platform.

For a list of some of the most commonly used EAD tags, go to the Library of Congress (LoC) website and check out the list of EAD Elements by Tag.

The LoC also has a guide to best practices regarding tag use at EAD Best Practices

Day 15: American Medical Association Citation style

So for some reason, web publishers just don't seem to know AMA citation style. They use a range of APA, MLA, and Chicago citation styles. I spent the better part of he day sifting and sorting citation styles and reformatting them using excel worksheets.

By the end of the day, I was able to run a mail merge to get them all into AMA citation style. All in all, I completed bios and bibliographies for 19 individuals associated with The Human Genome Project. This project cane to 40 typed pages, averaging 2 pages per bio.

Long day. Glad it is done.

Days 12-14: Survey of Legal Professionals Connected to the Human Genome Project

Part of creating a new digital resource is planning and research. What CSHL's Archives is working on for the future is documenting the Human Genome Project. They already completed initial bios and publication research on scientists involved. Now they are up to those professionals on the project's fringe but who may be equally important to the public's understanding and perspective of the project.

On my list are: Journalists, Ethicists and Lawyers.

I started with the lawyers to see how long it would take to properly research each one and how much info would be freely available.

Yes... I do realize that lawyers are easier to identify and research than Ethicists; however, there were only four lawyers and that made a reasonable test group to start with and make a project plan from there.

Well, it took me about an hour per lawyer. To be honest, I did get wrapped up in some of the material and have decided to borrow a book entitled, "The Genome War: How Craig Venter Tried to Capture the Code of Life and Save the World." It details the controversy that wrapped itself around the Human Genome Project headed by James Watson. The controversy was about patenting the scientific discoveries made through the Project--the ethics, legality and morality of patenting something that occurs in nature.

For a great summary of the book, try: Discovery Medicine's Executive Summary

Day 13: HGP - Researching Journalists

As part of a the follow up to an awarded grant, I began researching and compiling bios on individuals connected with the Human Genome Project. As the scientists's bios were completed the previous year, I am researching people who were on the fringe of the program:  legal professionals, journalists and ethicists. 

Some of these individuals are well-known for other accomplishments and some only appear once or twice in documentation. 

After completing the test group of legal professionals, my rate per person was one per hour. At that rate of productivity, I should be able to complete the list in 25 hours (or 3.5 days). Let's see how this timeline shakes out.

Resources used:
I start out by searching in Google Books: "first name last name" + "genome"

This search string pulls information from inside numerous out of print books and highlights the pages where the person's name appears. By adding the term "genome" it narrows the search to those books where the person's name and the term genome appear on the same page. 

Once inside the book, you can re-search using just the person's name and only pull-up pages where that name appears. 

After this I generally search in professional directories such as Martindale Hubbell, LinkedIn, Who's Who, Men and Women of Science, CSHL archives and online catalog, and external special collections.

Later, I do a Google search with the person's name combined with a current/recent job title. This helps to pull up professionally relevant information on the person as well as some publications. To identify further genome-related publications, I utilized PubMed. 

Methodology: 

In an effort to keep the notes organized, I decided to create 5 sections:  Professional (current position, career history, and connection to the HGP (what role he/she played, work accomplished, and notes on important connections as well as how this piece connected to the larger picture); Education; Vitals; Known To; Genome-Related Publications; Connections to CSHL. 

Day 11: Refoldering

So today I finished refoldering CGC's collection. The trick to refoldering is to be able to aid the researcher in defining the different documents and packets created by the collection's originator.

My first instinct was that each document received its own folder... WRONG!

In reality only documents where a beginning and end are unclear require folders. So if you can tell where one manuscript starts and another ends, no need for a folder. (Now remember that this is the stage where we also remove all paperclips, staples and fasteners--except for professional bindings).

The great part of this stage is you get to double check your own work while refoldering. You get to make sure that the divisions make sense, that you did not miss one letter stuck to another, and you get to see the finished product and say, "Yes! I did that!"

I gotta say it felt good to see it all refoldered, defastened, and boxed up and labeled.

Good times. See ya next week!

Day 10: DISASTER

As is the case with all well-made plans, something always goes wrong. In this case, the culprit is a server and the catalyst is a rain storm.The result is a down server that IT could not get back up and running.

The plan for today was to update and correct some Subject tags in the draft finding aid in ArchivesSpace for the CGC collection.

Instead I worked on a tutorial for creating Agent records in ArchivesSpace and finished refoldering the CGC collection I had begun. All little things that needed to be done anyway at some point in time.

Day 9: ArchivesSpace

Today was my first introduction to ArchivesSpace, a new tool for creating EAD Finding Aids.

As this is a new tool and a new user community, the software is free, but the community membership and help support is a paid subscription. Below is an introductory video outlining how to begin setting up ArchivesSpace for your repository.





Using the Clarence G. Campbell Collection I have been processing, we are experimenting on how to create a finding aid in the tool.

Day 8: Creating a Finding Aid

"Proof of a good finding aid is in the finding."

A good Finding Aid is clear, concise and organized. All finding aids within a repository follow the same format, structure and terminology. All sections are clearly labeled and defined.

In general, the finding aids have an administrative section, an introduction, a scope and content note, overview of the folders/record series, and some kind of inventory. All of the work that went into the preparation for processing the collection comes together and is incorporated into the finding aid.

The processing plan can be reworked into the scope and content section, the background research is incorporated into the abstract, introduction and historical note.

To view the traditional Finding Aid created, please follow this link:

Clarence G. Campbell Collection at CSHL Archive

 

 

For more information on CSHL's digital archival holdings, check out their Archives page and select Digital collections from the navigation box on the right of the screen. You can also access their blog and view their other archival initiatives from the link above.

To go directly to their digital holdings and finding aids: CSHL Archives Digital Collections.

 



Days 6 & 7: Processing Plan - Series Description

The basic types of documents found in the typical personal papers collection are manuscripts and correspondence. Clarence G. Campbell was no different in this respect. The fact that he was a doctor and eugenicist adds an additional layer of scientific knowledge to his collection; however it does not alter the basic record series present.

The first nine folders of the collection are comprised almost exclusively of manuscripts and research on eugenics topics. Folders 1 through 5 focused on early eugenics while folders 7 through 9 focused more on later eugenics topics and his book Race Survival. Folder 10 was comprised entirely of correspondence dealing with either the Eugenics Research Association, the Eugenics Record Office, or commenting on research and manuscripts (both his and others'). Folder 11 contained only published materials (mostly Clarence G. Campbell's) on eugenics.

As such, the container organizational scheme was pretty clear:

1. box one: Early Eugenics Career
1. Folder one (topical organization) - Eugenics and Race (1933-1936)
2. Folder two (topical organization) - Eugenics and Breeding/Marriage (undated)
3. Folder three (topical organization) - Eugenics and Evolution (1929-1932)
4. Folder four (topical organization) - Eugenics and Controversy (circa 1930)
5. Folder five (topical organization) - Eugenics and the Birth Control Controversy (undated)
2. box two: Later Eugenics Career
1. Folder seven (topical organization) - Eugenics and Dysgenics (undated holographs)
2. Folder eight (topical organization) - Eugenics and Sterilization (1936-1938)
3. Folder nine (topical organization) - Eugenics and Race Improvement (undated)
3. box three: Correspondence and publications
1. Folder ten (record series organization) - Correspondence (1929-1933)
2. Folder eleven (record series organization) - Published articles

* When working with original order, it is extremely important to have a good understanding of and feel for the contents of each folder. It is also important when doing an overview of the collection to note any important names, associations or accomplishments. These can be linked to other collections at he repository. On a separate sheet, I maintained a running list of these with their LoC Naming Authority File header, number and url link (this comes in handy for creating an EAD finding aid.

Day 5: The Processing Plan - Original Order vs. Imposed Archival Order

As discussed in the last post, the collection's administrative documentation is vital to future archivists' handling of a collection. There is always the fear of super-imposing one's own bias over a collection being processed.

For this reason, original order is always attempted to be preserved whenever possible. A collection can always be reordered by record group and series in the future; however, once the original order is altered, it can never be reestablished. There is always that possibility that a researcher would come in and be able to make inferences about the creator's by the order of the collection's files and folders.

There is really only one way to know for certain if a collection's original order has been maintained: if we are told this is the case.

Original order in personal papers inevitably is more challenging than original order for institutional papers (now compounded in the digital age). Institutional papers are generally ordered by their type and function and then either alphanumeric and chronology--in some form. Usually, personal paper collections become a hodge-podge of items some in topical order, others and chronological order and others in record type order.

The case of Clarence Gordon Campbell's papers is no different. the organization scheme is partially topical and partially chronological and partially material. For this reason, I decided to maintain the original order and process the collection down to the item level--allowing a researcher to do a crtl-f function to locate relevant materials.

A later archivist may disagree and reorder the collection by record series--my second choice--but that is for posterity to decide. I am hoping that a research will come along, and receive valuable information from this collection's organizational scheme.

Day 4 : Creating a Processing Plan

The first step in developing a processing plan involves:

1. reviewing the subject matter of the collection and its creator
2. reviewing all documentation relating to the accession
• this includes the deed of gift/purchase/transfer, the accession register, the provenance, and any correspondence that took place between the organization and the donor.

Firstly, you want to review the subject matter of the collection so that you will have a working knowledge of the collection's subject matter and be able to identify key ideas, dates and phrases. You need not be on equal footing knowledge-wise with the collection's creator; however, understanding the creator's passions will aid in understanding the collection's order and goal.

The documents relating to the acquisition, accessioning and processing will also become part of the collection--the administrative record for the collection. This portion of the collection helps document the archivist's reasons for giving the collection a particular order and hierarchy. It will also document if the  collection remained in its original order or if the archivist imposed a new order on the folders and documents.

Information from the deed of gift, correspondence leading up to the gift and the accession register will determine whether or not the collection retained its original order. An this will determine how the collection is to be processed.

Day 3: Digital Davenport

Today began with a tutorial on how to digitize photos for inclusion in CSHL's digital collection.

 

The set up was pretty impressive. I was expecting a scanner and photo processing software. Boy was I surprised; as you can see below, there is quite a bit more to digitizing documents and images.

Canon EOS-5D Mark III | Sydercheckr Color calibrator and Spydercube |
Color corrective lamps | Low light monitor



First thing, no scanner. Instead of a scanner, there was a professional camera mounted on a track (looks like a big black yard stick in the photo below). The trick with the track is that the distance of the camera from the object determines the resolution (again, I was surprised that this was the method used as I am used to resolution being saved in the processing program).

 

 

The monitor you see in the back is synced with the camera to display the image according the camera settings.

IOW: hit zoom on the camera and the monitor view will zoom.

This becomes insanely useful in checking the focus. You can zoom and focus the camera to the point where you can actually see the grain of the medium being digitized.

 

The best part? the monitor does not emit a significant amount of light and does not interfere with the two lamps.

 

My favorite tool is the Spydercheckr (that thing resting on the black matting and displayed on the monitor in the back). No it is not a watercolor painting pallet; nor is it a makeup pallet.

 

The Spydercheckr is a color calibrator used to check the camera and monitor's color settings against the actual document. Attached to the top of the Spydercheckr is the Spydercube. This nifty little gadget's purpose is to calibrate white, silver, black, ultimate black and chrome/reflective surfaces.

 

You always take a photo of this tool before digitizing actual images. This image can be used to send to a printer (should one of the images need to be sent to a printer for printing). What the printer does is use the image combined with the camera model's information settings to ensure that their printer and computer have the same color calibration. This is follows the old adage of measure twice, cut once.

 



Let the Digitization begin!!!



The digitization station in action!
P.S.: Those sandbag-esque sacks are to keep the black mating in place
while moving images, documents and objects.

Day 3 Take-away:

• Digitization is very detail oriented and a good work station flow is essential to achieving maximum productivity.
• I have a bad habit of forgetting to take the lens cover off the camera lens...
• I have a new obsession and want to start learning how to attach the metadata for these photos. 

Next post will focus on Lightroom. I keep calling it Lighthouse... and LightBox... yes issues... I know. :)

 

Day 2: Clarence Gordon Campbell

With day 1 under my belt and all administrative paperwork completed, I was able to look forward to a full day of working with the Clarence Gordon Campbell. The collection is comprised of 1.25 linear feet of files and dates range from 1920 to the late 1930s. It was donated by Dr. Campbell's grandson in 2009.

My task for the next few weeks is to

•  review the collection and 
• create a detailed inventory and a processing plan and 
• compile a finding aid for incorporation into the archive's larger collection

Following typical processing procedures outlined in LIS 714 and LIS 721, I began with a review of the collection's provenance information to have it handy for later use in the collection's finding aid. Thankfully my day-job as a prospect researcher aided me in my efforts to confirm the spelling of the grandson's name (which had two different spelling on the provenance paperwork and deed of gift documentation).

After this, I began to delve into the contents of Box 1 which consisted mainly of manuscripts and typescripts of speeches and article drafts, some article reprints and some correspondence which illustrates the variety of societal impacts (both good and bad), which resulted from the popularization of Eugenics.

Day 1 Take-Away:

• Most scientists have abhorrent handwriting.
• The learning curve for eugenics lingo is not too bad. My favorite phrase is "horrible Eugenics Baby" (referring to a series of "Better Baby" and "eugenics Baby" contests that swept the nation in the mid 1920s, once the idea of eugenics had been popularized).
• I need to speed up my processing time. Two folders in 6 hours of work is VERY slow.

Day 1: What is Eugenics?

Today's activities centered around orientation, paperwork and laying the groundwork for an awesome internship. After a group meeting, it was agreed upon that I would take on three projects:

* a soup-to-nuts accession project culminating in the creation of a machine readable finding aid

* a photo digitization project for inclusion in CSHL digital collection of events photos. 

* work with the grant writer to complete work on an IMLS grant project by identifying eugenics resources for inclusion in the repository's collection

After a morning of paperwork and running around campus for IDs and permits, I was STARVING, so a nice quiet lunch was totally in order.

My ID makes the internship feel so official!!!

The afternoon was focused on familiarizing myself with the topic of eugenics--it's history, key players and it's role in starting the quantitative biology movement. 

The first collection I am working with is a small collection on Clarence Gordon Campbell, one of the past presidents of the Eugenics Research Association and a prolific contributor to Eugenic News. So applying best practices learned in Intro to Archives, I took to researching a basic history of eugenics and the key players using resources available through CSHL collections and then external sources (the notes taken will be included in the finding aid as a historical note). Check out a brief history of the Eugenics Record Office at CSHL (f.k.a. Carnegie Institute of Washington Station).

It is amazing how quickly eugenics was turned from science into an outlet for racism. As a result,  many organizations changed their names repeatedly to distance themselves from those individuals who caused eugenics to become synonymous with racism. 

Tomorrow's activity:  review and examine the contents of each box and folder for contents, condition and structure.

See y'all tomorrow!

LT

Kickstart

This is a test post. It's purpose is to kickstart the blog.