INFO 5090 - Practicum Blog

  I started the day with trying to address some of the problems I had hit yesterday. I wrote a big list, so I could  keep track of them. I had some stuff that needed preservation, mostly a large poster that had been kept rolled  up and a photograph that had been glued into a frame. Not on purpose, it seems like the frame was poorly  made, so someone used glue to keep it together, but the glue spilled out on the actual photograph. I hadn’t  even noticed when the preservation guys were in. When I brought it up to Sam, he said he could take it over  to preservation during the lunch break. Which I’m thankful for because I wasn’t sure how I’d be able to  without a car.  I’ve also realized, two of the series I had initially planned were really too small for optimal containment.  It was technically a lot of stuff but basically two big stacks of paper so they didn’t really take up a huge  amount of space. I talked to Sam about it and he basicall...

  I Spent the day processing the collection. There were no lectures today, so everyone was working under supervision  by eMott in the morning then Meagen in the afternoon. I finished processing the music collection into two medium  sized boxes, there were too many to fit into one medium but not enough to fill one large box. I had to go back and  re-label some of the files I had written before, because I hadn’t written the folder # correctly. I already had a feeling  I hadn’t done something right because for some reason yesterday the sample folder wasn’t on display. I guess  someone had misplaced it. Once I finished the music collection, I moved onto the next series. I put all the photos  from series 4: personal items into plastic protectors, including some that had been kept in frames. I was surprised to  find three portrait photos of some young kids in the back of a portrait of Johnson when he was young. I don’t know  how they got there...

  Today the weather was a lot better, no rain at all but it was really humid. By that morning I had already  gotten approval from our supervisor Sam for my processing plan but I didn’t want to get too deep into the  process because after the first hour we went on a tour of UNT’s fashion collection. The collection was really  cool, there were a ton of different outfits by different designers, from different cultures and time periods. We  got to see a lot of pieces like a jumpsuit made from sequence granny-squares and a piece from the 18th  century that had been worn and repaired for some time by two brothers in Dallas in the 1970s. I took a lot  of pictures. I like to draw a lot, I’ll have to check out their online resources next time I feel like drawing an  outfit.  After lunch, in the later half of the day, basically everyone had started on the actual processing of their  collections. I decided to start with the fifth series in my colle...

  Early in the day there were some really bad storms that knocked the power out in a couple of places. I  managed to get to the library alright even with all the rain. However, because of the outages we had the  schedule flipped for the day. Our supervisor eMott lost power, her alarm didn’t go off and she had to take  care of stuff around her house before leaving. So, she had to give her planned lecture in the afternoon  instead of the morning. I spent most of the morning doing some finishing touches on my processing plan.  Mostly things like reviewing the arrangement plan I had made and double checking any information I had  written down. By the afternoon, I was ready to submit it to Sam for review and the weather had completely  cleared up. It was sunny, a little windy and overall pretty nice. I always get nervous about finishing things  too quickly, because I feel like I must have forgotten something but I hadn’t found any problems by...

  I spent the first half of the day working on my processing plan. I talked with supervisor Morgan about  some of the documents I found that contained possibly identifiable information. She said it’s fine since we  know the guy is deceased, including the stack of IDs we got with the collection. I don’t know yet if I want to  keep all of them. I think the passports and work IDs make interesting artifacts but I’m not sure if they would  all be worthwhile. There is some information on other living relatives but I guess we’ll cross that bridge  when we get there. Even with all the stuff I’ve set aside, there is a lot of physical material that will need to  be transferred to better containers. The second half of the day was at the UNT preservation center. I don’t know why when I pictured the  re-humidifying process I thought of like a steam-room for books. Or like a cross between a dishwasher and  an oven. The actual process was more like a spray ...

   Today, I spent the morning working on the processing plan. There were a lot of materials that came in large  folders so I talked to one of the supervisors, Sam, about whether or not to keep them or move them into  archival folders. He said I should move them out and later in the day when the preservation experts came in  they agreed. The old folders could be acidic or dissolve over time. They also said I should replace the plastic  sleeves used for the scrapbook as some brands can dissolve over time and stick to whatever kept inside. That  seems like a lot of work to do in the future but it has to be done.  I’m a little worried about the amount of material I’m considering discarding. There is a large amount of  published material like movies and music. Sam explained to me it would probably be fine. The library likely  has copies of some of the material already and they could keep anything else in the general collection.  They’ll ...

       Today, we had a lecture on making a processing plan for the first hour of the morning. It was very informative and our supervisors, Sam and Meagan, made sure to put a template for a processing plan and some example plans in the  team's account. I Spent most of the day working on surveying. I looked through the rest of Phil’s scrapbook. I learned  some interesting stuff about his life, career and activism. I was considering it before but now I’m definitely sure it  should be the main part of the collection. The book had a lot of interesting photos and some really interesting writing  about his early life. I kind of wish he had written more about his life. I think he did contribute to a few different  newspapers so maybe more of his personal stories are written down in the world.  I think I’m getting a better idea of the function of this collection now. With the book, the paperwork on his  military career, the papers kept...