Day Four - May 23, 2024

 

 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 probably keep an issue of a rare magazine called Adam, which I think was a source for gay news 

and culture. I haven’t heard of the brand before but it’s been kept in a pretty good condition. I think, there’s 

also a huge amount of identifiable information in the form of medical and army documents. I’ll have to go 

over with Morgan about what’s okay to keep and what should be censored or locked or whatever. I’ve started 

to figure out how I think the final collection should be structured. I’m a little unclear if a “series” should be 

kept in individual boxes or if you can put multiple in one. I’ll have to remember to ask about it tomorrow. 

The preservation experts I mentioned gave a presentation after lunch. It was interesting to hear about some 

of their processes. I’m looking forward to the trip.