Documenting an Archive

Week 3

This week, I began to officially document the contents of the RFPL’s unofficial archive. From the DACS PDF Sophia sent me last week, I created an excel file, assigning the required fields to column names. As I have become a little overwhelmed by the sheer amount of materials, I began with the rather significant collection (64 in total) of Circulation Records, Day Books, and Accession Books. These materials were written by the RFPL librarians, and capture the growth of the RFPL collection over the course of the twentieth century. I found materials that date back to 1905 (which is about seven years after the library was founded), and continue almost yearly through to the 1950’s.

I found documenting these materials to be a surprisingly time consuming process. While some of the information was easy to obtain for all records (ie Name of Creators  - obviously all RFPL librarians, and Administrative/Biographical History – a brief history of the RFPL), it did take time to identify the “Scope and Content” and “System of Arrangement” information for each individual book. Even within a specific type of book (ie an Accession Book), as documentation standards changed over time, different fields of information were collected. In addition, certain years were more meticulously documented by librarians then others. I also quickly discovered that paperback books from the early twentieth century are not particularly durable! I had to be very careful while turning pages, as they are very delicate and very easily ripped. As most of the early books are written in pencil, not pen, I actually ended up wearing gloves while working, which helped prevent me from smudging the pages. By the end of the week, I had documented about half of this collection.

I also spoke to Sophia about the nature of the online archive. We agreed that the purpose of the online archive was to give the community the opportunity to discover the hidden gems of the archive, the information that people would find most interesting. We agreed that the Circulation Records, Day Books, and Accession Books should be documented for internal purposes, but would not be included in the online archive. We expect that all other materials will be included.