Last day at the archives

Today was my last day at the WLA. I spent the day processing my last two collections. These were both artist's collections belonging to Maureen Warren and Fern Shaffer. However, Ms. Shaffer is actually donating more materials tomorrow so that will be added to what I've already processed.

 Ms. Warren's collection was very interesting because the focus of her work is to juxtapose Eastern and Western art styles. She compares the stillness and flatness of Eastern art with the movement and realism in Western art. I found her painting of geisha's particularly beautiful.

http://my.saic.edu/resource/resmgr/images_barewalls_2009_artgallery/warren__j_050__startled_by_s.jpg

http://www.arceoart.us/collaborations/santitos/pics/maureen_warren_kabuki_st_augustine.jpg

After I finished processing these collections, I did the standard "end steps" of labeling the boxes and folders, creating a title page for this collection to put inside the finding aid, and any other extra steps for safe preservation and storage.

Its really nice to see the boxes of materials you've processed lined up neatly with their labels. Its also fun to go into the basement and find a place to store these new collections among the many others that the WLA has.

More Artist's Collections

 Last week I worked on processing a few more small artist's collections. These collections are fun to do because I get to see the various forms of art and they're small enough to work through quickly.

Specifically, I worked on Karen Hanmer's, Nancy Plotkin's, and Margaret Lanterman's collections. These three women are linked by the fact that their worked has been featured at Artemesia Galleries, which I wrote about in an earlier post. The director of the archives told me that the majority of these new artist's collections came to the archives as a result of her recent presentation at an Artemesia event.

I questioned her about the process of finding donors and gathering collections. She said it can be done on a personal level where someone contacts the archives and an archivist goes to their home or office to assess the size and condition of their materials. Also, its can be done on a larger scale like she did with Artemesia. In either case, the goal of the archivist is to inform the potential donor about the benefits of having their materials archived. The archivists talk about how these materials will be preserved meticulously so that they last much longer than they would in an attic or a basement. They also talk about the value of having these women's materials in the archives as a contribution to the collection of women's history materials.

It is essential that more women donate their materials to archives like the WLA because the aim of this center is to preserve, share, and celebrate women's history. Archivists emphasize that all women make history whether it is Amelia Earhart or Jane Doe. Each of these women's stories and contributions to society are equally important and are necessary elements in the greater collection of women's history.

New Collection

 Today I started a new collection. Since I only have a few weeks left before graduation, the direction suggested that I work on very small collections that won't day more than a few days to complete. So, she suggested that I work on an artist's collection because they tend to be smaller and easier to handle.

I started working on Toby Zallman's collection. She is a Chicago-based mixed media sculptor who has been actively featuring her work throughout the Midwest since the 1980s. Her work is interesting because of the media she uses and the message the emanates from much of her work. Many of her sculptures focus on the juxtaposition of dichotomies such as masculine vs feminine, organic vs inorganic, or hard vs soft.

She uses interesting media including old computers and keyboards and alters their structure to portray some message. I found her keyboard work especially interesting because it is not only altered in form, but also includes a message. In her artist's statement, Zallman says that these are messages from the keyboard to her and symbolize the various relationships in her life.

http://www.tobyzallman.com/PAGES/keyboards5.html

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

http://www.tobyzallman.com/PAGES/keyboards4.html

Labels and women's archives

Today I officially finished organizing the Gannon Center collection, creating the finding aid, and labeling all of the boxes and folders! Its taken a while, but its nice to see all of these documents and materials organized and stored safely. I hope that if a researcher comes to the WLA looking for information about the Gannon Center, this collection will be helpful and easy to navigate!

After finishing with labels, I read an article by Karen M. Mason and Tanya Zanish-Belcher entitled "Raising the Archival Consciousness: How Women's Archives Challenge Traditional Approaches to Collection and Use, Or, What's in a Name?" about the history of women's archives. The authors gave an very interesting overview of the creation of women's archives from the initial realization of the need to archive women's histories to the present.

The authors stated that the concept of an archive dedicated solely to women emerged in the 1960s and 1970s around the time of the feminist movement when women realized that their histories were not being told in the broader genre. Women's contributions to history were not well preserved and were not being included in mainstream histories.

This sparked the increased collection and archiving of women's records and papers and even led to the creation of archives solely for women. However, in the 1980s, archivists realized that many of their collections did not reflect diversity. This was both a lack of racial diversity as well as representation of women from different faiths and social classes.

Many of the women whose materials had been archived were upper class educated women and mostly white. Thus action began to not only find donors from diverse racial or ethnic backgrounds but also from different education levels. The authors then introduced the importance of oral history to archiving. They stated that because they wanted to record the histories of women who were from lower social classes or had not received as much education, they needed to rely on oral history as much as documented histories.

African Activist Archive

Finally, the authors stated that the goal for archivists today is to be as open as possible to new collections and donors and to try and remove biases if possible. Because many archives and archivists tend to be more liberal or identify as feminists, it is important that they remain open minded to donors and collections that may be more conservative or "right-wing" because these histories are just as essential in the greater fabric of women's history.

Slow week at the archives

This week the computers at the archives were all being updated so there wasn't a lot of work that I could do.
Instead of working on my collection, I helped a graduate assistant with her work.
The collection she is working on about Deborah's Place had a lot of news print. In archiving, original news print is often recycled or disposed of because of the low quality and vulnerability of the paper. The originals are photo copied on to acid free paper and as usual any metal paper clips or staples are removed. This ensure that the news article will be preserved for a longer period of time.

I came across some interesting articles about Deborah's Place including the process of opening it and some of the controversy behind it. Some residents of the neighborhood weren't completely on board with the opening of a home for battered and homeless women so close to them, but luckily the center was opened despite any issues in 1985.

For the rest of this week, I will be finishing my collection and possibly starting a new project. More to come later!

This week I worked on the finding aid for the Gannon Center collection. The finding aid serves as an outline or overview for the material in a collection. I began by writing a short administrative history of the Gannon Center covering its foundation, its mission, and some of its activities. All finding aids have this short background whether it’s about an organization or an individual. I then worked on creating subject words which are essentially key words that describe the collection as a whole. The subject words are determined from the Library of Congress Authorities once the collection is associated with one of these key words or subjects, a researcher can use any of them to find this collection online.

                The subject words were kind of tricky to choose because I had to figure out which would encompass the collection as a whole and then see if they were available on the Library of Congress authorities.  A lot of the subjects I chose at first were not available including Ann Ida Gannon and BVM sisters so I chose more general subjects instead like Loyola University Chicago and Women and Leadership.

                The next step in creating the finding aid involves putting all of the folders of material into series and then into boxes. I had my series organized already so I fit all of the folders into boxes and created a list of the folders by each box in the finding aid.

                While the majority of the finding aid is complete, I will have to make some edits and then I will move on to the final steps of creating a collection.     

Creating a Collection

After a lot of sorting and sifting through papers, I've finally finished rehousing all of the documents in the Gannon Center collection into new folders. Although it was somewhat tedious going through the papers, it was actually really fun to see documentation of everything from the initial proposal to create the center to events and especially the many speakers the Gannon Center hosted.

On Tuesday, I began the next step in the process; creating series and a more complete collection. I've chosen four series: Administration, Events, Publications, and A/V. I sorted each individual folder into the appropriate series alphabetically. On Friday, I will begin fixing small restoration errors that I've made like forgetting to unfold documents or using the wrong folders then I will begin to create the finding aid.

The finding aid is essentially the document used to navigate the collection with information about each folder listen by series and box number. The finding aid also requires a small administrative history about the center as well as some key words that can be used by researchers to find the collection. These words are determined by listings in the Library of Congress and are very useful because any of those terms will lead a researcher to the Gannon Center collection.

Finally, I will transfer some of the A/V materials including CDs and DVDs to a digital system called DocFinity so that there are backups of all of the information.

Videos

      Today I moved on to the A/V portion of the Gannon Center collection. Part of processing requires that the archivist look through all A/V material to make sure that it is labeled correctly and is in good quality.
     I watched quite a few video cassettes about G.C. events and lectures which was interesting and I got to see just how much the Gannon Center has done over the years. Among these videos, there were a few recordings of speakers from the Center's Women's Conference including Sandra Cisneros!
     I've been a fan of her writing for a while so I was excited to see her speak at an event at Loyola. She read a piece she wrote for a magazine about the impact of color in our lives. It was similar to this piece.
     Besides seeing Ms. Cisneros, I also came across an interesting film entitle "Brides of Christ" which is a fictional portrayal of nuns in the 1960s in the US. Although I didn't have time to watch the whole thing, I will definitely be checking it out later.
     Finally, I ended the day by watching a student made film from Mundelein College Class of '55. They made a silent film document interesting events during their four years at Mundelein by reenacting each event. It was really interesting to see what is now Loyola's campus from 60 years ago. It was also really interesting to see the environment of an all-women's college on video. Although I've gotten a sense of the feeling of community at Mundelein from other documents that I've processed, it was even clearer in video. There was such a sense of friendship and camaraderie among the women.
    On Friday, I'll be finishing with the last box of videos and then beginning the process of organizing all of the processed material into some sort of sensible order. I can't believe I'm almost done going through all of the material! It's certainly gone by much quicker than I thought, but I am eager to see the completed  collection.

Reproductive Justice

     Today was the first of the WLA spring speaker series so we all got to hear a graduate student give an incredibly informative presentation on reproductive justice in Boricua and Chicana histories.

     She began by explaining to the history of abuses to Puerto Rican women during the 1950s and 1960s. During this time, birth control pills were tested on hundreds of women without their consent or knowledge; they were simply given a pill (which were 20-30 times more potent then than they are now) by a doctor and told that it would be beneficial for their health. Sterilization procedures or "La Operacion" were also widely used on women with sketchy consent forms and little to no knowledge on the part of the patients as to the consequences of the procedure. 

     Consequently, by the 1970s about 30% of Puerto Rican women were sterile; more women than any other country. These atrocities instigated a strong feminist movement by Puerto Rican women to reclaim their rights and recognize the injustices of these procedures. They fought for society to recognize that women had the right to choose whether or not they wanted children.

     The speaker also touched on similar feminist movements in Chicana communities where women embraced their culture and argued that having children or deciding against it was their right. 

    It was also really interesting to understand the differences between feminist groups according to the way they identify themselves. For example, feminist groups consisting of women of color like the Chicanas tend to incorporate both sexism and racism in their work while White feminists often focus on sexism alone. This difference can be seen, for example, in the way Chicana women celebrate their position as women and caretakers for large families while some White feminists might see this as sexist and a result of patriarchal society.

    Finally, the speaker told us about some organizations that are focused on the issue of reproductive health in Latina women like Mujeres Latinas en Accion.

    The speaker was great and I'm so glad I got to hear about an issue that is under publicized or even unknown. 

I'm a real archivist!!

...not really, but I did get to try out a different step in the archival process; accessions.

busy at work with the Gannon Center collection

     This is the first thing that archivists do after receiving material from a donor. The process includes looking through the material and using pretty vague categorization to input information about the collection into a software program like Past Perfect or Archivists' Toolkit. Since this is a preliminary step, the description of the collection doesn't have to be very detailed.

     While going through this collection, which was donated by a Mundelein College alumna, I was floored by how much stuff this woman has preserved over the years! She has all of her class notes, exams, syllabi, and papers from high school and college! 

 

    The best part of going through her materials, dating from 1963-1968, was that there newspaper clippings and fliers from that period. I found a news story about JFK's assassination in her high school newspaper and a flier advertising an anti-Vietnam protest. It was so interesting to see the similarities between the message on that flier and the Occupy movement today; apparently things haven't changed very much. 

2011

    

1968

 After putting the information into the software, I returned to the Gannon Center collection and continued sorting through everything. I got to the planning/proposal material which outlined how Carolyn Farrell and others began the process of opening the center. I'm almost done with print material so on Friday I get to move on to A/V!!

Archival Science

If there's one thing I've learned during my time at the WLA its that archivers are incredibly patient! Event going through my small collection is pretty painstaking. The amount of paper and information is a little overwhelming; I can only imagine the difficulty in managing a larger collection!

Even though its a little tedious and monotonous going through this material, its still interesting. I've learned a lot about the history of Mundelein College and the spirit of feminism and social justice that pervaded it. There a bunch of pictures from Mundelein at WLA's new facebook page:

While going through the materials in this collection, I've also learned about archival science. There is actually quite a bit of chemistry that goes into the process of archiving. Folders and boxes must have a pH of 7 so avoid acidification, photos must be kept in enclosures, and all metals (including staples and paper clips) must be remove to avoid oxidation/rusting which would damage the material. As a science major, I thought this was very interesting and it was nice to be able to see a bridge between science and history.

Sorting through the boxes..

Last week I began the task of sorting through a relatively small collection on the history of LUC’s Gannon Center. Although this is a small collection in comparison to some of the other ones that the archives have, I was pretty apprehensive about starting to sort through the material.

The archivist is responsible for categorizing the material and then creating series by combining similar categories. This didn’t seem too bad; what was scarier was the sense of responsibility around processing a collection. As the one doing the processing, I’m responsible for deciding what is important and what can be discarded. This is difficult for me because I worry that I might overlook something or throw something away.

 Although the task seemed daunting at first, once I started it was actually really fun. I got to sort through lots of material including pictures and brochures and in doing so got to see a lot of different forms of history.

One of the best things about handling this collection is that I get to learn a lot more about Mundelein College which was the last all women’s Catholic university in Illinois. When Mundelein merged with Loyola in 1991, there was a movement to preserve the heritage and spirit of the institution by creating a women’s center.

It was interesting because as Loyola students we hear about this history, but only from the perspective of Loyola’s board and administrators. What we didn’t hear was that there were a good number of Mundelein alumni that didn’t want the merge to take place because they felt it would be a disservice to Mundelein. It’s nice to be able to learn both sides of this issue.

I got through a good amount of material last week, but I still have a lot left. I’m excited to learn more about the Gannon Center and the women who founded it. 

First Task

 Today was my first official day as an intern. The director gave me a brief overview of the history of archival science which was actually really interesting. Admittedly, I had always imagine archives as dark basement rooms where people hide out and do research. While that might be true in some cases, according to the director, the WLA has been moving towards being more access oriented so that its more inviting for people to come in and out.

Archiving in the US began formally in 1934 with the creation of the National Archives and Records Administration; a New Deal program. At first, most archives were kept for government related histories. At the height of the Civil Rights Movement and the creation of political identities, people began to question how their own histories, ethnic, racial, or sexual, were being documented and preserved. This led to the formation of special interest archives like tribal archives in many American Indian nations and like the WLA.

She also told me about the issues of privacy and restricted access that go along with archival science. I'm actually a little anxious to be handling some of this material knowing how sensitive it is. However, she assured me that its not easy to miss restricted materials because they're usually labeled extensively.

My first task was to answer a reference question sent in to the WLA. The inquiry was about the process of creating a women's center like Loyola's Gannon Center for Women and Leadership at another school. I began by looking into collections about Carolyn Farrell, BVM, who was founded the center in 1991.

Carolyn Farrell, BVM

Her collection is massive; over 26 boxes divided into folders by subject. I learned how the archives and boxes are organized and then began my research. There is a wealth of information in this collection and it was a little daunting because I'm wasn't quite sure what to look for or how to find it. Still, its really interesting to look into this history with tangible material, like letters and brochures, rather than just reading about it in a book or online.

I didn't even get through one box today... but I'll be working on this project again next Tuesday!

Entering Piper Hall!

Ever since my freshman year at LUC, I've wanted to explore Piper Hall which is a beautiful building on campus located right on the shores of Lake Michigan.

Piper Hall was purchased from Albert Mussey Johnson in 1934 and originally used as a library by Mundelein College. Today, Piper Hall is the houses the Gannon Center for Women and Leadership, the Women and Leadership Archives, and the Women and Gender Studies Department.

As a new intern at the Women and Leadership Archives, I finally have a reason to go in and look around! The interior was beautifully restored in 2005 and features a grand staircase and the Tiffany Stain Glass above. I got the full tour and felt so exclusive when I went into the archives in the basement! The collection are kept in a environmentally monitored room and are stored in these awesome compact shelves that have a helm-like contraption to open and close them.

 My project at the WLA will involve processing and digitizing a collection and then hopefully creating an online exhibit. There's still a lot that I need to learn, but I'm excited to get started!