Archival Holdings in the Beaufort District Collection

Since it's American Archives Month, now is an appropriate time to reveal my dirty not-so-little secret about the situation of archival collections in the Research Room. 

First of all let me clearly state: The collections are safely stored in our environmentally friendly area. 

Second: The archival collections are not fully processed, and 

Third: I am beginning to despair that they will be by the time when I retire (which could be as early as tomorrow or as late as 2028. I like to have some wiggle room for changes in life circumstances).

 

In addition to other facets highlighted in the 10th Anniversary post a few days ago, I reiterate that the BDC has more than doubled its archival holdings over the past decade, from both new accessions and re-discovered accessions. Plus there's also been a fair amount of transfers of vertical file and government document materials from the branch libraries through time to cull and merge as well and customary and usual library duties, social media tasks, and local history programming to manage. 

When I was first hired I split my time between the Beaufort Branch Reference Desk and what was then called the South Carolina Room. Director Julie Zachowski helped me by letting me concentrate just on the special collection. Director Wlodek Zaryczny helped me by first getting the County to approve a part-time BDC staff person who later became a full-time Preservation Associate position. Director Ray McBride saw how much the BDC was struggling and added a part-time BDC circulation assistant position.  When the BDC had 2.5 FTE all working each week for the full hours allowed (the Preservation Associate, the part-time circulation assistant and me) we were cruising along nicely... but in the past year there were several FMLA circumstances; COVID-19; transformation of the Preservation Associate position into a Library courier position; and the vacancy for the circulation position. Sufficient staffing with appropriate skill sets for a combination library/archives is the BDC management issue of 2019 - 2020 and it looks to continue into 2021 as well. 

In all, there are now more than 175 discreet collections, predominantly relating to local organizations and/or women's history during the 20th century. Inside the Research Room BDC staff use an inventory begun by Ashley Sylva, continued by Amanda Forbes, and tidied up by Samantha Perkins in October 2019 to answer customer questions about the scope and depth of a particular holding. I've added a few small collections and additions to collections since March 2020.

The inventory is definitely a start to garnering better intellectual control over the holdings. But it is only the first step. Too often it's still my personal knowledge of the contents of the BDC upon which I must rely - which has always been something of a dicey proposition. And if nothing else, 2020 has reminded us all that nothing is certain in this life. 

To protect the collection, it has long been my ultimate goal to have Finding Aids for all of the BDC's archival holdings posted in the SCLENDS catalog and on the internet before I retire.  

Sounds simple enough: get the stuff, go through the stuff, describe the stuff, write up the summary about the stuff, and post the write-up on the internet for all to see. But the stuff often varies tremendously in format, quantity, appropriate preservation activities needed, etc. and we are obligated to keep materials created by an entity or person together as a collection. These standards of origin, arrangement, description, and discovery mean most collections have to get at bare minimum 2 or 3 rounds of attention. That can be relatively simple if the overall size of a particular collection is small in quantity of items. However, if the collection is 3 or more cubic feet in size, those tasks can take months or even years to prepare in light of all the other front room and back room archival and reference duties required of our small staff. (You can read about the basics of archival processing from a layman's point of view on Wikipedia if you want to nerd out). I might be more optimistic about reaching this goal if 2020 hasn't proven itself to be an annus horribilis.

To the general public, libraries, archives, and museums are a common group but each of these institutions and organizations have specific ways of handling cultural heritage items per their respective missions as this chart shows.

There are processes, procedures, and professional standards to observe which take training and time to master specific to each institutional type. Archives work requires specific understanding of the theory and practices related to it just as library work and museum work have specific tasks and ways of accomplishing their missions and goals.

Creating Finding Aids requires application of professional standards to the materials in hand with the ultimate goal that a researcher can tell just from the Finding Aid document whether or not it will be worth her/his investment of time to contact the Archives to speak with an archivist familiar with the collection to discuss further whether or not it would be in the interest of the researcher take a look at the materials. 

I was very lucky that both Amanda and Sam had taken archives tracks in Library school and had done internships in actual archives before accepting non-professional positions at Beaufort County Library (in spite of their MLS with archival track degrees). They worked very hard during their times on staff to establish intellectual control over some specific record groups housed in the Research Room while the new part-time circulation assistants, first Melissa Jacobs and then Kristi Marshall, took care of our Research Room customer needs and worked on processing and transcribing tasks. We picked the lowest hanging fruit of the archival collections over the past three years: i.e., the smallest collections with the least processing required and with the most information about when, where, how, and from whom the Library acquired the material. Amanda and Sam each far exceeded their respective goals for finalizing Finding Aids for specific collections which they arranged.

Thus, sixty-three of the approximately 175 collections have basic finding aids, most of which were created between 2017 - 2019 by Amanda, Kristi, and Sam. But other BDC staff contributed as well in earlier years: Ashley Sylva (most specifically the Arnsberger and stereoscope collections that are featured in the Lowcountry Digital Library); Dannielle Landry; Amber Shorthouse; Charmaine Seabrook Concepcion; and Melissa Jacobs.  More than a few of the BDC's past Docent cadre have played a significant part in performing tasks that helped support the creation of Finding Aids:  Laura Lewis;  Harriet Rahm; Carol Holland; Linda Hoffman and the members of the Clover Club. 

We keep a notebook of the Finding Aids in the Research Room for customers and staff to use. 

Unfortunately I remain the bottleneck in getting their work posted online in the BDC's "Links, Lists and Finding Aids" blog. We lost 6 months of staff time between June 2019 and March 2020 due to FMLA needs. And then, there was and has been COVID-19 mitigation efforts that kept staff outside of the buildings. Work continued on other aspects of BDC services but the archival processing side of things came to an abrupt and screeching halt. 

They say that one should always look for a silver lining. So here's the silver lining: The loss of the BDC Preservation Associate position on account of the Library system's need for a courier to transport materials between branch libraries when Records Management could no longer provide that service, means that at least I won't be falling ever further behind on catching up with posting Finding Aids. 

Recent research into the role of public pronouncement of personal goals indicates that telling others about your goals does not increase the likelihood of achievement. However in my case, I haven't  proclaimed my Finding Aids goal to the public at large - and I still haven't managed to get nearly as many Finding Aids as I had wanted up and running. So what do I have to lose? 

Here's a public pronouncement of a modest short-term goal: My goal for Archives Month 2020 is to get at least 7 more Finding Aids posted into the "Links, Lists, and Finding Aids" WordPress blog by Halloween 2020. You can follow my progress (or not) on the WordPress blog. 

Please note: Effective Monday, October 5th, we began scheduling appointments for limited in-facility Research Room services. No walk-ins! Contact me: gracec@bcgov.net; 843-255-6446 at bare minimum at least one working day in advance to make the arrangements. Our public area is quite small and with the COVID-19 guidelines we can only have one customer at a time.