Breaking News: Intern in Search of Sasquatchial Finding Aids Proves Successful!
There’s a lot of things wrong that headline, I’m fully aware, but typing out “sasquatchial” was just too fun to pass up; who knows when — or if — I’ll ever type it again. Fingers crossed that someday I will.
So yes, my hiking and mapping from last week led me to the land of finding aids, a much read bout place that I’m looking forward to getting to know a lot better. This week I’m working with the collections that already have some type of finding aid entered for them in Omeka; lose ones that have data in their Dublin Core fields with some pieces still missing or in need or some TLC.
So I’m kind of starting off simple in terms of learning what info there is and where it goes and learning the formatting Mark wants the finding aids to go by. It’s a good toe dip into the pond…ocean…whatever size body of water sounds the most impressive, let’s go with that.
I now know the locations of both the accession and donor files in case I need any supplemental information and also accidentally took home the plastic clip I was using as a bookmark for when I pulled a file. Which I just now realized…whoops. Sorry, Mark!
So far I think the most interesting part of doing finding aids is filling out the biographical notes section since it gives you the chance to really explain what the collection is beyond the collection description. Some of these smaller collections I’ve been working on were actually donated by the person they’re about or that person’s family so it’s fun playing Nancy Drew and finding all the clues to put together to get a picture of who that person was or how that collection came to be in the WWPL archive. The donor files are unique all on their own since they’re kind of the timeline of how an item– a letter or photograph — started in one place and ended up in another and how the process went of acquiring it; it’s something I didn’t think I would find as fascinating as I would. Some items have a detailed history and some don’t…those are the ones I wonder about the most.
