#42 - The Letters and Strategy

 If you read either of the last two weeks' posts about the new developments for my Rensselaerville Project, you’ll know, dear reader, that I currently have somewhere above 3000 pages of 19th century letters in my possession. 3000 pages, probably more than 1200 documents, with no inventory, no organization, and no archival preparations. What I do have, and thankfully so, is the prep work done by my Aunt and her mother to place the letters in archivally safe (aka acid-free) sleeves to keep the letters somewhat safe. But I want to be able to use the letters and to do that, I need to be able to find specific letters as well as keep them safe. 

Now where to start. 

I decided to start by poking around inside the boxes to see if there was any sort of method to the madness. I hoped that they were already in some sort of order, maybe by date, or by recipient. If they were just a jumbled mess I would have to figure out a way to organize them so I could find things and perhaps start finding patterns. It would be very interesting to find back and forth conversations! This would also be a good chance to do a quick evaluation of the state of preservation of the letters by keeping an eye out for torn or deteriorated paper. 

After a quick poke around I discovered some very cool things - my Aunt had done a pretty great job rehousing things in acid-free housing and making sure that most of the papers were unfolded and laying flat. I found letters from the 1820s, OMG. Unfortunately, there really did not seem to be a consistent method of organization inside each box or across the full 12 boxes. ..,Not great, dear reader. I also found that many letters had been xeroxed at some point and those pages were incorporated into the boxes, usually but not always paired with the actual letter. I wonder if these were letters that researchers like David Comstock had requested at some point. If my Aunt found them important enough to copy, they might be good letters to start with for transcribing and digitization.

Usually an archivist would try to keep a collection of papers in the same order in which they are found, assuming there was some sort of internal logic. But since these letters do not seem to have a consistent organization strategy it would fall to me to figure one out. This can get very complicated but thankfully, this is literally my job. I work as an archivist who specializes in helping clients and archives survey what they have and organize it to fit their needs and resources. I guess I am the client now!

At this point, dear reader, you may be a little lost - why am I spending this much time surveying the collection when I could be reading the cool old stuff? Well, mostly because I know if I start I won’t be able to stop! But this sort of pre-production stage is immensely important. You really need to think about what uses the collection could have and how you would interact with it before you get started because it can be incredibly difficult to change course once the ball starts rolling. I definitely want to be able to find specific physical letters with an inventory, but I would also like to make the collection usable for others. It would be awesome to have a scholar or researcher contact me and be able to tell them if I might have something of interest. Now, typically, if you use an archive it is generally like playing a game. You request a box that sounds like it might have something interesting - Correspondence 1850-1860. Or a document type - ‘Business Papers, Niles Searls.’ But you usually do not know exactly what is in the box. You do not usually know the specific letters like Niles Searls to Cornelia Niles, May 20th, 1850. But that's why it's like a treasure hunt! It is also a really good idea to think about what you can do to organize the collection by touching the physical letters as little as possible. Most of my letters are over 150 years old and written on brittle, thin paper. I don’t want to be handling them all the time, shuffling them back and forth over and over again. 

Right, so I have two main concerns so far, I need to know what I have and I need to physically touch the letters as little as possible. Otherwise, there are some other things to think about: what are important points of data on the letters that will help me find things and do I want to think about digitizing the letters?

We’ll get into it sometime in the future, but there are different philosophies of archiving about how to strategize archival processing. My favorite is Less Process, More Product; it's the idea that it's better to get everything trackable in an inventory, then go back as time allows to flesh out things like descriptions, transcriptions, and digitization. It prioritizes the physical well being of the papers and getting an inventory together. It's kind of like that business triangle theory thing - Time, Quality, and Quantity - Pick Two. LPMP focuses on Time and Quantity. Other theories would sacrifice time to prioritize Quality and Quantity. The difference here is that I think it would be best for my collection if I had a basic inventory containing the people (writer and recipient) and date, then arranging the collection by some sort of criteria (date? writer?). I could spend the time going letter by letter digitizing it and creating transcriptions, but considering I work full-time, it could take me literal years to process the collection fully. If I have at least an inventory and can find things, I can target certain people or years, digitizing and transcribing specific things when I or a researcher needs them. 

You may have seen this with a lot of big archives over the past year - the Library of Congress, the National Archives, major libraries, etc. They tend to have basic inventories (aka Finding Aids) for collections that give an extremely brief description. Then, if someone requests something from that collection they will send it through a cataloging and digitization process that ends up all online. This way the archives spend their time and money on collections that are being used rather than something that gathers dust. 

And considering I am doing this on my own without funding… I think I will go with a basic inventory first and foremost. Then, I can start slowing processing letters as needed. I will also be able to post the inventory online or show it to people and they can request specific letters for me to process. ...Maybe I should set up a Patreon! Ha.