Thursday, May 5, 2011

Week 15

As this is the second to last week of this capstone experience, I worked mainly on finishing record-keeping, including drawer lists and database records for the collection.  I also checked with my field supervisor about the collection storage and status of the transfers so that there would be no confusion after I leave.  I hope next week to have all my notes and documents organized and in place so that the next person to use this collection will have all the information available.

Saturday, April 30, 2011

Week 14

This week I turned in the first draft of the finding aid for review by the Manuscripts and Art Department.  Hopefully only minor rather than systemic changes will be necessary in the revision phase.  The final two weeks will be dealing with the odds and ends left over from the various objectives and leaving the institution with an organized record of the collection and all materials stored in final locations.

Friday, April 22, 2011

Week 13

As this project is wrapping up, I am focused more on tying up loose ends and asking for critiques and advice from interested parties.  Since the art collection has never had an artist whose artworks where so closely tied to a written form of expression, there is no clear-cut template to follow.  Still, I am trying to make every attempt to follow the standards of institutional finding aids and documentation as that will make my work clearer to the people I am working with as well as the end user.
I have a working draft of the finding aid and after an close proofing, it will given to my supervisor for comments and a consultation appointment with the Manuscripts department concerning appendices dealing with Manuscripts materials. 
Hopefully next week, I will be able to make final drafts and wrap up some of the aspect of the project.

Friday, April 15, 2011

Week 12

As nearly every art item has been accessioned and housed and half of the collection has already been moved to its permanent (for now) home, the documentation process has taken the center stage over artworks themselves. 
Combined with the encroaching deadline (see: the end of the semester), I have begun to encounter more and more hard decisions that need to made.  Of course in most instances, particularly in the organization, appearance, and content of the finding aid, many of these decisions are able to be changed, though likely at a considerable time/effort cost.  Luckily, the bulk of the finding aid is a similar table structure to my inventories, so this section mainly needs cleaning up and standardizing that was missed during that phase.  The appendices, though, are the aspect that I'm currently stressing, as this is where the non-art aspects of the collection get integrated. 

Because EP is a poet as well as a printer and often combined the two forms of artistic expressions in singular or related artworks, I knew from the beginning that I wanted the finding aid to address and make accessible the folders of notes and finished poems she has sent.  Currently, Appendix I includes the box number, an alphabetized list of all the poems, her numbering system for the poems, and whether notes and drafts are included.  Appendix II has a list of prints with their accession numbers and corresponding poems with their numbers. Appendix I has the real potential to change beyond design and appearance, as really the table could be ordered by box/folder location (the order they were shipped in) or by the numbering system the author gave them, rather than alphabetically.  While all of those elements are evident in the table, because this is a static document rather than an electronic one (regardless of whether it will one day be placed on the institition's website, it does actually matter to a degree which elements is sorted.  That is something I will have to consider and consult with colleagues, especially as art collection finding aids rarely contain information about not art objects.

Thursday, April 7, 2011

Week 11

While still accessioning and housing art objects, I have begun to place segments into the finding aid template.  There are still many decisions to be made, but it looks like most of my plans and previous data organizing will be usable in the final document.  I hope to have the finding aid draft finished by the end of April, so that it can go through revisions by relevant parties, leaving me with enough time to make corrections before the end of the semester. 
I will also need some of that time at the end of the semester to organize my notes and documents into a collection binder and accession folder, so that they can be consulted in the future by the department.  While I probably should have started that process at the beginning of this project, now that my filing structures are only understandable by me, it makes most sense to wait until the end and organize it all at one time.  Hopefully it won't be too difficult to make sense of!

Friday, April 1, 2011

Week 10

Most of this week was spent organizing the prints into related groups and then those groups chronologically so that they can be accessioned and described in the finding aid.  I also completed nearly all of the housing and am on track to complete housing and accessioning within the time frame I indicated last week.

Friday, March 25, 2011

Week 8/9

By now I should hopefully be over halfway done with this project.

Here’s my checklist currently:

Inventory
completed: (separate documents organized by shipment # and by type of item: EP Works, Other Artists Works, Manuscript Transfers, Book Transfers)

Housing
completed: drawings
to be completed: prints (40%)
estimated time to complete: 6 hours
   
Accessioning
completed: drawings
to be completed: EP prints; other artist’s works; artists books
estimated time to complete: 12-14 hours

Finding Aid
completed: biographical sketch
to be completed: scope note, contents; appendices (25%)
estimated time to complete: 10-12 hours