Week 5

This week I finished spreadsheets covering every item in the collection and made it 3/4ths the way through double checking the details of each item.  Next week I hope to move to organizing the Drawings, Proofs, Prints and Artist's books by medium, chronologically in time, and by their connection to one another so that I can assign accession numbers that are useful and convey a sense of the scope and of the inherent relationships in the collection. 
I will also need to spend time deciphering the organization structure the artist employed.  She numbered the collection in the process of packing and creating records for the works.  Her numbers for the items will be preserved in the final records, but on consultation with the Associate Curator, we decided not to follow her numbering system in the accession numbers.  I also hope to have a list of questions that I still have not answered about the items and her records to write to the artist in the next week. 

Week 4

To follow up on last week's visit with an archivist at the institution, I have requested some books to get acquainted with archival methodology and practices.  I also had another conversation with him about ways of presenting information about publications and poems in the collection, while still maintaining the focus on the artworks.  I will be looking for institutional finding aid examples to see if there is a collection that is a hybrid of art and manuscript or book items, and if so maybe gleaming some organization ideas from it.  If not, I will likely be using indices at the end at the finding aid to tie the poems and books to the art items.
Most of this week was spent trying to find the best ways to display these various connections between poems, books, and art in the collection.  Often a single print in the collection can be related to a proof, another print, a poem, and a publication.  Making those connections easy to understand and read may be the most important and time consuming element of creating this finding aid.  While EP did provide a lot of documentation for the collection items, sometimes particularly when it involves the text of her poems, tracing the connections can involve some extra thought and time with the items.  Despite this I hope to soon move from beginning inventory lists to accessioning the art items into the collection.

Week 3

This week, I talked with an archivist in the book cataloging department about collection processing needs.  He will be sending me some information regarding general and institutional specific archival processes.  I was particularly interested in discussing ways to keep connections between book and manuscript items that will be transferred to other departments in the institution and prints and artworks which will stay in the art collection.  He will also be sending me a new template for findings aids that has just recently been changed, so this collection will be the first to use this new, slightly tweaked, finding aid format.  After seeing this new template, I hope to get a better idea of ways that those connections can be readable to users of the finding aid.
To prepare for this task, I have been making notes regarding the books and manuscript materials and how they relate to one another, as well as to the art items.  That information will be applicable to the finding aid as well as the inventory.
Next week I will continue with the inventory process.

Week 2

I spent most of this week matching artworks to the files and inventory lists sent with the collection.  In many cases additional information needed to be recorded from the artworks and on occasion collection materials did not have corresponding files.
At the end of this capstone, this information will need to be recorded in 5 ways:

1. Collection Inventory File
2. Accession File
3. Finding Aid
4. Artwork Storage Inventories
5. Database Records

 As I have not been able to make final decisions yet about the structure of all of these documents, I decided to start with a template for the artwork storage inventories which generally contains the least amount of information.  This storage inventory template also contains all the information that needs to be gathered directly from the artworks.  This means that after completing the storage inventories, I can then organize, accession, and store the artworks.  The other documents can then be created by working with paper and electronic records, lessening the need to move and consult with the artworks themselves after accessioning.    

Next week, I hope to finish storage inventory lists for 1/2 to 2/3 of the total collection artworks.