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.