This week I had the opportunity to process a scrapbook. The scrapbook featured letters and notes from Samuel Brown. Mr. Brown was an African American musician from the Los Angeles region. The most interesting item I found was a rejection letter from a Baltimore university that bluntly stated “this [teaching] position will have to go to a white person.”
This week I also cataloged visual art materials. Everything from movie posters to art prints. I find the most important part of cataloging in a database is to remember to add subjects to the items. The subjects are pulled from the LOC authorities and the Getty Art and Architecture Thesaurus. The AAT comes into use often when dealing with obscure art materials that the LOC has not encountered.
Week Fouteen at The Mayme A. Clayton Library & Museum
This week, the processing staff at MCLM had a meeting with Murtha Baca, the Head of Digital Art History Access at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles, California. During this meeting we discussed what five broad categories to choose to catalog MCLM’s photograph collection. We settled on sports, entertainment, events, California and politics. The Getty AAT was used to decipher which headings would be most relevant.
This week I also attended a webinar, Digital Preservation: Fundamentals. I believe that keeping current with the newest standards and technology in the archiving field is paramount to functioning as an effective archivist. Attending webinars and seminars is an convenient way to stay abreast of current standards in the archival profession.
This week I also attended a webinar, Digital Preservation: Fundamentals. I believe that keeping current with the newest standards and technology in the archiving field is paramount to functioning as an effective archivist. Attending webinars and seminars is an convenient way to stay abreast of current standards in the archival profession.
Week Thirteen at The Mayme A. Clayton Library & Museum
This week I enjoyed a site visit to California State University Northridge Oviatt Library. The facility is impressive housing the archives, special collections and stacks in one building. Our tour of the facility was lead by Mr. Steve Kutay the digital specialist librarian at the Oviatt Library. The most interesting aspect of the tour was the storage unit at the center of the library. The storage unit spans two stories, is completely automated and houses infrequently used records and books. After the tour we went to the CSUN art gallery to view Identity and Affirmation, Post War African American Photography. Being that MCLM is a museum it is important to stay abreast of current exhibits in the region.
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