The Archival Field Fellowship is a grant offered by the Roving Archivist Program. The Fellowships increase hands-on assistance to Massachusetts repositories and provide emerging archivists with professional experience and mentorship. In 2022-2023, six institutions representing a diverse cross-section of archival repositories are hosting field fellows. As the fellowships are completed, field fellows share reflections and insights about their site experience on the MA SHRAB blog. This program is funded through support from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission.
Author: Zahra Garrett
When given a selection of sites at which to complete the SHRAB Field Fellowship, the Hyde Park Historical Society (HPHS) stood out to me as a top choice. HPHS was founded shortly after the American Civil War and had strong connections to historic abolitionist and suffragette communities in Boston.
When I arrived the volunteers were working on a full inventory in order to start better organizing their holdings, with many photos in tupperware bins, documents stuffed into envelopes and folders, and everything arranged haphazardly in and on top of drawers, shelves, cabinets, and tables. I was excited to jump in and help HPHS start the process of making their collections more accessible to public users.
Kickoff event at Hyde Park Historical Society: from left to right: Tom Sullivan (President of the Hyde Park Historical Society), Victoria Hall (Archives Committee Chair), Tom Doyle (Roving Archivist), Zahra Garrett (Archival Field Fellow), Dr. John Warner ( State Archivist, Massachusetts Archives), Patrice Gatozzi (Treasurer), Denise Dodds (Secretary).
I was assigned the task of processing a collection of materials pertaining to the Hyde Park neighborhood of Readville. Readville was home to Camp Meigs, one of the busiest Union Army training camps during the Civil War. In addition to Civil War era materials, the collection contains resources related to groups and institutions of import to Readville history. The Readville collection is an artificial collection–materials had been pulled from the general holdings and compiled by an HPHS volunteer in preparation of my arrival. The format of materials in the Readville collection varies greatly, from photos and prints, to textual documents, to newspapers and scrapbooks.
Copies of “The Liberator”, an anti-slavery newspaper published by William Lloyd Garrison.
Almost the entire collection was housed in a wide, chest-high filing cabinet upon my arrival. In compiling collection materials, an HPHS volunteer had roughly grouped items together. However, everything was just tossed into the drawers in no discernible order.
Top drawer of filing cabinet with unorganized Readville collection materials.
My first task was to do a thorough inventory, which I think was my favorite part of the process. I tackled each drawer as systematically as I could, pulling out piles in order and inputting data into a spreadsheet. Completing the inventory helped me better wrap my mind around the contents of the collection and started my brain along the process of considering possible arrangement options. (Plus it was fun to look at all of the old photos!)
Drawer with photos of General Henry B. Carrington, a letter from the Maryland Line Confederate Soldiers’ Home, and other materials within the Readville collection.
During the inventory, a major issue was finding several photos with traces of mold and water damage. Since everything was being stored together in common drawers, I bagged the offending items while I consulted with Roving Archivist Tom Doyle about how best to handle them. That’s how I learned that sunlight exposure is an effective means of killing mold–though one also has to take into account how sunlight can fade images.
Collection item with mold and water damage.
Upon completing the inventory, the next issue was deciding on a strategy for arrangement. After considering other options, I decided that a simple solution was best. I settled on separating materials into two series: Series I for materials related to the Civil War, and Series II for everything else. This decision was made based on the small quantity of materials, as well as the anticipated ways future users might search for relevant information.
An important lesson I learned over the course of my field fellowship at HPHS is that everything takes longer than expected. I wildly underestimated the amount of time required to inventory and process the collection. Part of that may have to do with my inexperience, but another part ties into unforeseen roadblocks that come up in doing the work. Perhaps the wrong folders got ordered so you need to wait for new ones; or something is covered in mold so it needs to be treated before it can be reintroduced to the rest of the collection; or you found something unusual so you have to spend time doing research to discover where it fits.
I eventually finished rehousing the documents, packing the majority of the collection into eleven boxes. (Loose objects and a few oversized prints were stored separately.) Once the rehousing was complete, I wrote a simple collection-level finding aid supplemented with a container list. My final task was creating an archival catalog record for the Readville collection in PastPerfect.
Fully processed Readville collection.
I’m grateful for the opportunity I had to gain more hands-on processing experience as an Archival Field Fellow. I’d like to thank Roving Archivist Tom Doyle, who supervisor my work; Patrice Gattozzi and Vicky Gall at HPHS for their help and guidance in navigating the collection materials; and the Massachusetts SHRAB for providing this opportunity to early career archivists.