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: Whitney Applegate
My time as the Archival Field Fellow through SHRAB placed me at the Wayland Free Public Library in Wayland, M.A. Located about 15 miles west of Boston, Wayland was the first settlement of the Sudbury Planation in 1638. As a SHRAB Fellow, I was tasked with arranging, describing, and rehousing three different photograph collections within the Wayland Free Public Library holdings. This was my first introduction to handling photographic mediums for archival purposes and I will admit that I was intimidated at first! Particularly with the first and largest collection, which consisted of a banker’s box full of photographs collected by the now retired library director, Louise Brown. Over the course of Louise’s twenty-six years at the Wayland Free Public Library, she saved and collected photos dating as far back as 1972. Photos included library events for children, Halloween costume parties, and staff photos.
This collection was by far the most time consuming to arrange and describe. The banker’s box full of photos indicated no original order and contained some materials that were inaccessible for our current technology (such as 3.5” floppy disk). Saving every single photo in this collection was unfeasible not only because of the collection size but also content. Some photos were of low quality, and some provided no context on how they related to the library. After conferring with my supervisor at SHRAB, Sarah-Jane Poindexter, and mentors at Simmons University, I felt confident to keep what met the collection scope of the library and discard what fell outside of this scope. I still felt nervous making this judgement call as the archivist in me wants to keep everything, yet I had to acknowledge that a blurry image of a painting with no context to the artist or how it relates to the Wayland Free Public Library does not provide historic significance to the institution.
The second collection included 35mm slide images from a project by the Wayland Historical Society. With the work of 50 different photographers, the Wayland Historical Society commissioned a project titled, “A Month in the Life of Wayland” to capture the community in 1988. Three photo albums were constructed by the Wayland Historical Society which included the 100 most compelling photos from the project. The corresponding 35mm slides of all photos taken by the 50 photographers were given to the Wayland Free Public Library for storage. I was tasked with rehousing over 700 35mm slides into polypropylene sleeves which offers better protection than the small plastic boxes where they were originally stored. This collection also contained strips of photo negatives and 8”x10” prints. Obviously due to the sheer size of the collection, I opted for a “More Product, Less Process” approach, or MPLP. This approach was the right choice which I especially learned when briefly trying to identify any duplicate slides. For anyone without the experience of viewing a 35mm slide without a projector or lightbox, it can be time consuming and headache inducing to try and depict images on such a small scale.
The final collection was the remains of an old photo album containing images from the Wayland Waterworks Centre System in 1926-1927. The photos are mounted on black paper with photo corners and include typed captions which are adhered below each image. It was clear from the start that these pictures were showing signs of decay from contact with the low-quality paper, which was also showing signs of deterioration. The plastic sleeves surrounding each page were brittle and falling apart, and the original leather album was so far deteriorated that only the cover remained. The leather cover showed clear signs of red rot which can damage leather, is irreversible, and will continue to spread without significant conservation. The album cover was probably the most difficult item to deaccession and I sought the advice of a few professionals before making the decision to remove the cover from the collection entirely. In the end, we had to weigh the pros and cons of saving something that requires special handling, storage, and conservation resources to prevent the spread of red rot to other items in the library. We decided a digital surrogate was the best option.
This internship allowed me to put into practice the skills I gained as a Simmons student in the Archives Management concentration, and the encouragement I received from SHRAB members was invaluable. I am proud of the work I accomplished for the Wayland Free Public Library. I arranged, described, and rehoused three different photo collections that preserve life in the town of Wayland, MA so that patrons can access these collections physically in the library where they are safely housed for generations to come.
