Pests in the archive

Pests are a constant problem for archives.  In West Texas, we have all sorts of creepy, crawling things. My house is a second home for scorpions.  Once I had to dump a tarantula out of my boot.  My foot and he wouldn’t fit together. I must admit that I have never faced tarantulas or scorpions at work, but on the first week I was at one of the universities a staff member walked in holding a large dead rat by the tail.  Following some construction outside of the library, said rat had apparently followed some plumbing into the basement where the archives are stored and it had been trapped there.  Did I mention that was my first week on the job at that university? To be fair the rat was dead and that never happened again.  Even premier institutions have to be proactive when it comes to pests.  I worked for one of the best museums in Texas.  This museum does everything right, but still I walked into my photo lab there and saw a huge, triple huge roach.  It was at least an inch and a half long.  Those things are fast too. I have no idea to where it ran off.  Several glue traps later and an exterminator and that was that.  Another one of the libraries had mice, dead ones by the time they found them.  One had even thoughtfully died in a trash beg.  Apparently they had gotten themselves trapped upstairs on the second floor somehow.  Now you know why libraries try to limit food and drink particularly to their archives.  Lots of things like to eat or chew paper. Two of the libraries have coffee shops within the facility.  This new trend in academic libraries was adopted to encourage students to use the facilities.  It does work.  Both libraries are busy, but it is a trade-off.  The third academic library limits food to the first floor foyer and any staff food is kept in metal cabinets or a refrigerator.  Since the archives are on the second floor that has been a good compromise so far.  At least all of the glue traps in the archives have remained empty.  That reminds me that I need to tell the third library that they need glue traps in their archives. 

Aside from people and food, one of the biggest contributors to pests entering an archive or library is through the collections donated to the facility.  Often these materials have been kept in a garage or attic where anything can move in and set up housekeeping.  One of the libraries had at least two collections that had been rescued from the trash.  Any new collections should be isolated from the other library materials until they can be inspected or even fumigated.  The Southwest Collection at Texas Tech has a separate room where material is fumigated prior to accessioning into the collection.  Sometimes material can be placed in a freezer if mold is the problem.  Many insect eggs can be killed this way too.  Most institutions don’t have separate facilities, but they should be encouraged to find an alternative to immediately bringing donations directly into the collections otherwise pests will always be a major problem.  Sometimes institutions listen and sometimes they don’t.  

Credentials

For the past five years I have worked as a processing archivist for a consortium of four universities and one public library.  I work as an independent contractor, a position funded by a grant that provides monies for digitization of collections.  Each institution chose the collections they wanted digitized. None of the collections had been previously processed.  In archival speak my job has been to gain intellectual control over the collections that were in the various archives.  Basically my job is determine what is in the collection, gain an understanding of how it is organized if it is, and then develop a processing plan.  The processing plan includes supplies needed to house the material and an overview of the collection with an organizational plan that includes articulation of possible groupings, called series.  Examples of series are topics like correspondence, photographs and so on.  The plan provides a roadmap of how to proceed.

            My credentials for that job include courses in archival science and on the job training.  As I mentioned before I am a certified archivist.  That means that I have certification from the Academy of Certified Archivists (www.certifiedarchivists.org).  To be certified you take a test (multiple choice) that covers all of the topics, called domains, relevant to archival practice from ethics and legal to preservation and protection.  If you pass, you are certified for five years before needing to re-certify. For re-certification you can re-take the test or earn 100 points by belonging to archival organizations like the Society of American Archivists (www.archivists.org) or the Society of Southwest Archivists (www.southwestarchivists.org), attending meetings, teaching, writing articles and so forth.   By the way historically you did not need a degree in archival studies to be an archivist, but that is changing as the profession matures.  Now most jobs do require a graduate degree in an affiliated field such as library science or history.  Most require a specialization in archival studies and experience in the field. The University of Texas at Austin and Simmons College in Boston are two examples of colleges that offer specialization in archival studies or science. There are others Archival Science is a growing field of study and it is fun.  You just never know what you might find.  Actually I did find eight dollars once in an envelope.  It had been in that envelope for over fifty years.  The card said it was gas money from a mother to her son so he could come home to Texas from school in California.  He came home, but never spent the money.  In case you’re wondering, I gave it to the library staff because the donor had no remaining family.  As I remember one of the dollars was a silver certificate so the money had even earned some interest over the years.

Getting started

My name is Mary Lee Bartlett.  I am a certified archivist. “What’s that?” you say.  Well, it is someone trained and deemed qualified to preserve and disseminate information collected by others.  In other words it’s an individual responsible for preserving history or at least some of it and making it accessible to you or anyone else who might be interested. Archival collections record history as it was lived by an individual, group, or business. Sometimes it’s the history of an important world figure while at other times it is the history of an average person important only to their family and local community.  “Why is that important?” you ask.  First our past is interesting.  It really is.  For example, old photographs can provide information about fashion, culture, technology, and the environment. It may be trite, but our past has helped shape our present and will direct our future for good or not.  Hopefully by understanding our past we can better direct our future.  That’s the goal anyway and archivists work to facilitate the meeting of that goal.  At least we try.

That said this blog is about archiving and archives.  It is about what to save and what not to save.  Also it is about how to preserve and how to organize documents and data. On a personal level, it is about the trials and tribulations of one lone arranger in West Texas.  Most importantly it is about some amazing collections that record not only the history of settlement of the West in the 1880s, but also a local version of the issues, such as Civil Rights or censorship, that have and continue to face our country.

I hope that sounds interesting and you will want to follow my story as I try to uncover at least part of the past and make it accessible to you.