Preservation in the archives: the Sayles Papers

Sayles House on Sayles Boulevard- Abilene, Texas
Courtesy of the Rupert Richardson Center for the Southwest
Hardin-Simmons University

In my opinion, one of the most important collections at the Richardson Center at Hardin-Simmons University is the Sayles Papers.  This collection is the largest in their holdings (60 linear feet, 89 boxes and folders - As a side note, archives measure collections in linear feet – that is the amount of linear shelf space that the collection will require.  Important to know when determining if there is enough storage space.)  At any rate, the Sayles family arrived in Abilene in 1886 (Abilene was founded by the T and P Railroad in 1881.) and immediately opened the Sayles and Sayles law firm.  But this was not simply a family of lawyers they were also land speculators, entrepreneurs, and businessmen.  Members of the family were involved in almost every economic venture that drove the West Texas economy – ranching, farming, oil and gas, land development, water rights, you name it.  The personal papers of family members, business relationships and activities, as well as legal dealings, are all in this collection.  The one major problem with the papers is that they had been in a fire.  They were rescued from the house where they were stored and many were just thrown into open boxes.  All were dirty, some covered in mud with clear footprints.  Specks of charcoal and burnt wood had also drifted into the open boxes.  Most papers are brittle both from the poor quality of paper used as well as the drying effect of the fire.  These papers are a preservationist’s nightmare.  That’s probably why they had stayed in the boxes mostly untouched for years. 

 

Very damaged papers

I am not trained as a conservator.  That requires special knowledge and expertise.  I was taught to do no harm and that’s the approach we used in dealing with these papers. Some previous sorting by history graduate students complicated our problems.  They had separated correspondence by made up topics, had not attempted any type of cleaning (that was probably good), and filed the papers in open accordion file folders.  That’s where we started after doing an initial appraisal of the collection and developing a processing plan.  That initial appraisal provided clear series divisions for the collection and gave us an understanding of the preservation problems we would be facing.  It took us the better part of a year to get the collection processed.  We lightly dusted the front and back of every page with microfiber cloths and brushes. (Most conservators recommend using soft brushes for cleaning paper. The dirt we faced required a bit more dusting power unfortunately.)  Any papers that were too damaged to save (like the ones pictured here) we photocopied to preserve the information.  The very acidic papers, which were mostly copies of an original letter or document, were separated from the other papers in a particular file by archival bond paper to at least slow down the acid migration.  At some point many of these documents will be scanned and available on line.  At present they are open for research at the Center.  The finding aid with complete inventory is also available on line.  (By the way a finding aid is like a catalog record.  It includes an inventory, a sketch about the collection and the creator, and other important information to introduce the researcher to the collection.)

 This is a great collection to study early railroads in the area, land dealings, and early ranching.  Anyone interested?

The Houston Papers – Richardson Center for the Southwest

            One of the first collections that I processed at the Richardson Center was the transcription of letters and materials either signed by Sam Houston or sent to him.  The letters date from 1826 to 1860 spanning the time when Houston served as a United States Senator from Tennessee, through his tenure as president of the Republic of Texas, and later official documents during his time as governor of Texas.  Some of the letters written during his second term as president of the Republic of Texas deal with the printing of currency to fund the republic.  Other letters focus on personal matters.  Transcription was necessary because the ink is fading on many of the documents.  In addition, handwritten materials are difficult or impossible to word search.  So far OCR (Optical Recognition) software to accurately perform that task is just not all that good.  Apparently schools are no longer teaching cursive writing so future generations will have to rely on transcriptions to read these types of letters.  Seems like a loss to me, but no one asked my opinion.

            For archivists or at least this archivist the history or provenance of these letters and papers is particularly interesting.  They point to problems facing archivists dealing with old papers and highlight the need to maintain the integrity of a collection.  Remember one of my first posts in which I listed the two most important principles of archival processing: provenance and original order.  Both concepts are missing in the Houston papers.  In all likelihood the Houston papers were originally part of the R. C. Crane collection at the Center.  Crane was a Sweetwater, Texas, attorney with a long term interest in Texas history.  He was one of the founders of the West Texas Historical Association and served as president for many years.  He was also a paper collector.  At one time all of his personal papers were at Hardin-Simmons, but these papers were transferred to the Southwest Collection at Texas Tech University several years ago.  Some of the antique papers amassed by Crane were kept at Hardin-Simmons.  These papers include Civil War documents among other things.  None of these antique documents have been processed.  The Houston papers have handwritten prices in one corner indicating that they were sold.  In all likelihood they were separated from the Crane documents because of the importance of the Houston signature.  (Although I have been told that Houston was a prolific writer and his signature is on many, many documents decreasing their value I suppose.  Still it is Sam Houston.)  Any other information regarding the origin of the papers may be in the Crane personal papers at the Southwest Collection.  To my knowledge these have not yet been processed.

            The moral of this story is that collections should be kept together.  Knowing where papers are from, their history or provenance not only authenticates the document, but also provides a complete story more interesting than just a famous signature.

Richardson Research Center for the Southwest

                        This photograph is of the front cover of a brochure describing the collections of the Rupert Richardson Research Center for the Southwest at Hardin-Simmons University in Abilene, Texas.  The brochure highlights some of the material housed at the center and also lists the complete collections that can be found there.  I mention all of this because many of these are collections that I either processed or supervised the processing.  Some of the collections are on line at wtda.alc.org, others soon will be, and some are available for study at the Center.  By the way the Center is in the Rupert Richardson Library at the university (second floor). Rupert Richardson was a prominent Texas historian, the author of numerous seminal books with a focus on Texas and Comanche history.  Dr. Richardson taught at the university for years and also served as university president from 1943 to 1953.  His papers are housed at the Center and include teaching materials, manuscript drafts, and old family photographs.

                        The Center was founded in 1975 through the efforts  of Dr. Richardson and other prominent West Texans.  Dr. Richardson became the first director in 1983.  It was continued by history professor Dr. B. W. Aston with the help of graduate students and now is under the library direction. Members of the historical community, particularly members of the West Texas Historical Association, donated material. Several attempts were made over the years to gain intellectual control of the material, but it wasn’t until the creation of the West Texas Digital archives through the funding of the Dodge Jones Foundation and the Dian Graves Owens Foundation that resources could be directed towards in-depth processing of the collections followed by digitization.  Devhra Bennett-Jones headed the digitization project for the Abilene Library Consortium and as I said I did much of the processing and organization.  Through the increased focus on the collections, the Center now has a full time librarian who has had archival training.  With the increased exposure from digitization of the material, the Center has expanded service to researchers and genealogists from all over Texas if not beyond.  Check it out.  The Abilene photograph collection and the Jesse Wallace Williams Map Collection are particularly fun to peruse.

                        More on what can be learned from the Center’s collections next time.

Conference thoughts on accessibility

           Many of the papers and discussions at the “Digital Frontiers” conference at the University of North Texas dealt with increasing archive visibility on the web. Build it and they will come might work for a movie baseball field, but may not be as successful for an archive or at least not successful enough. I mentioned schema.org last time as a website that provided terms used by web crawlers.  A web sharing site where some of the archives have experienced success is pinterest (https://www.pinterest.com/). Exposure on twitter and facebook are obvious choices visibility.  Blogs are also commonly used to increase interest in an archival website or a particular collection.  The key, of course, to enhance access to your material is appropriate search terms through detailed metadata.

            The definition of metadata is “data about data.” Ridiculous I know.  There must be a better way to describe metadata.  Let’s see how I do.  It is really simple.  A metadata record is a catalogue record describing a digital object.  If you are old enough to remember library card catalogue records then you understand metadata. If you don’t remember card catalogues then consider that metadata provide the explanatory information about the digital object. - who wrote it if it is an article, the photographer for a photograph, a description of the photograph, people in the photograph and so on including information about the scan that created the digital object.  In other words, metadata are the summaries (data) behind the digital object that you are viewing, i..e. data (catalog record) about data (the digital object) if you will.   Anyway these summaries or records describing a digital object among other things enable search engines to find the object.   The more detailed and specific the metadata, the more likely that you can find the exact digital object that you want through a search engine.  An example of detailed metadata would be the listing of all the individuals in a photograph, a date, the place where the photograph was taken and so forth. Standardization of terms helps.  Archivists are working on that.  One important consideration is determination of who your audience will be.  Genealogists are interested in searching using names while a historian might be interested in a time period or subject.  Although understanding metadata as a concept is not difficult creating comprehensive metadata can be.  That will be archivists continuing challenge.