Step 2: Archival Appraisal

Archival appraisal: the process of deciding what has value and what does not, or what should be kept vs. what should be destroyed (or culled). Without getting too involved in the theory, there are essentially three different types of value to consider in archival appraisal:

1. Evidential Value: Do the records provide evidence of particular activities of DEL's life (ie. his personal life, his education, his teaching career and his writing career)? This might include things like personal documents (birth certificate, degrees, etc.), photographs, correspondence from family, friends, colleagues, and publishers/editors.
2. Informational Value: Do the records provide information about DEL, or provide additional context to his life and writings? Is there research value to the records? This is going to be the hardest to appraise because the numerous magazine/newspaper articles and other such clippings that DEL inserted into these albums will fall in this category, and that's the grey area for me. To keep or not to keep, it will be difficult to decide. But more on that later....
3. Intrinsic Value: Does the thing itself (the object, not just the information contained in/on the object) hold value? For example, is there any value in keeping the albums intact? In my opinion the preservation requirements far out-way the need to keep the albums intact. And the albums themselves are in no way valuable. They're cheap magnetic albums probably bought in bulk based on the number of them that are identical. But intrinsic value can be applied to other items as well, and may come into play as I progress through the appraisal process. 

As you can well see from the absence of posts (since my last in January), I've been putting off this next step.
It's a rather daunting task mostly because it involves going through each of the 130ish volumes and evaluating all the bits and pieces. It would be so much easier if there was some sort of rhyme or reason to what is in the albums, but there's not. So I just have to bite the bullet and start at Box 1, Volume 1 and push on through to the end.  Wish me luck!

Arranging the volumes

When I went to Ottawa to pack up the volumes, they were on shelves and not in any order. Most of the volumes have roman numerals on the front cover, though many do not. My job last night was to put the albums in order as best as I could. Here's how I started (picture on the right). 

And the photo below is what it looked like once all the volumes were out of the boxes and stacked in (roman) numerical order. The boxes under the table are volumes that didn't have any number, that I could tell (and some of the busy patterns make it difficult to tell!).

Ugh. These magnetic albums are an archivist's nightmare. I think by now most people recognize that the magenetic (ie. "sticky") albums are not good for whatever you put in them. But if any of you followers are still using them - stop! 

This processing project will involve dismantling each of these albums - page by page - but first taking a photograph of the album - page by page - to preserve original order. Original order is one of the key principles in archival theory afterall. 

And here's the final product (right) - the boxes after they've been arranged in order. Just a few volumes "missing", but I'm sure they'll turn up as I go through the unnumbered volumes more closely.  So here's the thing I'm noticing about the boxes thus far - they're a mess! David Lewis loved to use his scissors. He's got clippings of just about every kind in these albums - images of art, photographs, local interest articles, recipes, newspaper clippings (some of his own, some not), playboy cartoons and just about anything else you can imagine have been clipped out and inserted into these albums. And often, these somewhat worthless items are right next to "the good stuff" ie. personal correspondence and records, like his birth certificate or a deed to property or photographs or letters relating to his publications. Quite frankly, the appraisal of these records is not going to be a fun task.

Before

When you launch into a new project, you should always take a "before" picture, right?   Here are the 12 boxes taking up a lot of space in my diningroom. My theory is: if they're in the way, I have to do something with them, right?  No more procrastinating.  And I have to admit, I have been procrastinating. Back in 2005 (or was it 2006?), when I packed up the boxes, I had them shipped to my mother's house where they'd be closer to their end-destination (Esther Clark Wright Archives, Acadia University). They stayed at my mother's until just a couple weeks ago, when I finally brought the last of the boxes to my apartment. 

Now that the boxes are all together again, I can finally get started on the archival processing, which involves appraising what should be kept vs. what shouldn't, arranging the records (or preserving the records they way they were kept by the creator, DEL), dismantling the albums and rehousing the documents in acid-free folders, and describing the records.

First step: taking the volumes out of the boxes and putting them in order ... but that's for another post!

Where it all began

My research into David E. Lewis's life and writings began in 1999-2000 when I was writing my undergrad honours thesis. My thesis was initially going to look at his short story writing style, but instead, after discovering that there'd been very little written/researched about DEL, it became a oral history/bibliography project. I interviewed several people who were directly connected to DEL, including Jerry Spicer, David's close friend and literary executor. In 2005 Jerry Spicer died, and bequeathed to me David Lewis's papers, all 12+ boxes of them. Since I have archival training and have been a working archivist for nearly 10 years, and since this is an research interest of mine, I thought it might be a good idea for me to take on the archival processing.

So, here I am, keeping a blog to document the archival processing of David E. Lewis's papers.