Back to the collection we go! 
This week was filled with a lot of work in the archiving department and I'm excited to fill you in on what I have been working on.   
As I had mentioned in a previous post, there were two office boxes filled with more objects related to the Petteys Papers that had not yet been sorted.  So, that's where my job came into play.  I spent a good deal of last week working to organize a list of what exactly was in the boxes and then I spent time trying to make sense of what categories they should fall into – these are called a "series" in the archiving world.  After flipping through the materials, creating new folders for the binders where documents were originally housed, and some scratching of my head, I came up with three new series to accompany the Petteys Papers and two new series to accompany the artwork itself.  
With that job complete, I moved on to working with some of the series that already existed before I started so I could begin to accumulate all of the information into a digital system called ArchiveSpace. In order to get my footing first, I started with one of the simpler series in the collection – the artist files. This series consists of 21 boxes filled with file folders – each on corresponding with a different female artist's name.  Let me tell you all something, Chris Petteys was an absolute expert in researching.  I mean, she had names of women from all over the world, and even if she could only find one newspaper clipping about them, she made sure she made them a folder and kept that clipping safe.  For some of the artists, there are even letters back and forth with Chris inquiring about information she could not find on her own.  And then for the artists that had more information about them (I.e. Kathe Kollwtiz and Mary Cassatt) there were folders broken down into what could be found within each of them – such as prints, correspondence, etc. I'm just saying, if Chris was anything, it was thorough.  
Since there was a lot to work on in Archives this week, I decided I would spend most of my Friday there as well since only working there Thursday was not going to be enough time to get a real start on entering the information into the database.  While I only managed to get one box worth of files entered before time ran out, I'm happy with where I've wrapped up for now and I'll be ready to keep on moving once I return. 
Before I wrap up this post, I just wanted to note how fortunate I was to of met the Dean and Associate Dean of the libraries this week.  It was wonderful meeting you both, and I hope the work I am doing with this collection does the library proud! 
Until next week, signing out.