Assignment 1: Repository site visit and report Submit Assignment Due Jun 26 by 12:59am Points 25 Submitting a file upload Make an in-person visit to an archival institution on your own, review a finding aid (online or at the repository), and request access to a physical collection (or portion thereof) for your examination. Do NOT take a tour; the point of the assignment is to replicate the experience of an archives user. Summarize your experience in a report, with a particular focus on patron services. Examples of the types of details to include: If you were able to consult a website before your visit, how easy was it to find the information you needed? Which procedures were necessary to gain access to the collection? What security measures did you observe? Was the finding aid sufficiently detailed, accurate, helpful? Did you speak to an archivist? (approx. 8 pages)
WHY? Many students have never visited an archive – or, more importantly, they have never made a visit as a user. It's hard to be conscious of all the factors that go into a “successful” visit to an archive as a researcher unless you go through the process. It's also an easy way to break the ice; many people find visits to archives intimidating. Much depends on the repository, its policies and procedures, and (of course) its staff.
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Rubric Site Visit Rubric (1) Site Visit Rubric (1) Criteria Ratings Pts This criterion is linked to a Learning OutcomeDescription of repository view longer description Description includes appropriate general details about repository and website (if available), and relates them to procedures observed 5.0 pts Description includes general details regarding physical location, size, scope, and purpose of repository (3-4 pts) 3.0 pts Minimal or no description (0-2 pts.) 0.0 pts 5.0 pts This criterion is linked to a Learning OutcomeDescription of access procedures and services Description includes procedures, etc., and discusses in terms of course readings 5.0 pts Description includes procedures necessary to access collection, restrictions, level of assistance from staff, etc. (3-4 pts.) 3.0 pts Minimal or no description (0-2 pts.) 0.0 pts 5.0 pts This criterion is linked to a Learning OutcomeAssessment of finding aid Assessment of adequacy of finding aid in general and in terms of the particular collection reviewed; course readings referenced 5.0 pts Assessment of adequacy of finding aid in general terms (3-4 pts.) 3.0 pts Little or no discussion (0-2 pts.) 0.0 pts 5.0 pts This criterion is linked to a Learning OutcomeReview of retrieved collection Discussion of factors related to ease of use of collection, with reference to course readings 5.0 pts Discussion of ease of use of collection: arrangement/ organization of documents, reading room facilities, security, etc. (3-4 pts.) 3.0 pts Little or no discussion (0-2 pts.) 0.0 pts 5.0 pts This criterion is linked to a Learning OutcomeGrammar, spelling, academic writing style; APA citations No grammar, spelling, or style errors. Professional writing. Correct APA style in compliance with 6th Edition. 5.0 pts 1-2 grammar, spelling, or style errors. Basic APA format correct, may have up to two small errors (3-4 pts.) 3.0 pts More than 2 grammar, spelling, or style errors in text; more than 2 APA missing elements or style errors (0-2 pts.) 0.0 pts 5.0 pts Total Points: 25.0
My Visit to the Clay County Archives and Historical Library in Liberty, Missouri By Brian S. Whitmer – June 25, 2017 – 809XI Author’s Note I begin the account of my visit with a confession. I attended college in Liberty, Clay County, Missouri in the late 80s-early 90s and never once during that time did I visit the archives - even though I was a history major and often passed the building on my way to and from campus. When it came to choosing an archives to visit for this assignment, I knew I would choose the Clay County Archives and Historical Library (CCAHL). Curiosity and a bit of shame were strong motivators. My secondary motive for choosing the CCAHL was the connection to my father’s ancestors who had come to settle in Clay County in the 1830s. I decided to see what holdings related to them might be available in the archives and made that the focus of my visit. I began planning my visit to the CCAHL by first visiting their website and exploring the information posted. The website itself is a dated and reflects web site design standards from the late 1990s. Clicking on the search link on the main page, I attempted to perform a search for the name “Whitmer” but nothing was found. Investigating further, I determined that the search was only retrieving information located on the actual website itself. Clearly, this was not a finding aid for the collection resources. I kept exploring the website and was able to determine the hours of operation (Monday thru Wednesday) and note the daily $5 research fee - paying $15 would give one an entire year’s access as a CCAHL member. I also found a brief account of the origins of the CCAHL which according to the website: After many meetings and a lot of leg work to determine the best location for these records [the original records in the custody of the Clay County court] and the group to care for them, it was decided to create a new not-for-profit organization and space was found in a single room in the Administration building of the Odd Fellows Home on South 291 Highway. The Clay County Archives was incorporated in 1979 and the work of moving the records from the County Home to the room in the Odd Fellows Administration building began. (CCAHL website)
Later, the CCAHL moved to the former location of the original Liberty branch of the Mid-Continent Library System and as a result of the bequest of the building’s donor, the building was to remain a library in perpetuity. Hence, the words “Historical Library” in the full name of the CCAHL. The type of holdings in their collection was listed along with publications available for purchase. Short descriptions for each holding type were present on each item’s page. The collection list included: (1) Government – affidavits, birth/death records, census records, circuit court records, coroner’s inquests, county court records, tax lists, marriage returns, naturalization records (2) Land – deeds, gazetteers, land abstracts, land grants, maps & atlases and (3) Other – black history, cemetery/obituary, family histories, footprints in Clay, genealogies, newspapers, photographs, published volumes, school records, scrapbooks.
I also decided to look to look for the CCAHL on social media and discovered their institutional page on Facebook. The account is current and there are numerous posts describing events, items at the archives, local history, patron reviews, and a locator map. There is also the option to message the archives using Facebook messenger with a note saying “typically replies within an hour.” Armed with the knowledge I had gleaned from the website, I was ready to make my first in-person visit on Monday morning, June 19th. On-street parking was available but the main parking was about a block away in the municipal lot. The main entrance to the building is up two rather steep outdoor flights of steps which made me wonder if an accessible entrance to the building was located. There is not. Upon entering through the main doors, I was in a small lobby with a tall front desk behind which were two members of the archival staff (Stuart Elliot and Diane Davidson) who both greeted me. There were probably 5 other patrons in the building that morning. I had my laptop bag, clipboard, and jacket pocket with pens & pencils. I wasn’t asked to check anything in. I volunteered that this was my first visit to the archives and they welcomed me and gave me a brief description of the holdings available and asked what information I was looking for that day. I told them I wanted to look up information on my family ancestors and gave them the last name “Whitmer”. I paid my $5 daily use fee, and Stuart turned to the computer to his right and entered the name into his electronic finding aid and then printed out a list of holdings indexed by the last name of “Whitmer” in the collection. 28 indexed items were available on the list. Stuart explained that there might be additional information but if so, it hadn’t been indexed yet. I decided to start with my father’s direct ancestor, Jacob Whitmer, who was represented on the list by his entry on the 1836 poll tax list. Stuart and Diane guided me to a table in an alcove and they pulled the binders on the shelves that contained the photocopies of the tax records for the approximate range of 1836. After about 5 minutes of searching through the binders, we located Jacob’s entry. He was assessed for the value of one horse ($20), cattle ($20), a watch ($8) for which he has assessed a poll tax of .44 cents for the 8th congressional district. As we talked I volunteered more information about my family history and explained that much of the documentary evidence for the Whitmers would probably be in Ray or Caldwell counties since they were evicted from Clay County by anti-Mormon vigilantes – just as they had earlier been forced to leave Jackson County. Looking through the printed list, I decided I would like to take a look at a court case indexed under the title of “Judge Whitmer’s House” which was from March of 1878. Stuart used the list to look up the box and case file that contained the case recrods. He returned with a large archival folder which contained the actual affidavits, written testimonies, and other official documents related to the case. I was able to handle these old documents – no gloves were required. I was struck immediately by the quality of the paper – it was very high rag-content and much thicker and more durable that typical paper in use today. I was also surprised to see the familiar light blue grid and vertical magenta line on many of the documents – just like the notebook paper I used in elementary school. Deciphering the handwritten documents was somewhat difficult but I was surprised at the high level of penmanship. With practice, this would become easier to read. I browsed the documents looking for specifics on the case and determined that the issue seems to have been a loose board in front of Judge Whitmer’s house that was stepped upon by the husband of the plaintiff which then struck and injured her. I eventually tracked down the ruling and the plaintiff was awarded the sum of $750! The record of the final verdict was signed off on by a judge from the supreme court of Missouri on an official court form. As we talked about the properties of the paper and printing, Stuart volunteered that another archivist had made an informal collection of the various clips, binders, and pins used to hold documents together in past and he left and returned with it. It was fascinating to rifle through these old artifacts of “office” technology. I was reminded at this point of the security precautions that were taken at NARA as described by one of our guest speakers, Joyce Burner, during our first class weekend. AT CCAHL unlike the security-intensive NARA, It was would have been possible for a motivated person to steal a document from the folder, hide it in a briefcase (or clipboard which I had with me), and leave the archives. I would imagine this is a concern for many small, donation-supported archives who lack the deep pockets of a federal body like NARA. Stuart then brought me over to a computer on a high table that allowed standing access and we then accessed the photography collection. Stuart had built the database that the archives used for catalog its materials and we talked about the IT resources used in the archives. The entire database was built using FileMaker Pro which he had selected for ease of use, cost, and flexibility. As I watched, Stuart looked up various images of Whitmers in the photographic collection. Stuart told me some of the history of the image collection – many had come from the studio of Jacob T. Hicks who had a photography studio on the Liberty Square in the mid-to-late 1800s. Noticing that many of the images of David Whitmer were labeled as coming from the Hicks collection, Stuart retrieved a printed book about Hicks published by the Clay County Museum and as I thumbed through the book, I learned that David Whitmer and Jacob Hicks were close personal friends which accounted for the numerous portraits of David. I also learned that Hicks was given permission to photograph many historic Mormon church documents that were in David’s possession. Included was a document now called the Anthon Transcript – which I later looked up. According to the Wikipedia entry: “The “Anthon Transcript” (often identified with the “Caractors Document”) is a small piece of paper on which Joseph Smith wrote several lines of characters. According to Smith, these characters were from the golden plates (the ancient record from which Smith claims to have translated the Book of Mormon) and represent the Reformed Egyptian writing that was on the plates” (Wikipedia, 2017).
This was this first mention I ever heard of this document. I did a little more web research and came across an interesting website that went into great detail regarding the photo which apparently didn’t come to light until 2012 (Mormonitemusings, 2013). Stuart was called away to help other patrons, and I thanked him for showing me the photographs and the book on Hicks. I returned to the desk and thumbed through the Whitmer case file. I was then joined by Diane who had remembered seeing Jacob’s name on a monument located in the north part of Liberty which she had recently photographed for a local boy scouts project. She had images of the monument on her phone and I looked through them. This then lead to a general conversation about monuments and cemeteries. Diane explained that she was working as a volunteer at the CCAHL because of her interest several years back to find, document, and improve the site of her husband’s ancestor’s family cemetery. She had used the archives to discover the ownership and historical records available for the cemetery which had been abandoned and now resided on a local resident’s farm. Her research eventually lead her to the owners of the property, the Mormon Church in Utah. She made contact and negotiated a five-year contract with the Church to allow her to improve the property. She cleaned up the physical site, looked for buried headstones, and has commissioned a metal sign to mark and identify the cemetery location. She enjoyed the work and ended up becoming a volunteer. Her current project was to document the cemeteries and graves in Clay County logging them into a comprehensive database as well as nnvestigating new discoveries and documenting sites that needed more information. As we chatted, serendipitously, a local man from Smithville, arrived to meet Diane and to volunteer as a cemetery researcher for the northern part of Clay County around Smithville Lake. It turns out he had already been doing this on his own for many years and had already documented over 900 graves for the website findagrave.com. They talked briefly and agreed to meet again soon. I made a note to check findagrave.com for records of Whitmers in Clay County. Stuart returned and gathered up the folder with the Judge Whitmer court case and returned it to it proper box. At this point I had looked through the materials I was most interested in and so asked Stuart some general questions regarding the holdings and some of the history of the archives itself. Stuart gave me a very brief tour of the archives space pointing out the items housed on the steel frame shelving. Most of the most commonly requested materials were on this main floor, but much more was available in the basement level of the building. Stuart explained his role in the archives and how he had come to the archives after working 20+ years as the IT person for the county courthouse a few blocks away. Though not trained as an archivist, he had taken on the role of IT chair and had single-handedly built the database that the CCAHL uses to catalog its holdings. I then asked him if I could schedule an interview with him for my informatics class and he readily agreed. I thanked him for his time and told him how much appreciated his help on my research. At this point, a classmate from my old college who volunteers at that archives approached me and we struck up a conversation. He explained his past and current projects there at the archives and I gathered that he had been volunteering for many years. He showed me a copy of a booklet on the historic homes and buildings in Liberty that he had provided the research for along with pointing me to some online resources he thought I would find interesting. I thanked him and took my leave of the archives. I had been there over 3 hours. I so was engrossed by the research and the interest shown by the staff and their interest in helping me track down information that the time had flown by. I repaired to a local coffeehouse and wrote of up my immediate impressions. This was a surprisingly fun assignment and I now feel more grounded in the experience of an archives and many of the concepts that we’ve discussed in class and the readings have taken on a more concrete form in my mind. Clearly, the resources and character of the staff make a large contribution to the value of the institution and the experience of a patron. Much like the differences between a mom & pop shop and a big box retailer, there is a significant gradient of expectations between NARA and CCAHL. I can see myself volunteering there in some capacity in the near future. I’ve already paid the $15 for a yearly membership. Post-visit followup After my visit to the archives, I returned to the CCAHL website another day and was able to locate the finding aid used during my actual visit to the archives. It was somewhat confusingly named Clay County Archives Master Index Inquiry and was tucked under the menu item titled resources instead of being a prominent feature of the website. A typical record returned from the search included the name of the collection it was located in, the location to its physical location, and a cursory description of the item. The finding aid on its own is insufficient to glean much information on individual items necessitating a visit to the archives or phone call to determine if the material would be what a researcher was looking for. Because the staff is still indexing much of the collection, the finding aid is necessarily incomplete but researchers seem to have relatively unfettered access to the collection which is in the spirit of Greene & Meissner – indexing and processing shouldn’t get in the way of access. From my limited exposure to the collection, the finding aid seemed to match the collection. Both Stuart and Diane were able to quickly find and retrieve the items I requested. If space ever proved an issue, I would guess that the collection might stop accepting the scrapbook and family histories that are apparently a part of the collection but overall the items of the collection seemed very relevant to needs of the local community. This definitely reflected many of the topics dicussed by Millar in Chapter 4. CCAHL served as a touchstone for community memory and identity for Liberty and Clay county as well as fulfilling the role of records keeper for the legal documents of the county. As I thought about my visit in relation to the article by Yankel & Torres, I was definitely helped in my role as a user of the archives by having made strides in my archival intelligence. Knowing what to expect, visiting with a clear research objective, and being under no illusion of the “immortal, omniscient, indispensable reference archivist” I was able to help guide the staff to finding resources appropriate to my requests (Yankel & Torres, 58) and avoid looking for materials that would be more likely to be in another county. Had the staff not been as friendly and helpful as they were, I could imagine the first visit to an archives would be much more intimidating especially when it’s not clear what the behavioral norms are. There is definitely a learning curve to using the resources of an archives and it seems like a lapse in my undergraduate education that we never visited the institution as part of studying American history. But that learning curve is easier to overcome when one gets the opportunity to handle original source documents. That was one of the most exciting and motivating parts of the visit for me and probably an effective way to encourage more people to visit an archives.
Reference List Anthon transcript. (n.d.). Retrieved on June 22, 2017 from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthon_Transcript. Clay County Archives and Historical Library. (n.d.) .Retrieved June 16, 2017 from https://www.claycountyarchives.org/ Greene, M. A. & Meissner, D. (2005). More product, less process: Revamping traditional archival processing. The American Archivist, 68(2), 208-263. Millar, L. (2017). Archives: Principles and practices (2nd ed.). New York, NY: ALA Neal-Schuman. Mormonitemusings.com. (November 13, 2013). The Hicks “caractors” photo. Retrieved from https://mormonitemusings.com/2013/11/19/the-hicks-caractors-photo/ Yakel, E. & Torres, D.A. (2003). AI: Archival intelligence and user expertise. The American Archivist, 66(1), 51-78.