January 9, 2020 (Wednesday), 9:00-3:30pm:

Hours completed: 6

Total hours completed: 127.75

I continued work on developing a number assigning system for accessioning Ron Hansen papers, but didn’t get the chance to talk to Dave about the correspondence category (1.5 hours). For Writings, I weighed having a numeric identifier for the major works by publication date or a unique code assignment that was more broadly applicable for all of his works, such as 0101 for Major Work - Desperadoes and 0203 for his third short story published. Another thing to talk over with Dave!

When Dave arrived, I showed him the label proofs, and he made some suggestions of how some wording could be improved (possibly instead of probably for an item of uncertainty, for example). I then made those changes and reformatted the labels to adjust for the changes. (2 hours)

The department had just received some reformatted video and audio files from an A/V preservation firm, so Dave had me check the returned files for their quality, confirming the firm’s notes on defects in the tapes. Then, I managed the documentation by splicing the PDFs, moving each item-specific page into its own folder with the videos, and naming the individual pages by the item-specific naming conventions. (2 hours)

Finally, we went upstairs to the ad hoc humidification chamber to remove a relic authentic--in this case a very brittle 19th century document that needed to be unfolded in order to be photographed/scanned for the CDR. We took it out and gently unfolded it, noting that it was perhaps more damp than we wanted, but that on the whole, the system was successful. (30 minutes)

The water damage is from a previous incident. I noted the iron gall ink deterioration to Dave, but we determined that the digital record was paramount to its preservation, making the humidification necessary.