November 11, 2019 (Monday), 10:00-3:30pm:

Hours completed: 5

Total hours completed: 5

I met Dave Crawford, Creighton’s University Archivist, and got a detailed overview of the various projects the Archives & Special Collections are working on currently (5 hours). Things touched on were the Ron Hansen papers, the Father Doll photographs, the Carlson Fable collection, the photography and photogramming of the church artifacts. The Ron Hansen papers is a collection of manuscripts, correspondence, research material, proofs, translations, and more related to the work of author Ron Hansen, a graduate of both Creighton University and Creighton Prep, whose notable works include Desperadoes and The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. The collection has not yet been formally accessioned despite its presence on campus for over 20 years, and it continues to grow periodically when Ron Hansen or his family members stop by to drop off some more documents. A project we talked about me doing was working out a unique numbering and organization system for accessioning the documents that reflected the different kinds of items present in the collection and grouped the items together by type or work, if possible.

The Father Doll photographs is a huge collection of photographs by Father Don Doll, SJ, a world-renowned photographer and Jesuit who has lived in Creighton’s Jesuit community for several years. His collection of images spans the globe across several decades and captures the work of the Jesuit Refugee Service, documentation of nearly every Jesuit-related event in the past 40-50 years, extensive work with reservations around the Midwest and beyond, and much more. He has photographs featured in National Geographic, who ended their moratorium on black and white images in order to be able to feature his work. However, the archive does not have the facilities to be able to safely store and protect the copyright of the images, thus work with the collection is somewhat stalled. Dave has decided that the way to handle the collection is to begin work on assessing the size and scope of the collection, add scans of the negatives to Creighton’s Digital Repository (CDR), and do interviews with Father Doll to glean some further information about the photos and to be able to add some metadata to the digital scans. I offered to do some transcription of the interviews, since I have experience as a transcriber, in order to pilot that aspect of the program. Once enough background information is gained on the collection, it can then be used as a fundraising angle to motivate donations for new facilities that would be able to house the film in proper storage conditions.

The Carlson Fable Collection, collected by Father Greg Carlson, SJ, is in the special collections side of the department, and encompasses over 40,000 items--books, objects, and more--relating to fables and how they have changed over the centuries to reflect different times and different lessons, depending on the cultural context they come out of and the aims of the fabulist. Portions of this collection exist on Fr. Carlson’s dedicated website, but Creighton is in the midst of bringing some of those records into the CDR and modifying/completing the records according to special collections standards.

After the introduction to the many areas of focus for Creighton’s department, we then toured the different locations that the department has, discussed problems of organization within the system, and examined some of the Ron Hansen documents.