Guest post written by Raquel Begleiter, Research Associate for the Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library (DOML)
Libraries, books, papyrus fragments—these are a few of my favorite things. The value of each has always been obvious to me as a researcher. Until recently, though, I did not realize that archives and well-executed archival practices can also serve as invaluable tools for research. Continue reading
The Image Collections and Fieldwork Archives (ICFA) is seeking for two interns: Archival Intern and Metadata Intern. For more information, please see the descriptions below. Note: The student must be able to take the internship for a course credit. Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, located in Washington, D.C., is an institute of Harvard University … Continue reading
Written by Jessica Cebra, ICFA Departmental Assistant Measuring tools are essential to archaeological surveys, excavations, and other kinds of fieldwork. Measurements not only lend themselves to the documentation process, but offer a sense of scale to those who did not see the object or site in person. Amongst the images of scaffolding, trenches, and crumbling … Continue reading
Written by Rona Razon, ICFA Archives Specialist For a long time, I have been meaning to write a post about my thoughts on the proper way to perform archival processing (i.e. research, assessment, arrangement, description, and rehousing) and the value of “More Product, Less Process” (MPLP). As most archivists know, MPLP is a different approach … Continue reading
I’ve finally started the process of physically rearranging the materials in the Van Nice Collection! Here’s a peek at what my work-space is looking like these days: Basically, what I’ve got going on is a list of all the individual folder titles and their original box numbers, in the new arrangement that we’ve been working … Continue reading
It’s been a couple of weeks now since I finished an initial assessment of the Van Nice Collection. The next big step is to use all of the notes I took to evaluate whether the current organization is adequate, and if not, to determine the best way to re-order the collection without inadvertently breaking up … Continue reading
Having finished the set of boxes we initially identified as correspondence, I spoke with Rona about how we might organize both the correspondence and the administrative files. Before I move on to the next set of material, we wanted to make sure that we had taken stock of what I had already looked at thus … Continue reading
Now that I’m pretty deep into the set of boxes we tentatively labeled as “general correspondence,” I’m in a better position to think about how they should relate to the material in the “Administrative” files that I looked at previously, and also how they might relate to parts of the collection I have yet to … Continue reading
In one summary report of his work at Hagia Sophia, Van Nice wrote that the project’s mission was “recording changes in and additions to the original structure of Sancta Sophia.” To this end, he and his fieldworkers took meticulous notes on everything they saw—every crack, every hole, (filled and unfilled) every angle of every wall, everything. … Continue reading
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