I’m plowing very slowly through copies of fifty letters from the Staack-Ehmen collection at the Nebraska State Historical Society in Lincoln, Nebraska.
As I went through the set of images to make certain I had received all the ones I had requested, I came to appreciate the work that goes into cataloging a set of loose papers of this type. Cataloging loose, original manuscript material is time-consuming. It is tedious. It is not as simple as putting a book on a shelf and entering (or uploading) bibliographic information into an online card catalog. Each letter in the collection was inventoried separately. For each letter, the archivist determined (as best they could):
- the writer of the letter
- the location of where the letter was written
- the date of the letter
Given that these letters were mostly in German and that some had handwriting that was difficult to read, that was no small task. It took me a fair amount of time to compare the copied images to the inventory to confirm I had everything (which I did). The amount of time originally cataloging the materials would have been far greater than the little bit of time I spent comparing.
It made me appreciate the work catalogers do–quite a bit.
It reminded me that if you are going to donate “your genealogical papers” to an archives or library that you really, really, really (one more time for emphasis, really) need to have them organized. Cataloging unorganized papers takes time. It’s also important to make certain that your “genealogical papers” are not simply stacks of photocopies of books and other items that are readily available. Archives prefer material that is unique and original–not stacks of random pages copied from published books, etc.
It also reminded me that papers of ancestral associates may very easily mention ancestors in whom I have a direct interest. Of course I already knew this–but the letters brought that point home. Neighbors and other immigrants are mentioned in these letters.
One pastor is mentioned more times than I can count.
A big thanks to the Nebraska State Historical Society for cataloging these materials.
Another big thanks to the family of William Ehmen for donating his materials.
2 Responses
One of my volunteer gigs is working at the archives of the Contra Costa County Historical Society. Besides answering genealogy queries, I’ve been working on a finding aid for our collection, especially the special collections. My job is fairly simple as most of the collections have already been processed. However, this week, we found a collection that had not been processed. I really appreciate those archivists and their staff who painstakingly catalog and then place each item into archival folders or sleeves, which my partner and I are now doing. It is important to not just stuff materials and paper into a big cardboard box and donate it (even if your husband was a Congressman). We got just a small portion of his papers. The rest are at the Bancroft Library at U.C. Berkeley, which is still unprocessed and I can understand why.
It’s not an easy task to process these things in some cases. It took me long enough to make certain I had copies of what I thought I did and that the copies were all workable. The archives graciously made “re-dos” of a few for me which I appreciated, but the going through the images to make certain what I had an to annotate them took time–much less than it would have been to process it in the first place.