{"id":6794,"date":"2018-05-03T13:32:58","date_gmt":"2018-05-03T13:32:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rootdig.genealogytipoftheday.com\/?p=6794"},"modified":"2018-05-03T13:32:58","modified_gmt":"2018-05-03T13:32:58","slug":"thanks-to-the-cataloger-at-the-nshs-in-lincoln-nebraska","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rootdig.genealogytipoftheday.com\/?p=6794","title":{"rendered":"Thanks to the Cataloger at the NSHS in Lincoln, Nebraska"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m plowing very slowly through copies of fifty letters from the Staack-Ehmen collection at the <a href=\"https:\/\/history.nebraska.gov\/\">Nebraska State Historical Society<\/a> in Lincoln, Nebraska.<\/p>\n<p>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):<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>the writer of the letter<\/li>\n<li>the location of where the letter was written<\/li>\n<li>the date of the letter<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>It made me appreciate the work catalogers do&#8211;quite a bit.<\/p>\n<p>It reminded me that if you are going to donate &#8220;your genealogical papers&#8221; 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\u00a0<em>time<\/em>. It&#8217;s also important to make certain that your &#8220;genealogical papers&#8221; are not simply stacks of photocopies of books and other items that are readily available. Archives prefer material that is unique and original&#8211;not stacks of random pages copied from published books, etc.<\/p>\n<p>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&#8211;but the letters brought that point home. Neighbors and other immigrants are mentioned in these letters.<\/p>\n<p>One pastor is mentioned more times than I can count.<\/p>\n<p>A big thanks to the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/history.nebraska.gov\/\">Nebraska State Historical Society<\/a>\u00a0for cataloging these materials.<\/p>\n<p>Another big thanks to the family of William Ehmen for donating his materials.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;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 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6794","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rootdig.genealogytipoftheday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6794","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rootdig.genealogytipoftheday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rootdig.genealogytipoftheday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rootdig.genealogytipoftheday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rootdig.genealogytipoftheday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6794"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rootdig.genealogytipoftheday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6794\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rootdig.genealogytipoftheday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6794"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rootdig.genealogytipoftheday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6794"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rootdig.genealogytipoftheday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6794"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}