{"id":2907,"date":"2017-06-28T19:03:29","date_gmt":"2017-06-29T03:03:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.tavbooks.com\/?p=2907"},"modified":"2017-06-28T21:21:14","modified_gmt":"2017-06-29T05:21:14","slug":"archival-cataloguing-for-booksellers-part-iii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.tavbooks.com\/?p=2907","title":{"rendered":"Archival Cataloguing for Booksellers, Part III: Intellectual Content and Research Methods"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Kate Mitas<\/p>\n

Before diving into the subject at hand, a brief, belated caveat:<\/p>\n

Throughout this blog series, I have so far used \u201carchive\u201d to mean something at least vaguely equivalent to the Society of American Archivist\u2019s definition: \u201c[m]aterials created or received by a person, family, or organization, public or private, in the conduct of their affairs and preserved because of the enduring value contained in the information they contain or as evidence of the functions and responsibilities of their creator, especially those materials maintained using the principles of provenance, original order, and collective control; permanent records.\u201d A recent discussion with Arthur Fournier (Fournier Fine & Rare), who was a panelist at the recent RBMS Conference session, \u201cDefining the Archive\u201d has prompted me to reexamine my use (or possibly, misuse) of the term. Arthur was kind enough to share his thoughts on the matter, which will be appearing in a future installment in the series, but, suffice it to say, my usage of \u201carchive\u201d in this blog is, at the very least, up for debate. For the sake of expediency, I\u2019m going to keep using it as a broad term for the types of materials I\u2019m referring to \u2014 most often, in my admittedly limited experience, collections of assorted original, printed and visual matter, often of a vernacular nature \u2014 and for now will just ask you to think critically about the term, how I\u2019m using it, how you might define it otherwise, etc.<\/p>\n

NB.\u00a0Links to additional resources and full\u00a0definitions of terms are embedded throughout this blog — please make use of them!<\/p>\n

Right, now for the fun part: finally<\/i> digging into your archive, interpreting your findings, and backing up your claims with reliable data. What could be easier?<\/p>\n

Well, depending on your archive, quantum physics, for one, or perhaps learning to play \u201cMary Had a Little Lamb\u201d on the piano with your toes. (Okay, I\u2019m only speaking from experience in the latter example, but still.) Archives can be hard<\/i>, and more than a little overwhelming on first approach, like having to assemble a complicated jigsaw puzzle that may or may not be complete and without knowing what the resultant picture should look like, in the full knowledge that your livelihood depends to some degree on your ability to not only piece the puzzle together but then also, and just as importantly, convince someone to buy it.<\/p>\n

So, where to begin?\u00a0Adrienne Horowitz Kitts (Austin Abbey Rare Books), a fellow CABS 2015 grad who recently made national headlines<\/a> for her work on an archive of suffragist correspondence sent to Isabella Beecher Hooker, including letters from Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, advises beginners not to be intimidated. \u201cTake a day, or two or three to get to know the contents; look at each piece and dust it off, get an idea of what is in there. A combination of items in the archive \u2014 letters, manuscripts, pamphlets, leaflets, photographs \u2014 together tell the story.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Screen<\/a>

A portion of the suffragist archive. Photo courtesy of J. Adam Fenster\/University of Rochester.<\/p><\/div>\n

Archivists have a term for this: artifactual literacy<\/a>, \u201cthe ability to understand, contextualize and interpret primary sources.\u201d So, in a way, do booksellers: selling point. Finding the story and telling it is not only the hardest and most rewarding aspect of cataloguing an archive, it\u2019s also the best way I know of to convince someone to buy it.<\/p>\n

Understanding How Institutions View Archives<\/strong><\/h3>\n

It\u2019s worth pointing out here that booksellers and institutions value archives differently. Commercial value isn\u2019t synonymous with research value: institutions add to their collections for a variety of reasons (and with sometimes vastly different budgets at their disposal), and \u201cresearch value\u201d is far from being a monolithic criterion. Knowing some of the basic lenses institutions apply can not only help you understand what makes your archive important, it can also help you decide which institutions to approach, and even why an institution may decide against purchase.<\/p>\n

Very broadly speaking, an archive might be considered useful to an institution on the basis of its intrinsic value<\/a>, its evidential value<\/a>, or its informational value<\/a>. In extremely simplified terms, what this means is that an archive might be valued on the basis of what it is, what it reveals about the work and activities of its creator(s), or what it tells us about the time and place of its creation.<\/p>\n

Adrienne\u2019s suffragist correspondence seems to me a pretty clear example of an archive with a high degree of intrinsic value: the content is hugely significant, of course, but I doubt similar letters exchanged between minor figures in the movement would have garnered the same kind of national attention. Not surprisingly, the University of Rochester, who purchased the material, holds both the John and Isabella Beecher Hooker papers and the papers of Susan B. Anthony. Conversely, if a similar suffragist archive didn\u2019t <\/i>include any correspondence from major figures, but nevertheless revealed organizational details like meeting minutes, procedural issues, locations of talks\/protests, etc., it might be considered useful on the basis of its evidential value; the archive of a previously unknown but active suffragist might be said to have informational value.<\/p>\n

The point of all of this isn\u2019t that you have to learn archival theory to catalogue archives, it\u2019s that, whether you\u2019re aware of it or not, these broad angles of emphasis \u2014 what an archive is in and of itself, what it reveals about its creator\u2019s activities, and what information it provides\u2014 are in fact already influencing how you interpret and describe the intellectual content of an archive. Telling any story requires deciding which details are important and which to leave out, and the story of your archive is no different.<\/p>\n

Determining Intellectual Content<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Unless you know everything there is to know about the material you\u2019re working with \u2014 and I suspect it\u2019s a rare occasion indeed when that happens, if it happens at all \u2014 understanding and researching your archive inevitably go hand in hand. So how do you go about figuring out just what exactly you have, especially if you have no idea what to look for in the first place, and might not recognize an important detail if you were staring directly at it?<\/p>\n

It\u2019s likely that every bookseller has a unique approach to this conundrum: some slightly mystical application of personal experience, knowledge, curiosity, technological skill, etc., that somehow lands them at the tail end of cataloguing an archive feeling like they\u2019ve found its most compelling and honest narrative. I\u2019ve found that I can usually augment my lack of experience and knowledge with an ability to parse data for relevant information quickly and deduce potential avenues of inquiry from it \u2014 so my research often involves rapid-fire Google searches, followed by digging around on primary source sites like ancestry.com<\/a> and newspapers.com<\/a>. That\u2019s not necessarily the best way to go about it, however. Garrett Scott (Garrett Scott, Bookseller), offers these useful, and moderately analog, observations, instead:<\/p>\n

I tend . . . to have a blank sheet of paper and two sharp pencils (they have to be sharp!) as the tangible browser cache on my desk. Ideally I try to pick at whatever loose bits of fact need figuring out and follow my curiosity and by the time a diary or archive or collection is cataloged I have usually used only a portion of the info I’ve scribbled on the blank sheet and have wasted time going down a few unrelated alleys. (From dental surgery I once ended up combing theater ads for child prodigy performers in Philadelphia in the 1850s \u2014 there was some connection but not much \u2014 and I regret it not one bit.)<\/p>\n

I figure it’s like the recent claim that humans didn’t see the color blue until they had the language for it — I don’t see interesting things about archives (or future buys) until I’ve created my own language and interest in it that comes about from noodling around with\u00a0references and following where the material and curiosity (related and unrelated) leads.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The key thing to remember, no matter how you approach it, is to let the material dictate the narrative, which means keeping an open mind about where you might wind up, focusing on the contents of the material itself (i.e., if the creator of your archive turns out to be the first cousin twice removed of a famous 19th century explorer, but the contents of your archive document a widow\u2019s life in Philadelphia during the Civil War, you won\u2019t be doing yourself any favors hyping the tangential connection to exploration \u2014 and in fact, might be eliding the very thing your archive was meant to preserve), and supporting your findings. It\u2019s incredibly easy to make assumptions about your material, and even to get excited about it based on those assumptions. Nevertheless, to my mind, we have a responsibility both to our customers and to our profession to represent what we sell as honestly as we can.<\/p>\n

The ethical ramifications of imposing a narrative might seem a bit muffled on the supplier\u2019s side of the archival equation, but the consequences can be far-reaching for booksellers as well as researchers, and not only because booksellers can lose customers from the practice. Imposing a narrative can help perpetuate stereotypes and biases, which in turn restricts avenues of cultural inquiry and the commerce that depends on it.<\/p>\n

As Elizabeth Birmingham recounts in her essay on architect Marion Mahony Griffin, \u201c\u2018I See Dead People\u2019: Archive, Crypt, and an Argument for the Researcher\u2019s Sixth Sense,\u201d imposed narratives and accepted narratives are sometimes (often? usually?) interchangeable. In Birmingham\u2019s case, this meant that over the course of more than a decade of research, and in spite of having access to Mahony Griffin\u2019s own manuscript account of her work and marriage to architect Walter Burley Griffin\u00a0and\u00a0nearly 700 accompanying illustrations, Birmingham went along with the prevailing narrative that Mahony Griffin was merely her husband\u2019s helper, and a grudging one at that. Eventually, however, Marion Mahony (as she is now more commonly known) became recognized as one of the great architects of the 20th century<\/a>, and gained prominence for her artistic ability as well \u2014 most of the drawings of Frank Lloyd Wright\u2019s designs in his major 1910 Wasmuth portfolio were done by Mahony, and a book of her botanical paintings was published in 2005. Birmingham is now one of her strongest champions, and a copy of Mahony\u2019s manuscript archive has been digitized and is available in full<\/a> to any who wish to view it. \u201cThe researcher\u2019s sixth sense isn\u2019t the ability to see the dead but our potential to help the dead, who do not know they are dead, finish their stories,\u201d Birmingham ruefully concludes in her essay, \u201cand we do this in the moment we realize their stories are ours\u201d (Landmark Essays on Archival Research<\/i>, p. 169).<\/p>\n

Research Methods<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Good archival research, particularly for our relatively limited ends, often comes down to a combination of information literacy<\/a> \u2014 the ability to recognize when you need to use sources, identify credible sources, and use them efficiently and appropriately \u2014 and the same sense of professionalism and self-discipline (dare I say \u201chonor\u201d?) that any good bookseller applies to bibliographic research. Just as you wouldn\u2019t skip collating a book or checking a reference number even if you\u2019ve gotten the book from one of the best dealers in the business, you shouldn\u2019t skip doing some basic, but necessary, research on your archive to ensure that it is, in fact, what you say it is.<\/p>\n

Recognizing when to use sources:<\/span><\/p>\n

For me, recognizing when to use sources is pretty simple: I don\u2019t know something, and I think it might be important to the story whose trail I\u2019m sniffing out. I ask myself questions the entire time I\u2019m working my way through an archive, testing each new bit of information against what I think I know about the material. Who is this person? What event are they referring to? Why does this matter to them? Could it matter for another reason? What do they mean when they say x<\/i>, and is it the same thing I mean when I say it? How does this compare to other archives like this that I\u2019ve seen? Etc., etc., etc. Questioning myself is a way of honing my interpretation as I go, and forcing myself to support that interpretation (or discredit it) with research from outside sources when necessary.<\/p>\n

Evaluating the credibility of sources:<\/span><\/p>\n

Since I mentioned journalism in an earlier blog, it seems appropriate to turn to that profession for advice in identifying and evaluating credible sources.* Drawing on both the Harvard Kennedy School\u2019s Journalist\u2019s Resource<\/i><\/a> <\/i>and Columbia College\u2019s online guidelines<\/a>, here are some good questions to ask about your source:<\/p>\n