What I was most struck by in our visit to the Moravian archive was the amount of backlog that they have. We were told they had something like 20% of their collection actually sorted and archived, and I was really surprised by that. Especially when we went into the archives and I saw how much processed stuff they had, it seems almost overwhelming that they still had 80% of it to archive. We even ran out of time on our tour for him to show us where the processed and unprocessed material lived. This makes sense given what we read from Greene and Meissner about how great of a challenge processing backlog is.
I can see a big conflict here where an archivist would want to process things down to an item level because that would make it easier for a user to find something specific that they are looking for, but if everything is processed down to an item level, you would never get through any of your backlog, it would only increase. This speaks to the Greene and Meissner reading where it says something to the effect of a decision must be made about whether the ultimate goal is preserving the records, or if the goal is to serve users of the archive.
The trip to the Allentown band archive was a completely different story in terms of how it was set up. Of course, they have backlog too and that is part of what we’re helping with in this class, but it was less apparent to me what was processed and what was not. I also thought it was really interesting to see the differences in the locations that the materials were held in. While the Moravian archive was set up in what I imagine is a fairly standard way, much like we saw in the library, the band archive felt much more personal. We were able to see band uniforms, old programs, and photographs of old band members as we were walking around.
I was also able to gather a lot more story potential from the band’s archive. I saw seemingly random items like a santa hat, or a poster with some dogs on it, things that seemed to be there for no reason, but it’s important to remember that some one did put it there for a certain reason and it isn’t actually random. I was able to reflect on this more through reading my field notes and trying to find connections in the things I was seeing. In the Sunstein and Chiseri-Strater reading, it discusses field notes as a construction of the experience. This was especially helpful after visiting the band archive because I felt like there was so much going on and so many different things to look at, it would have been very difficult to come to any conclusions about the experience if I hadn’t been documenting it through field notes.
