Boxes and More Boxes

I ended week two of my internship feeling cautiously optimistic I would be able to finalize a processing plan and perhaps, with a bit of skill and beginner's luck, begin to work processing the Nugent collection this week.  However, somewhere along the way last week I underestimated the sheer amount of materials still waiting to be surveyed.  Along with the 34 boxes in the initial accession I have surveyed, there are a handful of other accessions that add up to 31 more boxes of materials.  The other accessions have been stored at the Auxiliary Library Facility, or ALF, a specially-designed off-campus building with humidity and temperature controls for preservation purposes.  The Indiana University Archives, as well as University Libraries, recall items from the ALF when needed.  Imagine everyone's excitement in the Archives this week when I asked to recall another 31 boxes!  These other accessions have been previously analyzed by others.  However, I believe I should take the time to open each and take a look myself.  Each time I open a box and take notes as to its contents, I develop a better idea of the scope and arrangement of the overall collection.  As this week ends, I can claim progress as well as renewed humility.  Certainly there are more series and sub-series for me to discover in the Nugent collection.

As I survey the nearly half-century of materials in the Nugent papers, I am reminded of the sheer amount of paperwork, correspondence, and memorabilia each of us accumulates during our lives.  Of course, today the concept of "correspondence" has largely entered the digital realm; my generation may be the last to recall sitting down to write a letter by hand.  Those younger do not associate letter composition with pen, paper and postage.  The information age has made correspondence easier but has unintentionally removed this long-standing aspect of social history, as least conceptually.  Socially email is a better, faster, more efficient means of communication, and archivists and records managers will have to continue to be creative in developing preservation techniques.  Imagine if each email, of any type of relevance, was printed.  For most of us, that would mean mountains of material.  One look around the archives today and a few mountains may be visible here and there; I do ponder what an archive will look like in ten, twenty, fifty years.  What types correspondence will exist for those in another half-century, and what new challenges await future archivists like myself during that time?