Special Collections and Archives blog

In an ideal world, donors would submit collections to Special Collections and Archives (SCA) in as pristine a manner possible: boxes would be clearly labeled and the contents organized and titled appropriately; contents would be in excellent stable condition; and the threat of pests (insects etc.) would be minimal to none. The idea that a box of material–whether textual or photographic–could be a danger to a person’s health seems a little out there.

Unfortunately this is a reality that many archivists and librarians face on the job; Post graduation, recently-minted professionals would never have imagined the sorts of environments they would be exposed to while collecting valuable historical documents. Mold/mildew, mice/rats, snakes, spiders, book lice, chemicals, and other biohazards are often parts of the job that are less than glamorous and certainly seldom publicized.

Recently, Special Collections and Archives was asked to retrieve materials stored in a older-model bleekers box that was offsite storage for the organization making the donation. The name and location of the material (and its donor) shall remain anonymous. Upon opening the door to the bleekers box, the immediate heavy musty odor suggested the very real likely presence of active mold and/or wood rot.

After clearing some space in the aisle, staff were able to make headway and rebox some damaged boxes

The source of this odor was not immediately clear, but it wouldn’t take long to discover that a nickel-sized hole in the metal roof of the storage container had allowed water to enter for a number of years. Subsequently, numerous boxes and wooden shelves directly underneath had active (fuzzy) mold on them, preventing the retrieval team from even looking at the contents and assessing them for potential acquisition. Active mold contains tiny spores that are easily breathed in when disturbed; often these spores can attach themselves to tissues in the body and continue growing there, leading to serious medical issues. For this reason, archivists know that specialized retrieval by a trained team of experts in full protective gear is the only way active mold should be safely removed and managed. Inactive mold (dark and powdery) has fewer health concerns, but wearing gloves and using a mask to protect airways is always a good idea.

The area directly underneath the hole in the ceiling/roof

The evidence of mold growth underneath the wooden shelves is apparent

SCA staff demonstrating responsible gear for retrieving materials in less than ideal conditions.

However, all is not lost! There are many safety precautions that can be taken to mitigate exposure and potential illness when working with at-risk materials. Prior to commencing work, SCA staff put on protective nitrile gloves; these were swapped out regularly throughout the day. One member of the staff regularly wore a protective mask as she was making regular trips in and out of the box, while two other staff were predominantly stationed in the outdoors where there was less risk of exposure. Out of approximately 125 boxes stored in the bleekers box, the contents of 91 were identified as being in stable condition. After re-housing them in new boxes (and retaining all contextual information written on the boxes), the old boxes were collapsed and discarded or recycled. A further 17 boxes were experiencing accelerated mold growth and were not touched. Other boxes contained information that was of no interest to SCA. It is anticipated that a future visit to the bleeker’s box by a special team of pest professionals will be undertaken to retrieve the remaining 17 moldy boxes safely.

AND the story is not over. To eliminate other pests (such as silverfish, spiders, beetles, and book lice) that were not immediately seen in the material, these 91 boxes will be plastic wrapped on-site and sent to a large walk-in freezer for one-week of freezing. This step is critical so that SCA does not unwillingly introduce pests to collections presently housed in its storage facility. Altogether it is anticipated that this process will take over one month before all 91 boxes (and potentially some of the other 17 boxes) are all housed in SCA and ready for a formal review for appraisal, arrangement & description, and digitization purposes.

In closing, SCA will leave you and our future donors with some recommendations for storing your material so that the scenario above can be avoided.

• Ensure the storage environment is sealed from exposure to the elements (check for leaks, cracks, and points of entry for insects/rodents)
• Wherever possible, provide a consistent year-round temperature and relative humidity. While this is an ideal, new research suggests that materials are hardier than previously thought and can withstand some degree of seasonal fluctuation (winter to summer and vice-versa; monsoon activity) that can affect either temperature or relative humidity
• Mitigate the level of light beaming down directly on materials or the boxes in which they are contained. Light damage will rapidly deteriorate these materials. Most materials prefer environments as dark as possible.
• Use acid-free (and preferably waterproof/resistant) boxes and file folders/supplies to store documents/materials
• Organize and inventory boxes in a manner conducive to eventual transfer in the event you move or you wish to donate materials to an archival repository.

On July 28th, 1914–exactly 101 years ago today–Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia. Many pinpoint this date as the beginning of the ‘Great War,’ which would soon involve many other nations in a battle that would become more commonly known as World War I. The United States formally declared war against Germany on April 6, 1917 – almost three years later. Special Collections and Archives has combed its digital holdings and would like to offer the following items that focus regionally on this historic war and the brave soldiers who fought for this country.

Harold Blome’s Diaries, 1912-1918. MS.91

Red Cross Dog of WWI [standing in front of Babbitt Bros. Trading Company]. NAU.PH.412.1.41

World I Soldiers at Grand Canyon, 1917 ca. NAU.PH.568.8198

Group of Men from Flagstaff, Arizona that Served in World War I, 1917 ca. AHS.0123.00014

A Patriotic Parade on the Campus During WWI. Morton Hall in Background, 1917. NAU.ARC.1918-6-1.

World War I United War Work Drive; Two Women and Soldier Standing in Front of UWW Posters, 1918. AHS.0125.000007

Verde Copper News War Headlines, 1918. NAU.PH.231.303

Oral History Interview with Ruth Mary Griffin and Agnes Anderson, 1975. NAU.OH.28.2

Archivists enjoy good satire.

Click here to access the full story. It is not far-fetched to assume that The Onion has a team of information professionals on staff. Ridiculousness aside, there is intelligent thought (i.e. archival theory) behind this veiled critique of narcissistic Facebook users. One such theory is that of appraisal:

…the process of determining whether records and other materials have permanent (archival) value. Appraisal may be done at the collection, creator, series, file, or item level. Appraisal can take place prior to donation and prior to physical transfer, at or after accessioning. The basis of appraisal decisions may include a number of factors, including the records’ provenance and content, their authenticity and reliability, their order and completeness, their condition and costs to preserve them, and their intrinsic value. Appraisal often takes place within a larger institutional collecting policy and mission statement.  (courtesy of the Society of American Archivists’ Glossary of Archival and Records Terminology)

Simply, appraisal is the process whereby archivists determine what should be retained in a new collection/accession with consideration of an item’s administrative, legal, and/or historic value. An excellent web resource from the National Archives and Records Administration’s (NARA) records management unit details this process as it applies to federal records. While archivists strive to be as objective and neutral as possible with collections in their custody, appraisal is often criticized as a subjective process that is the result of one person’s  (or a small number of people’s) inherent bias(es) when surveying a collection. However, some relatively easy items can be removed from a collection during the appraisal process. These can include:

• Redundant/duplicative material
• Photographs that are clearly blurry and/or of questionable quality
• Material that is the physical and/or intellectual property of another agency or individual
• Sensitive items that contain social security numbers or other information (health, educational) that is protected through federal legislation designed to safeguard the privacy of individuals

Archives and archivists worldwide are currently facing difficult realities with the handling of born-digital materials. Digital photographs, films, documents, databases, spreadsheets, and e-mails–among many other types of electronic records–are beginning to arrive at their institutional doorsteps in greater quantity and many are minimally-equipped to preserve them, let alone facilitate their access and retrieval.  Rather than spend this entire post discussing all facets of electronic records, we will briefly focus your attention on one specific aspect of their management: appraisal.

The woman in the above-linked satirical piece would have benefited from a thorough appraisal of her images prior to uploading them in Facebook. Nobody wants to scroll through 12 million images from somebody’s vacation. It can only be assumed that the woman in this fictionalized story was far more concerned with access to the images than she was about their long-term preservation. At Special Collections and Archives (SCA), we would focus our efforts–at least initially–in preserving the images as long as possible. We would remove all digital files from outdated storage devices (floppy disks, CDs, DVDs, portable drives, etc.) and move them onto a centralized server with measures in place to ensure that data is not lost due to corruption from the physical storage medium or potential viruses. Subsequent to this, we would appraise all files and ensure that an appropriate selection for long-term retention is made. With items preserved and a selection made, access to the material is more readily facilitated.

The digital world affords archivists the opportunity to automate portions of the appraisal process. For example, keyword searches across multiple files and folders can quickly isolate anything containing a social security number or other sorts of private information for subsequent redaction or deletion. A hexadecimal number unique to one specific file (known as a hash value) can be created for all items in a series of folders and subsequently compared for the purposes of identifying duplicates. However, digital photography–especially images taken by commercial photographers–can potentially yield hundreds of files taken over a brief period of time that are nearly identical one to another. What is an archives to do?

Some strategies are clear and involve little effort. If shooting in a proprietary file format (Canon’s is .cr2 and Nikon’s is .nef), a photographer’s favorite images (selections) will have been modified in editing software, such as Adobe Photoshop. These changes will not have affected the original file but instead a sidecar (.xmp) file will have been automatically created that captures any/all modifications made to the original file. Simply seeing that a .cr2 or .nef file has an associated sidecar (.xmp) file would suggest that this specific image was of importance to its creator, especially if one can verify that they were the only ones to handle these files after the image was captured. All other items without these sidecar files could potentially be considered for deletion. If the opportunity is available, working with the original photographer on making a selection for permanent retention would be a very useful appraisal exercise, but most institutions will not have this luxury.

Neither of the above scenarios are always available to archivists. Advancements are being made on a regular basis that will help further automate the identification of nearly-identical items that could also be explored as a tool for appraisal. For example, ssdeep is a free program that can be used to analyze context triggered piecewise hashes (CTPH). Also referred to as ‘fuzzy logic,’ ssdeep looks at multiple files and confirms sequences of identical bytes in the same order, but will flag differences between these sequences in both content and length. These subtle changes between files could potentially help in the identification and deletion of near-identical digital photographs in a folder.

No solution will be perfect, but building a solid set of tools and applying archival theory to the appraisal process will help an institution appropriately manage its digital assets. Also important is experimentation and dissemination of efforts. Albert Einstein once said, “No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong.” SCA looks to the broader archival profession for answers and solutions, but often its most successful efforts have been the result of experimentation. We look forward to sharing our challenges and successes about practical digital appraisal–among many others–with our archival colleagues in the near future.

The Fred Harvey Company in many ways defined the American southwest-even though their businesses expand far beyond to as far east as Cleveland, Ohio, and as far west and north as the wine country of northern California. Our exhibit will show the progression of the Harvey Company from small clapboard railroad cafes like this one:

Fred Harvey lunch room. New Mexico–Deming. 1883

We’ll move forward into time with Harvey’s rather grand plans for the Grand Canyon with the rustic and elegant El Tovar Hotel:

El Tovar Hotel, Hopi House, and Navajo hogans, Grand Canyon village, south rim of the Grand Canyon

…Through the period of the elegant Fred Harvey rail-side hotels:

Rear (railway side) garden/lawn area of La Posada Hotel designed by May Coulter, 303 E. Second (east bound Route 66). April 2006.

Along the way you’ll also see the Harvey Company’s forays highway-based enterprises like this California restaurant:

California – Ontario Harvey House – Exterior

…All the way to the more interesting enterprises, like the Fred Harvey service at Ontario Motor Speedway(!)

Ontario Motor Speedway – Victory Circle Club

There will be more- lot’s more to see and learn about Fred Harvey. Meanwhile, consider this just a “taste” of what’s to come.

Whether for personal use or publication, online or in a book, digital or print, we’ve got you covered when it comes to obtaining reproductions and permissions for the thousands of items within our photograph and manuscript collections. Funds generated for reproduction and use fees are directly reinvested into the preservation and maintenance of our collections.

The Most Request Image is? “Kolb on a Rope”

NAU.PH.568.8690

Ordering in Four Simple Steps

1. Download and fill out the “Application for Permission” form
2. Submit completed application form to special.collections@nau.edu
3. Once submitted form is reviewed by departmental staff, an email containing an invoice outlining reproduction and use fees will be sent — along with a link to a secure credit card payment form.
4. Once payment is verified, an email will be sent containing requested files, invoice marked “paid in full” along with counter-signed and dated permissions form.