Newly Discoverable Collections at TUSC
Recently, TUSC hired two new members of the Collection Management team – Kure Croker and Samantha Schafer – who were introduced in the last issue of this newsletter. With their addition, the team is now up and running in making long-hidden TUSC collections available to the public for research and use.
What makes a collection discoverable? It’s not just writing a description of the collection, though that is a large part of the work. Processing – the act of preserving a collection for future use and making it discoverable by the public – also includes organizing materials, putting them in archival-quality containers to help delay deterioration, stabilizing materials via specialized conservation work, creating inventories at various levels of detail, and gathering information about the collection, its contents, its size, and its creators. At any given time, the Collection Management team is juggling multiple collections of varying sizes and complexity. No two work days contain the same exact work!
In the last six months, the Collection Management team has processed eighteen new collections totaling roughly fifteen linear feet of records. Some of the highlights from our newly processed collections include:
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Carmen Freret Favrot designs (LaRC-735), which features detailed sketches for jewelry designs and personalized monograms by a Newcomb College alumni,
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Tulane University Special Collections zine collection (LaRC-1154), which includes zines about New Orleans culture, local indigenous groups, feminism, and science fiction, among others,
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Jules J. Paglin collection of OK Group records (HJA-067), which includes marketing data and reports gathered by Paglin during the 1950s and 1960s about the OK Group, which was a group of six southern radio stations geared towards Black listeners,
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Murphy Dowouis photographs (LaRC-1136), which contain over 100 images of French Quarter Mardi Gras celebrations from a countercultural viewpoint.
The Collection Management team will continue processing collections and creating finding aids to aid in the discovery of their materials. To explore our collections, check out Tulane University’s instance of ArchiveSpace here.
3/6/2024
