Week 8: DeBary Collections

Compared to last week, this one has been much more stable since many of my questions got answered, and it has been a straightforward path to getting the work done. I previously expressed concern about the Library of Congress's website update and its impact on the Dublin Core Subject Headings. Since then, I have received an email from the RICHES digital archivist regarding the matter, and he is not worried about spending too much time updating the terms, given that he informed me the LOC updates its headings monthly.

Many of the subject terms on the spreadsheets appear without the "authorized" label, but we will keep them; ideally, we should find ones that have the label.

My main goal before moving on to any other spreadsheet or project is to fix up all of the Subjects on DeBary. As I mentioned last week, most collections contain sentences for the category when they should be authorized terms. I'm exploring ways to incorporate this information, as it could be useful elsewhere. This is especially the case when it's not included in the Description, so it will likely be added there. I'm also working on other columns, such as Cats, which currently lack terms, and I'll implement additional ones to those as well. Fortunately, I enjoy working on Cats because there are quite a few pages of terms to work with, whereas the others require more creativity to produce.

Newspaper clippings of Periko family

The terms don't appear from thin air, so to ensure a smooth process, I need to retrace the steps of previous interns. While I wish I could magically think of all of the appropriate terms, descriptions, titles, etc. I need to dedicate time to reviewing existing research on these collections and conducting additional outside research to gather more details on the artifacts, if needed, or if I notice a detail that could potentially lead to something else. As of this week, most instances of additional research have focused on gathering more information about newspaper clippings.

Looking through all of the artifacts has been the best aspect of making the spreadsheet corrections, much like my experience with the Apopka collections, because it's like putting together a puzzle of the city's history; some of the information even overlaps. For instance, in a collection, I came across a file with DeBary's first post office and a picture of the Bealls Cabins and Grocery, which were both featured in the Muse collection I worked on. Muse's grandfather owned the business, which made it interesting to see how it potentially impacted other residents enough to want to include it in their archived collection. There have also been mentions of a few bridges in the city that I wasn't aware of before, but a late 1800s photograph really caught my attention. It features an unnamed bridge and people, and it's incredible to have a glimpse of everyday life around 1883.

(top) DeBary's first post office, (bottom) Bealls Cabins and Grocery

Photographs from 1883

Overall, these are my immediate focuses with corrections. I plan to conduct further research to create more detailed descriptions and potentially gather academic sources to add to the External Reference.