Closed Schools Project at the Seattle Public Schools Archive
Materials from the African American Academy
during the final stages of processing
during the final stages of processing
At the Seattle Public School Archives, I had another, more compressed, opportunity to work on a major project from start to finish. The collections I processed in this case represented the materials sent to the archive from five Seattle schools which had been closed at the beginning of the previous summer (2009).
Because of the planned duration of my internship (one quarter), I made what I felt was an ambitious plan to completely process the collections within the quarter, and also to design and mount an exhibit based on the materials. The collections were comprised of both scheduled records which required separate accessioning, and archival material which required rehousing, arrangement, and accessioning to a different set of standards. Of course, there was also a large amount of material which had to be weeded from the disorganized collections first, so I was also involved in appraisal, deciding what constituted archival materials and what had mandated legal retention requirements. During the processing, I also separated materials which, while not within the collection development policy of the SPSA, were of potential interest to other repositories. Some of this material went to the University of Washington, and a few items went to the Seattle Municipal Archives. I completed this processing within the time frame I had set, following the standards and meeting the expectations of the repository.
However, during the course of the work, through both discussions with the archivist and my research in the collections themselves, I also came to fully realize the extremely sensitive nature of these collections. Strong feelings had been aroused in the various communities affected by the school closures. During my processing, much of the identifiable material weeded from the collections of these schools had to be disposed of in particular, careful ways, so as to avoid further inflaming the conflicts. I decided that creating a public exhibit would be a bad idea, especially given the ongoing lawsuits that had been started by two of the communities against the school district.
In order to complete my internship, I instead cataloged a large number of backlog publications, marking and shelving them according to the system already in place. Choosing to work on cataloging and further reducing the backlog was a better choice for my learning and development in any case, since I already had experience designing exhibits around archival collections. Since then, the archivist and I have put together an exhibit focused on the one school that will be reopening this year - Sand Point Elementary. This exhibit will hopefully get people thinking about the positive side - schools close, and are reopened when they are needed again. A photo of the exhibit, which is in the main lobby of the administration building, can be found below.
Because of the changes in plan during the course of this internship, it makes a great example of my willingness and ability to step back and reappraise my plans, even when I'm in the middle of a project, working on a tight schedule. The results, for both myself and for the archive, were very positive. I ended up continuing to work for this institution beyond my internship, and was able to substantially reduce both their processing and cataloging backlog.
All uncredited photos on this site were taken by Gabriel Chrisman
All material copyright Gabriel Chrisman, 2010
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