Abner Jackson Journal

Thanks to Michael Tinkler, Assistant Professor of Art, and a grant from the Provost we now have

Extracts
from the private journals of
ABNER JACKSON, D. D., LL. D.
President of Hobart College from 1858 to 1867.

 

compiled by his daughter,
Mrs. Philip Norborne Nicholas.

available as a PDF online.

Michael discovered this journal while doing research on St. John’s Chapel. He then got a grant from the Provost to have it reproduced as a computer document. How here it is!

Michael also came up with the idea of doing a Jackson Journal Blog, where we could post one entry as at a time, making it fun and easy to read the whole thing and get a feel for live at Hobart College in the mid-nineteenth century. We hope to have a campus blog set up and persue this as a joint venture.

E-mail to PDF

The IT department just installed Adobe Professional on my computer and it is great! I can now convert whole folders of e-mail to PDF files.

I save all my reference questions and replys, because I often get the same questions again. Once they are PDF, Adode automatically sorts by date, sender and subject.  I love it!!!!

From now on this is how I will be handling all of the Faculty and Staff list e-mails this way.  Up until now I have been printing them out and foldering them. These will be saved on the server so they will be updated with any system changes.

Phase boxes

I had a request from Lori N. Curtis for instructions on making phase boxes that I posted about on June 12, 2006.

I contacted Andrea Reithmayr at the U of R for permission to post them. Here are the instructions for phase boxes with tabs.

You’re going to want to check out the whole site for the University of Rochester-Preservation Department as well.

Thanks Andrea!

New Archives Security!

We have a closer watch on our materials 24/7, thanks to Cathy Williams (William Smith College Centennial researcher extraordinaire) Spike (vampire) of Buffy the Vampire Slayer is now on guard.

Crisis in Archives!

Last spring a whole class had the same topic assigned.  I am a trusting person at heart, I had student workers retrieving materials (as always) and I let many students work together and pass materials back and forth.

This morning the fall class began working on the same assignment.  I freaked when we found that one of the folders was missing.  So now we are in lock down for materials on “Tommy the Traveler.”  I’m keeping all the materials at my desk.  Each student has to get the folder from me and return it to me.

There is always the chance that the folder was just mis-shelved. We will keep looking!

I’d be interested in comments on how other Lone Arrangers in small archives handle a similiar situation.

Processing Communication materials

We seem to be getting back in the swing of things. I hope to have some table space before the first class comes-a researching.

We are into processing the files that came over from the Office of Communications at the beginning of the summer.  Student workers used an Access database to put in the Collection number, box number, folder number, title, series, type of contents for the first 5 boxes.  I figured out, this morning, how to use the “Avery Wizard” to make labels with numbers and titles.  Now they are transferring the files to acid free folders and labeling.

Now that the procedure is worked out I’m hopeful that things will move along quickly.  I’m having them label the items with the format 37.1.25 rather than Coll#37, Box#1, Folder#25. I believe this will save a lot of time and be effective, as long as we are consistent.