Archival Practicum: Day 5

Day five is under my belt now! Processing work on the patient files continues, and although I had hoped to be moving faster by now, yesterday was a little slower than the previous week. While I do like tracking my data and productivity, I have to account for the fact that some patient files are simply bigger and have more material than others.

I don't have much to discuss this week, so I'll share my general process, since I don't believe I've done that yet. The files were returned from Family Search in non-archival bankers boxes (about 30 or so of them), and they were in general alphabetical order. For example, one box might be A-C, and the next could be B-C. Additionally, some of the patient files within the boxes might be out of order, but thankfully, nothing too crazy that I've noticed yet. I know this goes against general common sense, but I have only been double-checking and alphabetizing the folders for each letter as I get to them. I know, I know, I'm living dangerously here, but so far it's worked well. This way, I'm not spending an entire day organizing hundreds of patient files in flimsy boxes (and maybe I was just super excited to get started on processing files on day 2). We shall see if I continue this method or not...

Then, of course, I rehouse them like I mentioned before, taking care to remove staples, paperclips, tape, or other things that could damage the documents. So far, I've found that fitting 50 files in a box works well, so yesterday I just finished box 3 and will start box 4 next Monday. This does mean, however, that there will be more boxes of processed files than there originally were of unprocessed files, since the old banker's boxes have been very stuffed. And consequently, this collection will need more shelf space.

I didn't take any photos yesterday, so here is a photo I took on day 2 of some of my workflow, showing a partially full unprocessed box and a partially full processed box next to it.

Stats:

• Files processed: BEHLKE - BLAIR, 35 folders (150 total folders processed)

• Hours: 8hrs (40 total hrs)