Archival Practicum: Day 8

Yesterday was day 8 of my practicum. This week was certainly not as exciting as last week's session, but here are my notes.

I'm still seeing a ton of tape. There was one piece of paper that was badly crumpled and torn, which had been taped back up. Now, I'm not sure if the paper was previously damaged or if it happened somehow while it was handled for digitization. I want to give them the benefit of the doubt, so I'll assume they were just trying to be helpful and patched up the paper. Needless to say, I did not try to remove the tape from this paper.

Additionally, I found some rusty staples yesterday. I've been removing any staples that I find, but honestly, there haven't been many. I figure that most of the staples were removed by the group that digitized them. I also found some more misfiled documents, so I'm glad I've been taking the time to quickly check each paper.

As for the content this week, there was a patient who got in trouble for placing a dummy in their bed so they could sneak out and drink in town at night. It sounded like something out of an old comedy. Also, there was the odd case of a patient who was accused of stealing from other patients, slashing the leather seats in the dining hall, was subsequently expelled, and then disappeared. There were many letters from the man's family asking if the home knew where he went, which was pretty sad. There have been a lot of cases of mental health issues within these patient files, so often the work of processing the patient files can be somber. These are, after all, snippets into their lives.

Stats:

• Files processed: CARLETON - COMAN, 73 folders (356 total folders processed)

• Hours: 8hrs (64 total hrs)