Hello!
For our capstone, Caitlin and I are conducting an assessment and creating a processing plan for the Michael McCurdy Collection at the Boston Public Library. Over the last two weeks, we've worked to wrap our heads around exactly what the collection entails, gather resources and track down the various bits and pieces that will be needed to put together our processing plan. Here's our assignment, as written up by the marvelous Martha:
Module 5: Assessment and processing plan for Michael McCurdy collection: McCurdy is an important artist and illustrator. According to Wikipedia (!) his main archive of work covering a period of 48 years is at the Boston Public Library. The contents of the collection are in wrappers and need to be opened, checked against the existing inventory and prepared for rehousing. In addition to assessing the condition of the contents of the collection, this module will include the preparation of a workable processing plan.
Caitlin and I have done some initial scoping out of the project and took some pictures as documentation. For your enjoyment and edification, we're including them in the post!
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| The Jordan Room at the BPL (one baker's rack of McCurdy on the right of the image) |
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| Baker's Rack full of boxes from the McCurdy Collection. Note the titles and packing slips on the boxes. |
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| Bigger than your average library cart, loaded with more McCurdy. Oh, note the box on the top tipped sideways...it is marked "this side up" facing us. I'm thinking the contents, if not packed securely, have all slipped to the bottom. |
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| Close up of a table filled with boxes, most of which have been opened. Note the box on the lower right with the packing slip cut through. |
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| Peeked into one of the open boxes on the baker's rack; here's a book jacket featuring his illustrations. |
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| Another peek in the box labeled, "An Old Fashioned Thanksgiving" |
The boxes in the Jordan room are all labeled and numbered (the highest number we could find without disturbing the boxes was #85); each box has an itemized packing list affixed to the top. Looking in one of the opened boxes, it's pretty clear to see that some of the items listed on the packing slip have already been removed. Talking with Print Collection staffer Aaron, it would seem that some of the collection is stored in at least two other rooms; original woodblocks used to create the artwork in one location and correspondence/archival material stored in Print Stacks (confirmed this already). Martha gave us a 35 page document to go along with the project that is a descriptive write up of the collection. What we need to track down is the original inventory that would have been included as part of the purchase of the collection. To gain access to that documentation, we'll need to appeal to the Head of Collections.
Here are some of the resources we've gathered:
- Artist’s website with links to his exhibitions (no catalogue raisonne yet for this artist, so exhibition catalogs become important documents for correctly identifying works, if need be): http://www.berkshares.org/artists/mccurdy
- Library of Congress site for their Prints and Photographs Division, which will have much of what we need for resources to conduct this project: https://www.loc.gov/rr/print/
- Basic guide to help begin the project (Library of Congress guidelines): https://www.loc.gov/rr/print/tp/ChecklistToPlanProcessing.pdf
- Here’s a sample of a processing plan for a print/photograph collection; the plan we create will be modeled on this: https://www.loc.gov/rr/print/tp/RogovinProcessingPlan.pdf
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