{"id":1029,"date":"2019-11-01T12:00:22","date_gmt":"2019-11-01T12:00:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.pafaarchives.org\/blog\/?p=1029"},"modified":"2021-05-06T14:06:57","modified_gmt":"2021-05-06T14:06:57","slug":"john-rhoden-papers-weekly-roundup","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.pafaarchives.org\/blog\/behind-the-scenes\/john-rhoden-papers-weekly-roundup\/","title":{"rendered":"John Rhoden papers: Weekly Roundup"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Contributed by Kelin Baldridge and Jahna Auerbach, the John Rhoden papers processing team <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Each Friday, we intend to publish a summary of what we accomplished, learned, and discovered in our work during the week leading up to it in the Weekly Roundup series. Here’s the first of many!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Rhoden project assistant archivist, Jahna Auerbach, hard at work organizing travel photos.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Accomplished so far:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

  1. Completed preliminary survey <\/li>
  2. Completed Processing plan<\/li>
  3. Completed preliminary Intellectual arrangement <\/li>
  4. Begun physically sorting objects<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

    Next up:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    1. Complete sorting <\/li>
    2. Finalize physical arrangement<\/li>
    3. Inventory of photographic items <\/li>
    4. Select  items to be digitized <\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

      Week 1(ish) Lessons: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

      One thing we learned in creating the preliminary intellectual arrangement is how dynamic an intellectual arrangement can be. One of PAFA archivist Hoang Tran\u2019s catchphrases is \u201cthings they don\u2019t teach you in archives school\u201d and the level of depth and complexity that can be included in an arrangement is certainly not something I was prepared for. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

      I had initially created an intellectual arrangement that was\nseparated into series based on John Rhoden\u2019s life: Professional, Personal, and\nArtist Series. The professional series was then separated by major milestones\nin his career. Straight away, I liked this series because I felt it rendered\nthe items more accessible as they were grouped with what would likely be most\nrelevant to researchers. However, I quickly became afraid of the arrangement.\nLessons from archives school about avoiding charging items with meaning,\nlimiting their understanding, and ensuring that an arrangement is fully neutral\nstarted to come back to me. As a result, I created a second (very safe, very\ntextbook) intellectual arrangement that separated the materials by document\ntype \u2013 correspondence, contracts, personal documents, etc. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

      When presenting these two arrangements to Hoang and Rhoden\nCurator Brittany Webb, I was reassured that the more dynamic arrangement was\nmore suitable. Brittany reassured me that organizing the papers according to\ncareer milestones rather than document type would be far more useful to a researcher.\nFurthermore, Hoang taught me that the way archivists handle collections will\nvary depending on the context. For our purposes, the PAFA archives are used for\nart research, primarily by high-level students and weathered scholars. This\nenvironmental context can then inform how an archivist approaches the\nintellectual arrangement. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

      With the help of Hoang, I ultimately created a preliminary\nintellectual arrangement that included the following series: exhibitions,\ncommissions, fellowships\/grants\/awards, press, teaching, gallery sales,\nartwork, and personal. We did away with the restrictive professional, personal,\nand artwork series while keeping the emphasis on his career milestones.  It is much longer than my \u201csafe\u201d (document\ntype focused) intellectual arrangement was, but it also better contextualizes\nthe material and makes it more accessible. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

      Going forward, we expect the intellectual arrangement to\nevolve as we continue to become familiar with the collection. Furthermore,\nsince the creation of the preliminary intellectual arrangement assistant\narchivist Jahna Auerbach joined the team and her perspective and input will no\ndoubt help the arrangement evolve. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

      • \"\"
        John in Egypt<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/li>
      • \"\"
        John in Pakistan<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n

        Week 1(ish) Discoveries:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

        Having the privilege to process a collection of a person as well-traveled as John Rhoden has proven to be both fun and challenging. Rhoden traveled to over twenty countries with the U.S. State Department between 1955 and 1959 and has piles of photographs documenting his numerous journeys. The majority of his photographs are unlabeled, which means that we have to rely on landscapes, architecture, and various other vague context clues to identify where the photographs were taken.  A large portion of our research has consisted of targeted searches about visual topics such as South Asian sculpture, architecture terms for temples, and whether or not sail boats are common in Egypt. Some questions we have are dry, but some spark conversation between PAFA employees across disciplines.  This has turned sorting photographs into a complex puzzle that we are constantly trying to put the pieces together. It also has taught us that some things are unknowable, if only temporarily, and that working with a large archival collection requires a focus on the big picture. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

        • \"\"
          Richenda in Indonesia<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/li>
        • \"\"
          Sailboats in Egypt<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n

          This project,\u00a0Rediscovering John W. Rhoden: Processing, Cataloging, Rehousing, and Digitizing the John W. Rhoden papers<\/em>, is funded in part by the National Endowment for the Humanities, a federal agency. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

          ABOUT THE NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE HUMANITIES<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

          Created\n in 1965 as an independent federal agency, the National Endowment for \nthe Humanities supports research and learning in history, literature, \nphilosophy, and other areas of the humanities by funding selected, \npeer-reviewed proposals from around the nation. Additional information \nabout the National Endowment for the Humanities and its grant programs \nis available at: www.neh.gov.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

          Contributed by Kelin Baldridge and Jahna Auerbach, the John Rhoden papers processing team Each Friday, we intend to publish a summary of what we accomplished, learned, and discovered in our work during the week leading up to it in the Weekly Roundup series. Here’s the first of many! Accomplished so far: Completed preliminary survey Completed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4,5],"tags":[31,30,29],"class_list":["post-1029","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-behind-the-scenes","category-collection","category-grant","tag-johnrhoden","tag-neh","tag-rhoden"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.pafaarchives.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1029","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.pafaarchives.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.pafaarchives.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.pafaarchives.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.pafaarchives.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1029"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/blog.pafaarchives.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1029\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1679,"href":"https:\/\/blog.pafaarchives.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1029\/revisions\/1679"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.pafaarchives.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1029"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.pafaarchives.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1029"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.pafaarchives.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1029"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}