"Preserving Newburyport's Historic Collections" Online Exhibition

DISCOVERED. PRESERVED. SHARED.

Back in 2018, the NPL Archival Center embarked on a challenging, but exciting journey of preservation and access in the storage areas of the NPL Archives and City Hall. This was an adventure suitable for only the bravest of archivists, library volunteers and mylar-cutting magicians. Two years of toil and sweat were rewarded with restored manuscripts; encapsulated photographs and maps; processed collections; and over a hundred rare books all boxed, labeled and organized. 

The most gratifying part of this adventure would have been the big party we were planning for the end of the grant---our city-wide "Archives Day." This event would have brought all of the local cultural organizations together, from the NPL to museums and churches, to show off rare and never-before-seen items from their archival collections. 

Unfortunately, COVID-19 changed everything. In March 2020, the library closed and the staff went into quarantine. It became clear that we would not be able to hold any events that would attract large crowds until 2021. So, no celebration on a grand scale as we would have liked...

However, as we are fully committed to sharing with the public what we have accomplished with the LSTA grant, we have created a "virtual exhibit" on this blog featuring the Library's most interesting items recently preserved using LSTA grant funds. 

While it's true that we have to keep our distance and can't hobnob like we used to, we can still raise a glass (remotely), celebrate the hard work and gaze upon the treasures that are now available for everyone to see, use and marvel at. 

Below are highlights from our LSTA Grant Project, "Preserving Newburyport's Historic Collections." 

We hope you enjoy! 

(Clicking on a graphic will enlarge it for easier viewing.) 

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MANUSCRIPTS

RARE BOOKS

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PAMPHLETS

PHOTOGRAPHS

MAPS & PLANS

Though many shareholders wished to rebuild, the Bartlet Mills Corporation decided to dissolve and the property was advertised and sold at auction just months after the fire.

Newburyport Daily News, May 25, 1881, p. 2. 

COLLECTIONS

NEWSPAPERS

EPHEMERA

THANK YOU!

A huge thanks to the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) and the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners (MBLC) for making this grant journey possible. We most certainly could not have accomplished what we did, in such numbers, without their generosity. 

       

And a special thanks to all of the hardworking NPL staff and volunteers---our "Preservation Task Force." Without them, we would never have achieved what we did. The sheer numbers of items that we were able to identify, preserve and make accessible was extraordinary. An amazing feat for our small, but mighty Archival Center. We miss you terribly and hope to see you all again soon, post-COVID. 

We also want to thank NPL circulation services tech Naomi Needle, for all of her help with this online exhibit and to NPL head librarian Giselle Stevens and asst. head librarian Sara Kelso, for their support.

         The NPLAC's stellar "Preservation Task Team" in action (missing a few camera-shy faces).

FIN!

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COVID-19 and its impact on our LSTA Preservation Grant progress

In mid-March 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic forced all Newburyport municipal buildings to close, the NPLAC staff and volunteers were working hard to meet our ambitious preservation and access goals for the remainder of the LSTA grant project. The map encapsulation was going quickly, the photograph project was progressing well, and a number of processed collections were nearing completion. We had recently placed an order for archival supplies, expending most of our second-year LSTA grant funds. We were also in the middle of planning our city-wide grand finale "Archives Day" event in July, to be held during the Newburyport’s Yankee Homecoming celebration. 

All of this abruptly stopped on March 18th with the closure of the Library and the staff assigned to work from home.

Though the situation has been frustrating, we've been doing our best to reassess our goals and adapt to our “work from home” status. We’ve been putting our energy into communicating with patrons, staff and volunteers using social media and technology, as well as working on what LSTA grant-related projects we can from home. In some aspects, this sudden interruption of work has been positive, giving us a fresh perspective on life and work. This enforced hiatus has given us some time to think and to re-evaluate our progress and strategies, especially with our work on the LSTA grant project. Though we may not meet our September 30th deadline for completing all of our preservation goals, we will have accomplished the majority of the work and will certainly continue to move forward on our projects as we can.

This next week, Gov. Baker will be implementing the first of four phases to reopen Massachusetts. The Newburyport Public Library will be implementing its own plan for a slow and careful reopening. When the NPLAC staff are able to return to the Archives, which might happen as early as May 21st, we will pick up where we left off with our ongoing projects. Our volunteer team may or may not return in June/July. Everything changes by the day, so we’ll just have to adapt as we go and have a flexible attitude and approach towards completing our grant initiatives. 

If we are unable to hold our city-wide Archives Day event this summer (which looks unlikely at this point), we hope to put together a virtual event to celebrate our LSTA accomplishments with the public. It won’t be quite the same, as there is nothing better than to see primary source material in person, but it would be a safe way to share collection material and brag about what we've achieved over the last two years. 

One positive aspect to all of this is that when the world returns to "normal," people will be eager to get out and take advantage of all the cultural opportunities they’ve been missing. We foresee a significant increase of NPL Archival Center visitors in the upcoming months.

Below are some fun photographs of our preservation progress up to mid-March 2020: 

Photograph project moving forward. Val organizing photographs by size and subject heading.

Repairing volumes of Tax Records above. Susan learning new bookbinding skills at the North Bennett Street School.

Encapsulation of maps, plans, fragile ephemera, and early newspapers. Before & after. 

City Hall maps, before and after. Nicki is the NPLAC’s amazing encapsulation maven.

Friday mornings---NPLAC’s busy beehive of preservation and access activity. Maggie indexing maps, Nick indexing ship logs, and Liz and Nicki working on collections.

Dedicated Thursday/Saturday volunteers, Marge and Skip, working on the pamphlet files.

NPL Archival Center and LSTA Grant UPDATE!

TEMPUS FUGIT! Time does fly! 

We find ourselves already in our second year and final phase of our LSTA grant project, “Preserving Newburyport’s Historical Collections.” This year, we are focusing solely on preserving our collection material, from family, club and church papers to photographs and maps.The next nine months will be full of processing collections, encapsulating maps and integrating hundreds of previously unprocessed photographs into our existing photograph collection. There will be a lot of labeling and numbering to do. We are thankful for our hardworking staff and volunteer preservation task team!

As said in our previous post (proudly boasting), we have made tremendous progress in our first year. 

Here is a brief timeline of some of our 2019 accomplishments:

APRIL 2019 — WEBSTER'S RIVERSIDE DAIRY COLLECTION

Assistant archivist Dana Echelberger and volunteer Marianne worked together to process the Webster’s Riverside Dairy Collection, which included two boxes of loose papers, photographs, booklets and scrapbooks. The collection is completed, cataloged and ready for researchers.

MAY 2019 — PROCUREMENT OF FURNITURE

The NPLAC purchased a Gaylord Archival Five-Drawer Extra-Large Flat File Case and a Vertical Art Storage Bin. A custom base was built to support the oversized flat file case by staff from the Newburyport Department of Public Works. This base increases the height of the flat file case and provides storage areas underneath. The Vertical Art Storage Bin works perfectly for storing our framed paintings and prints. 

JUNE 2019 — TWO CERTIFICATES AND SEA LETTERS: the Schooner Cynthia and Brig Vulture

Before - Two “Certificates and Sea Letters” 

were sent to NEDCC for conservation treatment 

in October 2018

After - Safe removal from the crumbling, acidic
mounts was achieved and the documents
were returned to the NPLAC in June 2019.

Two rare documents in the NPLAC collection were in need of immediate conservation and preservation action. These “certificates and sea letters,” one signed by George Washington for the Schooner Cynthia (1796) and the other, signed by John Adams for the Brig Vulture (1797), were in danger of being lost due to their acidic and disintegrating mounts. In February 2018, the NPLAC received a conservation report for the two ship passports from the New England Document Conservation Center (NEDCC). Their recommended conservation treatment included testing, cleaning, careful removal from the acidic mounts, stabilizing and digitizing.

In October 2018, the two documents were delivered to NEDCC. On February 25, 2019, Natalia V. Paskova, Assistant Paper Conservator, reported that they had been removed from the acidic mounts and were in the process of being lined with a very thin Japanese paper to provide extra support. In June 2019, the conservation treatment was completed. NEDCC built a protective enclosure for the documents and provided us with digitized copies of each manuscript and a final report. 

Since their restoration, these “sea passports” have drawn interest from researchers writing about the maritime history of Essex County. 


JULY 2019 — PHASE BOXES FOR RARE BOOKS

Assistant archivist Dana Echelberger and a volunteer worked together to prepare orders for phase boxes to protect the NPLAC’s rare book collection. The volumes include early almanacs, early music, religious texts, educational publications and bound records. 125 phase boxes were ordered and received, including one oversized phase box for the bound volume of Newburyport Town Records, 1764-1789. All of these rare volumes are now well protected from the light, dust and the potential hazards of sitting unprotected on a metal shelf in compact storage.

Before phase boxes....and after. 

AUGUST 2019 to present  — MUNICIPAL RECORDS 

The multiple volumes of the Tax Assessor’s Valuations (1825-1861) rescued from the dusty basement at City Hall have been cleaned and are currently being either repaired or rebound by the NPLAC volunteer bookbinder. This involves stabilizing bindings that are intact or removing the damaged one and replacing it with a new cover, spine and end pages. Thank you Susan and Nicki! 

Various stages of cleaning, stabilizing, repairing or rebinding early tax records. 

SEPTEMBER 2019 — INVENTORY

Skip and Marge Motes returning the final box 

of pamphlet files to the shelf, marking the 

completion of the Archival Shelving inventory. 

An epic moment! 

Congratulations to two of our stellar, long-term volunteers, Marge and Skip Motes, who completed the inventory of the NPLAC’s holdings! This monumental task was done in two phases. The first was the Reading Room inventory, which was completed in 2015 (took one year). The second phase, begun in 2017, focused on the “Archival Shelving” compact storage area, which holds over 5000 items. This was completed in September 2019. Their careful, thorough and methodical approach revealed what items in the collection were cataloged and those that were not. They also identified materials needing preservation or conservation treatment. If it wasn’t for this amazing dynamic duo, the NPLAC staff wouldn’t have been as organized or prepared for the LSTA Preservation Grant project. Their hard work and dedication made all of this possible. 

Marge and Skip recently embarked on a new LSTA grant-related project, which involves identifying, labeling and indexing 150 maritime photographs in the NPLAC’s collection. We are so grateful for their time, expertise and incredible perseverance (through thick and thin) to “get the job done.” 

NOVEMBER 2019 — ONGOING 

Pre-processed collections awaiting final processing, finding aid and catalog record: 

William Harris Papers, Hicks Papers, Newburyport Rotary Club Papers, Baptist Church Records and the NBPT Ephemera Files. 

Other ongoing or new projects to be completed in 2020:

• Indexing early newspapers
• Identifying, indexing, labeling and numbering photographs
• Encapsulating maps
• Indexing, labeling and numbering maps
• Newburyport Garden Club Papers
• Plum Island Collection
• Alice Dodge Wolfson Papers
• Municipal Records (Tax, School Committee, Charter Committee, Tree Committee) 

Stay tuned for future posts on our LSTA Grant progress as we head into the new year. With all of our helping hands, we'll be knocking out the above projects in good time. 

Happy Holidays!

Categories Galore

As librarians and archivists, we are obsessively organized! We love folders, categories, and subjects. The old adage, "a place for everything and everything in its place" was made for the library and archival fields. There is nothing more satisfying than seeing subjects organized in our catalog as follows:

Street-railroads -- Massachusetts -- Newburyport

Seriously, this makes us happy! And speaking of categories, we are full steam ahead on the grant process. Volunteers have been instrumental in helping us evaluate and understanding the breadth of unprocessed collections. Special projects volunteer Liz has been hard at work pre-processing a collection about transportation in Newburyport.

Side note: When the Newburyport Public Library Archival Center receives donations from patrons near and far, they come in many different forms. It is typical to receive a box full of papers, books, photographs, newspapers, and ephemera in no particular order. It is up to us to make sense of the materials and organize it in a collection.

In this case, we received a stack of folders full of papers relating to transportation in Newburyport.

While the folders look nice and neat (a definite plus), we still need to establish intellectual control ... a term meaning we need to know the content of the papers inside.

Liz was tasked with going through the contents of each folder to "clean" them up. This involved removing staples, as seen in the picture below.

Staples are a huge no-no in the archival world. Older staples, for example, were typically made of metal which rusts and corrodes over time. As she was removing staples, Liz took note of the rust stains left over from where the staples once were. We caught it just in time!

With staples no longer a concern, Liz organized the papers into different categories. For this collection, she chose modes of transportation (roads, railroads, bridges, etc.).

As she continued sorting through folders, Liz quickly realized that four categories were not enough. It wasn't long before the whole table was covered with piles with their own unique labels.

An explosion of categories...and post-its!

Paper materials come in all shapes and sizes, but we have to be mindful of how they are made. Newspapers are an amazing source in capturing a moment - or day - in time. The challenge that arises with newspapers is with composition - the paper is highly acidic. With time newspapers will self-destruct - but not before compromising other paper materials they're in contact with.
To preserve information from a newspaper clipping, we make photocopies of the articles on archival paper designed to be long-lasting, so the information will not be lost. Liz is pictured below making copies of the newspaper clippings.

Once articles are photocopied and information is secured, original newsprint can be recycled.

Liz worked hard organizing this collection into a sensible system. As you see with the photos below, she has completed the first step in the beginning stages of processing a collection by organizing the material into categories that flow nicely.

This is a beautiful sight we like to see!

This collection is now ready for our archivists to process. It will require us to do a bit more digging and organizing into one cohesive collection. After the completion of a written finding aid, a tool that outlines the collection and what materials are in it, this collection will be made accessible for the public to see!

Have any questions or comments?  Add them down below!