I was given free reign to appraise the slides of the agricultural professor and after two solid days of working on them, I finished the initial appraisal. I then moved along to a secondary appraisal. Since the materials were in such a disarray to begin with, we had large, broad categories including “Germany and other European countries,” “Wisconsin,” “Hawaii and other US States,” and some smaller ones like “Flowers/Close-ups” and “Teaching/Photo Tech.” There were about 30 carousels of slides that needed to be sleeved for easier viewing, which were placed into the appropriate category immediately afterward. During the secondary appraisal stage, I sorted through each category, viewing about half of each box of slides to see if it contained images relevant to his work in agriculture. If it did not (i.e. people-presumably family-fixing up an old house and picnicking, lots of tourist-like snapshots of buildings in a city or people-again presuming family-on a rafting trip) I moved it aside to the “Return to Family” box. When I got to the end, there was still a “Unknown/Miscellaneous/Unsortable” box to be dealt with. I go tthe curator at this time and we started sorting through that box together. The first 10 minutes went alright until we got to a set of 35mm negatives that was sleeved. The content of the negatives was a studio portrait session with a lady and two images at the end of her with her sweetheart. “Hmmm… I think this should go in ‘Wisconsin.’” says the curator. “I don’t know. We don’t know who this it, its probably a family friend.” I replied, trying to swing it towards the family pile, wondering if this is really happening. “Well, it looks like it he could’ve been taking passport photos for her.” “Those don’t look like the type of poses for a passport. Look, here she is with someone else,” indicating the ones of her and her sweetheart. I’m also wondering why keeping some unnamed person’s studio shots of a passport photo would be relevant. “We should really put this in ‘Wisconsin.’” He’s sincere about this. I’m so confused that I’m getting frustrated. “What kind of research value does this have?” I was trying very hard no to sound as confused/frustrated as I was feeling. “Well, she could be someone important.” And that’s the point I engaged myself in some busywork and walked away, but my mind was reeling and I was so confused. I was wondering if this guy ever DID appraisal. Do all the appraising archivists appraise like this? This isn’t how our practicum went. Did I miss something? And most frustrating of all, the thought that, Couldn’t every person in every photograph that comes through the archives be “someone important”? Isn’t this what appraisal is about? Deciding what has “enduring value”? And making selection decisions based off of that? How is a sheet of a portrait session, which is the same (unnamed) face over and over again, of enduring value? Now for the flip side. I understand that he was a photography professor, and we are keeping a lot of his “Photo Tech” teaching slides and images (which I also don’t see as having “enduring value,” but it makes more sense to me). I’ve asked for more information on the creator, and the collections we already have, but I was met with the answer that this was just “an initial appraisal,” even after explaining that the “initial” part was completed. Finding aids for his other collections have not been digitized and the information that I found said “see the Visual materials archivist,” which is whom I had asked in the first place. And its not that one sheet of negatives is going to make the archive explode due to being over capacity, but he was also trying to unsleeve individual slides to put them where he thought they should go, without looking at the titles on the sleeves, which indicated they were part of a group from a carousel. It disturbed more that he was going to such lengths to keep individual items that he would be removing them form the original order. At this point, I feel like I’ve getting highly conflicting information, from my practicum and this practical work. |