Herrera metadata project - Elaine Patton, 02/06/2014

Today I worked on MSS160-b3-f22 as my final project (!). It's been a great run! :)

I knew I'd seen HPLM_MSS160-b3-f22-16 (a program for an event "Honoring and Supporting" LBJ) before in another folder that I've done before, and hooray, I was able to easily locate the other version, HPLM_MSS160-b3-f13-02. The one from today is the better version, for what it's worth: the one from folder 13 has a blue tint. I've identified each as a Version Of the other in their records.

This folder actually contained several sets of "Version of" documents: same letter or note with different handwritten note added or addressed to different people, which made things very easy. There was a handful of Spanish-language documents, most of which could be described as "script for endorsement of Connally."

I noticed, as I was reviewing the records list, a few of the items had little padlock icons next to them that I haven't seen before... however, going back into the record and re-publishing got rid of them. Doesn't seem to matter, but just wanted to mention that.
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Nothing says "victory party!" (in the old-fashioned way...?) like a invitation written like an office memo.

Photos & Herrera metadata

Scanned a few extra photos, then worked on a few more Herrera folders: MSS160-b3-f23, -f25, -f26, and -f27.

HPLM_MSS160-b3-f27-01 is in Spanish; seems to be the same sort of layout as the text for a radio broadcast speech from an earlier folder, though. Ditto for -02, -03 (which may be a rough draft version of 01), and -04. The other two items were English, though, and I was able to complete the records for them.

Department photos & Herrera metadata

Finished up scanning the department photos with no problems.

Finished up MSS160-b3-f13, which I'd started...about a month ago! A couple of the items were only partial letters: the first page of one, the second page of another. I also completed MSS160-b3-f21 with no complications.

Deptartment Photographs - Elaine Patton, 1/9/2014

Today I worked on scanning photos out of the department albums. Have about a third-ish of the older album to complete.

Straightforward but for the apparently missing photo here and there:

• catdept-015 is on the bottom half of a page titled Surprise Party for Rosa Lin and next to a caption listing 10 names, but only 3 people are visible in that photo.
• catdept-016 is on the top half of a page for Monica Simon's leaving the catalog department; a caption of names is on the bottom half, but there's no photo to accompany it.
• catdept-018's album page has a caption listing names with no matching photo
• catdept-162's page was missing a photo.
• catdept-277's album page was missing a group picture.

Other:

• catdept-027 & -028 have both 2006 and 2007 written on the back; the latter has "January ? 2007", so I assume 2007 is just when they were added, maybe?
• 094-120 were in an envelope in the back of the newer album.

Herrera Metadata Project - Elaine Patton, 12/12/13

Today I worked on MSS160-b3-f13. Lots of letters = very straightforward. (The downside is that when I do come across the rare newspaper article, it's several records later before I realize that I didn't switch the "Primary Source" descriptor over to "no"!) A few of the records had already been completed, it seemed, as well.

Still a few records left (though only a handful, I think). :)

Herrera Metadata Project - Elaine Patton, 12/5/2013

Today I completed: MSS160-b3-f14, -f15, -f19, & -f20.

In folder 14, there is a Viva Johnson poster that apparently was not digitized.

The finding aid description for folder 20 has a misspelling, I noticed: Allan Shivors: Telegrams to and Speech on Behalf of, by John J. Herrera. The governor's name should be Shivers. I included it in the Notes as it's written in TARO, but wanted to point that out.

One letter in f19 was hard to follow since it seemed to be partially in some shorthand:

Continuing in the vein of how little politics really change...

MSS160-b3-f14-05

Herrera metadata project - Elaine Patton, 11/21/2013

'60s font! Barely-smiling disembodied face on a STAR!

Today I (finally) got to finish MSS160-b4-f12 and MSS160-b3-f12. No major problems-- couldn't physically confirm whether one item was a scan of a sticker, though it almost certainly is. A pamphlet for Bill Blakley didn't name a particular compiler or publisher, so I left those fields blank, but it was almost certainly created by his campaign team. Little things like that.

 Also, I love old campaign literature because it reminds me of how little politics change in many ways...

Herrera Metadata - Elaine Patton, 11/14/2013

Today I started on MSS160-b4-f12 and struggled with UNT's system on-again, off-again ability to load pages completely. On the plus side, when that happens while trying to save a record, it seems that record does actually get saved, even if the page can't complete its normal refresh cycle, so it could be worse.

Herrera Metadata Project - Elaine Patton, 11/7/2013

Today I continued to work on MSS160-b4-f11 [and finished it, it turns out!]. Nothing particularly weird encountered (except for a large number of envelopes, which get the most boring titles and descriptions created), though I did come across another couple of Social Security numbers, flagged in the non-displaying notes.

There were, however, several gems-- utter, hilarious gems.

For example, the 2 resumes which volunteered various information like height/weight and physical health (after the name/address heading and before the education & experience parts):

Did that used to be a 'thing' in the '70s/pre-hiring protections?

Then there was the fairly lengthy letter to Herrera explaining the author's daughter had met a man who seemed like a phony (supposedly had attended a number of prestigious universities, claimed to have a number of degrees, planned to become a cardiovascular doctor but spent most of his days "smoking and drinking coffee" in restaurants, claimed to have been a racing driver but owned no car...) and had given Herrera as a reference. She says it's possible Herrera himself is a phony, but there weren't any better options than to contact him. The post-script of the letter casually asks for the driver's license and Social Security numbers of the man in question, if Herrera could procure them.

This one... I don't know what to make of this one, particularly the second half pictured below:

TeachingTexas.org records - Elaine Patton, 10/24/2013

Today I submitted selected items from the digital collection relating to Texas history to TeachingTexas.org. 

Very straightforward, no real problems. One item was a French map of the Louisiana territory which didn't easily fit into any of the time periods, which jump from "prehistory" to "Spanish Texas." The record only had a vague c. 1800s date, so I went with Spanish Texas. It was sometimes challenging to map the content to a TEKS skillset, as well.

Herrera Metadata Project - Elaine Patton, 10/17/2013

Today I completed MSS160-b4-f10 and got started on MSS160-b4-f11 (the latter is huge!).

I did run into the awkward situation (with HPLM_MSS160-b4-f11-38) where I technically had a name for a creator/contributor, but since the item is just an informal birthday card, only a first name was given (Lee).Not sure how/if this should be entered.

There was also a duplicated piece of correspondence that, somewhat annoyingly, had 2 different letters printed on it. I've encountered that before, but with this one it really wasn't clear exactly which one had come first (and to further nitpick, the topmost message didn't seem to make internal chronological sense -- obviously some context must have been missing). Nothing prohibitively weird, just...weird.

Herrera Metadata - Elaine Patton, 10/10/2013

Today I created metadata for the items in MSS160-b4-f09. Most of this folder contained letters, which are very straightforward. There was one Deed of Sale and one copy of a legal brief, which required some scrutiny before I could decide what exactly to title them and how (and who) to list as creators/contributors. Two Spanish-language items: this time I left the long one alone, but the other was just a short 'Happy New Year' greeting.

One personal letter to Herrera included this funny bit:

... dogonne it"***!XXxx@"! ...

I also got started on MSS160-b4-f10: so far, so good. This folder actually contains some photographs, which is a nice change of pace!

Herrera Metadata - Elaine Patton, 10/3/2013

Today I finished up MSS160-b4-f08, which I had started last week.

Mostly there were no surprises, though I did catch one document that didn't have a page count or size written in. I also encountered a few letters written in Spanish, which necessitated some transcription and a trip over to Google Translate. One, involving a Volkswagen car possibly being transferred to the younger son of a couple, was a bit difficult to parse, but the other two were fairly straightforward.

I got a kick out of a couple pieces of correspondence with Houston Lighting & Power Co., like this bill describing the amount of electricity used as the hours Reddy worked and the amount owed as "Reddy's Wages."

Electricity bill, circa 1960

There was also this line in a letter of apology about a billing error that led to Herrera's power being wrongfully cut off:

"It seems that whether our records are kept by a giant electronic brain or on the back of an old envelope, we must always content with clerical errors caused by human intervention. ..."

I just like the "giant electronic brain" imagery, particularly for 1960.

Herrera Metadata Project - Elaine Patton, 9/26/2013

Today I worked on folders MSS160-b04-f07 and -f08 from the John J. Herrera Collection. I completed all of folder 07 and some of folder 08. No real trouble, except that filled-out forms are still tricky with regards to creator/contributor attribution. There were also a few instances of duplicate documents-- I'm surprised the UNT editor doesn't an option for labeling something as a "duplicate of" in the relations field; the closest thing is "version of" or maybe "replaced by." For these, whichever I encountered second is the one that got labeled copy or duplicate with all other metadata remaining the same.

John J. Herrera Collection Metadata - Elaine Patton, 9/12/2013

Today I entered metadata for MSS160-b4-f05 & -f06 from the John J. Herrera Collection. Both folders were mostly letters and went smoothly.

I did hit a brief snag in f05 with a couple of pages torn from a calendar with regards to who counted as the creator and/or contributors to it. One page was completely blank on the calendar grid (i.e. no notes written on it), and I suspect it was only included because the image printed on it would have accompanied the next month, which did have some notes. The other folder had the somewhat thick "Abstract of Title to Part of Block 4 of "Westview Addition"..." which was a little perplexing to document. It took me back to some of the Old Vault Letters with the ongoing listings of Block X Lot Y, Block Z Lots ABC...

Collections & Themes - Elaine Patton, 9/5/2013

Today I perused the Houston Area Digital Archives looking for items that could be showcased for the themes of football, weather (flooding, hurricanes), and the Houston Livestock Show. Football ended up with the most items, though the latter two each have about 15. I tried to search for specific names or places associated with either (e.g. the founder of the HLSR, J. W. Sartwelle), sadly without much luck. I did turn up a bunch of my old KHOU news footage reels, near and dear to my heart since last summer. I also tried searching through Google using the modifier site:digital.houstonlibrary.org, which helped me find a few more things.

Unrelated to anything above, I also noticed this ad in the scan of a 1940s newspaper (the Southwestern Times, I think-- I neglected to bookmark the exact file): This Thanksgiving, EAT OUT.

Old Vault Letters - Elaine Patton, 8/29/2013

Finally back (from a scheduled break and then unexpected scheduling conflicts from my librarian job). Today involved reviewing the last few Old Vault letters previously decoded and assembled, in a couple of cases, by Michelle:

• MSS0113-b01f15-06
• MSS0113-b01f19-03
• MSS0113-b01f20-05
• MSS0113-b01f21-02

I was able to add in a few words here and there, made much more straightforward by the work already done by Michelle & Cecilia to get the oddballs in the right order to be legible. Other difficulties remained, i.e. that letter with random(?) slashes after many of the words and at the ends of lines. Same letter also had very expansive, spidery writing. I also learned the term "chirography" from the letter to Eliza Fannin, a good counterpart to the better-used 'typography.' Good stuff.

Panorama Scanning - Elaine Patton, 6/27/2013

Images scanned today:

• MSS0100-1300 - 1323
• MSS0100-1275 - 1299

 And that's the end of the Schlueter trays! At least, the stack I've been pulling from. Lots of pictures of fig orchards in this bunch, but most amusing to me was the ad for Merit Bread toast on all the trucks in this fleet:

"Make toast your breakfast food"
Texas Bread Co.

Panorama Scanning - Elaine Patton, 6/20/2013

Items scanned today:

• MSS0100-1071 - 1075 + a random, unnumbered Litterst panorama (piece of paper in the tray suggests that it should have contained 1050-1075)
• MSS0100-1126 - 1150
• MSS0100-1200 - 1224
• MSS0100-1325 - 1346

Saving to the internal hard drive rather than straight to the external seems to have neutralized the weird file corruption of last week. A couple of pictures were of uncertain identifier; these got labeled "### possibly" (as a question mark can't go in the file name).

Panorama Scanning - Elaine Patton, 6/13/2013

Photos scanned: MSS0100-1151 - 1174, MSS0100-1175 - 1199, and MSS0100-1100 - 1125 (give or take).

For some reason at least a couple of the images didn't scan or write to the hard drive properly (trying to open them produced an error message about how the TIFF couldn't be parsed or something thereabouts). I rescanned the ones I noticed, but I didn't open all of them, so there's a possible future issue. The second tray also had a few duplicate numbers, marked by a (2) in the file names (and distinct from the extra-wide panorama that's labeled (pt 1) and (pt 2) in the file names).