Herrera Metadata, Michelle Godfrey-Oct. 16, 2013

Made more progress on MSS160-b4-f03 today. The only unexpected thing I came across was an envelope that got scanned with a letter it did not belong with. This folder also contains quite a few handwritten letters which are somewhat challenging to read through and describe.

Here are a couple of things I saw that caught my attention. There was an actual signature from Senator Lyndon B. Johnson on a letter sent to John J. Herrera.

signature of Senator Lyndon B. Johnson in 1954

October is National Disability Employment Awareness Month and it was a timely occasion to see this postal stamp from 1954.

Hire the Handicapped - It's Good Business

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!

Shab, sheet music collection project

Today I managed to input the data for 53 more cards of drawer 3 of the sheet music collection project.  As before, most of the cards were typical and routine to catalog; however, the cards presenting the theme songs [to television shows, movies, news broadcasts, etc.] presented somewhat more of a challenge due to the title and theme information, among other things.  The ones I am uncertain about, I have highlighted in green and red for Cecilia to review since sometimes it is difficult to ascertain whether the theme, when written in the title field on the hard copy card, would still be inputted as the title or the note or both.  Otherwise, I don't believe I encountered any new problems.  The location of bracketed information also continues to be a bit challenging because that information is often all over the place on the card (such as place or publication info not normally found in the same place as with most cards) - for now, I've broken down the bracketed information into different fields for Cecilia to review and will wait for her feedback on whether or not to change this method of cataloging it. 

Herrera Metadata, Michelle Godfrey - Oct. 9, 2013

Today, I continued working on MSS160-b4-f03. The folder is now about half complete.

A recurring issue is with having the original and duplicate copy of a document and creating a unique title for them. Many of the remaining items in the folder are handwritten, so fortunately there won't be duplicates to deal with. I also came across a few items that did not have a creation date.

Herrera Metadata - Michelle Godfrey, Oct. 3, 2013

Today I worked in the new folder, MSS160-b4-f03. It got a little confusing right from the start because the first item I opened was a telegram. What I didn't notice was that the telegram actually had two pages and once I read them together, things made more sense. Otherwise, there were no other problems with anything else in the folder.

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.

Shab, sheet music collection project

Today I cataloged 40 more cards from drawer 3 of the sheet music collection.  Today's cards didn't go by as fast as last week's because although most were straightforward, there are new questions coming up along with the old ones such as what field to catalog the genre into, multiple publisher headings or other information often in brackets, what to do with notes written next to the dates, and whether something should be in a note or instrumentation (or some other) field.  I've highlighted the questionable text in red and the fields in blue for Cecilia to look at.  I also found some music cataloging websites that may offer more help next week, such as the Yale music cataloging directory.  http://www.library.yale.edu/cataloging/music/musicat.htm  I will look into this further next week.