Research and Archival Practices

This week, I went back to writing the various draft resolutions for the sites that are possibly up for a historic marker nomination. Admittedly, over the past couple of weeks, I had started with the easier sites to create a draft resolution for, as I was still getting familiar with the process. So now I am moving on to the trickier ones. By trickier, this is usually in reference to whether or not I was able to find all the aspects of the site’s history, such as the construction and sometimes destruction dates. As well as notable moments in the site’s life; basically, I am writing down why it matters. Unfortunately, local history is often inconsistently recorded, and tracking down oral and local sources can be a challenge.

There are a few sites in particular that have proved extra challenging. So much so that I had to reach out to the Sanford History Museum. The museum was able to confirm some information for me, but next week, I will go to the museum to actually look at some of the documents. I did get to take a peek at the Sanford museum this week and look at some of the exhibits. This short trip turned out to be beneficial, as one of the exhibits actually clarified something on one of the sites that I had been confused by.

On top of continuing to write draft resolutions, I also began formally organizing some of the archival materials that I had been assigned. The specific materials that I am starting with are scrapbooks filled with newspaper clippings that all relate to the city of Casselberry and its nearby surroundings. As I flipped through the book, I documented various headlines, the newspaper titles that they came from, the date, the author of the article if it was available, and a description of an image if there was one.

Looking through the various headlines proved more interesting than I had anticipated. It is important to note that all the articles that I have looked through thus far have been from the early 1970s. They have included stories about a large carjacking scheme and a boy who was rescued from a collapsed sand cave. There have also been many articles discussing local politics, including references to elections and potential policy changes. One policy change that was up for discussion was related to changing the time that serving drinks stops from 2 a.m. to 3 a.m. This caught my attention because these are policies that are still being debated today.  Soon, I will also be learning how to best preserve the actual newspaper clippings, but because of how they are cut up and taped or glued on to pages, some further research has to be done on what makes the most sense.

Overall, this was a productive week as I continued with both previous tasks and started something new. Next week, I am hoping that I am able to start going through my work more quickly, now that I have a greater sense of what I am doing.