The job can become overwhelming at times, but I sincerely enjoy reading the news articles or shifting through invitations and letters of appreciation directed towards our efforts as a community arts organization. At times, I feel as though I make the job longer because I will find myself sitting down with an article and reading from front to back. Luckly, my job requires -to my understanding- a deeper understanding of the organization and the efforts that have passed through our hands as a community.
For the past few weeks, the Esperanza Peace and Justice Center hosted a group of 4 young women from a local group called JOVEN. The young girls helped with various duties of the office, but particularly they have helped with the organization of newspaper articles. In my efforts to organize our records collection, I came across about 10 boxes labeled newspaper articles. The importance of our newspaper not only as a way to prove that we have indeed produced valuable and well received programs, but also as a way to show our own struggles as an organization that does not shy away from controversial but highly important issues.
The young ladies and I embarked in an effort to place in chronological order each and every newspaper article in those boxes. Between 4-6 people, we finished the task in under four days. For some of the helpers, it was a great way to really see the rich history of the organization, but it was also a good exercise of the importance of placing history in order for future readers.
The work was done on a white buthcer paper floor mat in order to prevent the news articles from gather dirt and dust from the floors. Research on newspaper preservation indicates that newspaper are the most difficult to preserve due to their natural state of high acidity and the fact that most are made from grinding wood into sawdust particles which also hold a high level of lignin. The acid breaks the newspaper down and the lignin turns it yellow. basically from birth, the newspaper was destined to live only a short while.
As an organization that understands the importance of preservation, we are still on the beginning steps to understanding how and where we are going to save our valuable history. As for our newspapers, we have found that in the past we use the newspaper articles best for fundraising efforts, especially for large foundation applications that require extensive documentation of our programs and past events. While I read that most archival materials are most highly valuable when they are fully intact, our organization tries to maintain records in practical space saving ways.
For example our newspaper articles are cut and glued to fight a letter size and are then placed into regular sized binders. We do cut the articles into pieces which can be a bit of hassle if the cutting project is not completed in one sitting. The pieces get lost and the articles does lose information. My job is really to keep track of small little preservation projects and to make sure they are started, completed, and done to the best of our abilities.
For now, the organization is in a bind as to how we can store the documents that were taken out of the boxes and put into chronological order. We do not receive funding for preservation efforts and we hesitate to purchase rather expensive archival materials because we must work with the budget we have. Our funding goes primarily to programming and for that reason, our main attention goes there.
I did come across a piece of advice online regarding using discarded metal plate boxes from large printing presses. These boxes are built to keep out light and humidity which are the principal enemies of newspaper articles. I tried calling printing presses in our area as well as in Austin, but had no luck. I wonder if that small piece of information was correct and if it is, how can we and other small community organization access this cost saving option.
I will sign off and continue to work on this issue as well as all the other ones that plague our efforts.
So long preservation lovers.
