Developing a Collections Plan for a Rubber Stamp Collection

The immediate outcome stated in our project proposal was the creation of a guiding document/collections management plan that would address assessment, categorization, use and accessibility, storage and environmental considerations, cataloguing, and programming opportunities.

This target was achieved through the development of a collections management plan for the H/G Archive by Ms. Shaw. The collections management plan and assessment were performed concurrently with a series of inventories, collection evaluations, and rehousing projects by Ms. Shaw. This comprehensive assessment took place between October 2016 and August 2017 and included daily and weekly visits to the Archive for evaluation of the collection and the archival space, as well as meetings with MCBA director, Jeff Rathermel and MCBA staff. Ms. Shaw examined materials in various formats and current storage practices of these materials. This process allowed a deeper understanding of collections strengths, weaknesses, and areas for improvement, positioning MCBA to undertake a formal inventory.

This work could not have been achieved without the expertise and commitment of Ms. Shaw. Her role ensured that our proposed targets were achieved and exceeded. Ms. Shaw provided additional oversight to a team of interns from St. Catherine University's student chapter of the Society of American Archivists. This team contributed over 85 volunteer hours of support to the H/G Archive. While MCBA is not quite ready to formally offer a graduate-level internship through St. Kate's, relationships have been forged with faculty members and steps are in place to work with an Advanced Cataloging course through the university this fall 2017. MCBA seeks to cultivate this partnership so that library science students may supplement their classroom learning experience and gain hands-on professional experience in a unique library and archive setting.

Ms. Sophia Kiheri, MLIS, also provided pro bono support throughout the duration of the project, and contributed a great deal to the overall success of this project.