From Dust to Digital: an archival processing story

Daisy C. Muralles is the Information and Reference Specialist at UC Santa Barbara Library, Special Research Collections. Here she discusses the intensive process of cataloguing the Lawrence B. Romaine Trade Catalog Collection (RTCC), 6,000 documents of which are now available in Adam Matthew’s brand new collection, Trade Catalogues and the American Home.

In 2010, I was introduced to the Lawrence B. Romaine Trade Catalog Collection (RTCC) as an undergraduate student working on rehousing, sorting and listing hundreds of individual trade catalogs at UCSB Library, Special Research Collections (SRC). The bulk of RTCC was purchased in 1966 and since then, it has grown to include well over the 40,000 items reported in our online finding aid. Decades of additional purchases were made to supplement the various subject areas in this collection. But by 2010, the collection consisted of items that were both catalogued and uncatalogued, some falling apart, others misplaced and all very dusty.

It was then that the RTCC rehousing project was initiated. The re-housing was surprisingly labor and time intensive. Significant portions of the collection were written in other languages, i.e. German, French or Italian, which required extensive referencing to dictionaries and other language tools. Several items were also in very critical archival states. We found items suffering from mould, infested with silverfish, and the ever-present decaying rubber bands and paperclips littered the entire collection.

As each subject section was reviewed, from Aviation to Woodworking, each box was changed and re-labelled, and items were sorted, assessed for additional preservation needs and listed by manufacturer. It was an exciting time as dozens of “undiscovered” catalogs surfaced from the collection, increasing our manufacturer holdings. We had already recognized that the trade catalogs were of ever increasing interest to our researchers, but it was becoming more apparent that a listing of the manufacturers was not enough and thus the second part to our multi-year project began, an itemized inventory of RTCC.

In the summer of 2015 Adam Matthew proposed to digitize a portion of RTCC. This project was the incentive to complete the itemized inventory of the collection. Fast forward to today and we now offer researchers the opportunity to browse large sections of our collection online – cutting down on the time it takes to browse and review the physical materials. And more importantly, we can now cast a larger net on discovering and accessing valuable information only found in these dusty catalogs. As for the itemized inventory list, we have fewer than 20 subject areas left to describe, which I anticipate will be completed by the start of 2018.

Having been part of this project for several years, first as a student and now as staff, has made the digitization of our trade catalog collection a very proud moment for me. Each time an architect or restoration builder, academic historian or genealogist, or the many avid collectors and hobbyists, reach out to ask for information regarding an obscure trade catalog from the early 1900s, I know that I can help them with increased confidence. What we’ve done to this collection has and will continue to benefit the scholarly community and beyond for a long time. The importance of these trade catalogs, and their accessibility was noted by Lawrence B. Romaine (original organizer and namesake): “If a complete history of American manufacturers is ever to be compiled, American trade catalogs will unquestionably be one of the most valuable sources of material available.”

-----

Trade Catalogues and the American Home is available now. For more information, including trial access and price enquiries, please email us at info@amdigital.co.uk.

On 27th April 2017, we will host a webinar on Trade Catalogues and the American Home. Register here to discover more about the resource. All of our webinars are recorded and are available to view at your leisure.