Repost for the day crowd: Down in the Archives, Chevrolet Deluxe edition

"ITA97, now with more Jag @ opposite-lock.com" (ita97)
07/25/2019 at 12:39 • Filed to: None

I’ve been working on a side project at work inventorying a whole bunch of map cases in the department. These particular flat cases are a... disaster, in the sense that we don’t have a great idea of what’s really in them and exactly where it is. They’re this bunch of stuff (say 650ish folders with at least ten times that number of individual items) that have been under various organizational schemes at different times, and then eventually became something of a mess that we’ve ignored for probably the last 15-20 years as a department. For right now, I’m just doing a folder-level inventory to preserve my sanity. They hold a variety of maps, plat maps, engineering drawings for all manner of things, building plans for the entire university over the entirety of its existence and all kinds of oversize ephemera related to certain regional history manuscript and university archives collections.

They also hold a large format, surprisingly detailed promotional flip chart for the 1939 Chevrolet Deluxe model range. To say the least, this is out of scope for us and the university building plan collection it was found with. It also lacked any kind of accession record, or any other contextual information for why we have it. If I had to guess, a Chevrolet sales guy was probably looking to score some fleet sales and was pitching the university on some new cars back in the day, and this ended up in a drawer with a bunch of other university records in someone’s office and later made the move over to us along with the old building plans.

I snapped some quick potato pictures of a maybe 1/3 of the pages. Enjoy.

!!! UNKNOWN CONTENT TYPE !!!

Somewhat sadly, we’ll almost certainly weed this from the collection. I’m sure GM’s archive has a copy or two, along with a some other places. That said, and because this thing is so damned cool, instead of weeding it to the recycle bin I suspect I’m going to weed this to my office wall. I may even setup an easel in the corner of my office so I can easily flip it to a new page when it comes time to look at something different.

DISCUSSION (7)

vondon302 > ITA97, now with more Jag @ opposite-lock.com
07/25/2019 at 06:36

Cool score.

Your job sounds interesting and tedious.

;)

ITA97, now with more Jag @ opposite-lock.com > vondon302
07/25/2019 at 07:32

I love working in the archives. It is, however, one of those jobs that not everyone can do. Many of the tasks themselves are not particularly interesting in and of themselves, but the material you’re working with is often fascinating.

This is actually one of those professional ethics dilemmas. I’d love to rescue it from the recycle bin to my garage wall, but while not outright illegal, doing so would be a big ethical no-no in the archival world. However, rescuing it enroute from the recycle bin to my office wall where it still theoretically remains University property isn’t as big of a deal.

vondon302 > ITA97, now with more Jag @ opposite-lock.com
07/25/2019 at 07:45

Lol

better on the wall than shredded in my opinion.

Snuze: Needs another Swede > ITA97, now with more Jag @ opposite-lock.com
07/25/2019 at 13:46

I’m not up on the ethics of archival, but I can see where just taking it would be stealing. Could you just ask someone if you can have it to take home?

Bandit > ITA97, now with more Jag @ opposite-lock.com
07/25/2019 at 14:24

https://www.gmheritagecenter.com/about-gm-heritage-center/contact/index.html Contact the heritage center, a quick browse of the 1930s documents online do not show your booklet . Perhaps they’d be interested.

ITA97, now with more Jag @ opposite-lock.com > Bandit
07/25/2019 at 19:18

I may shoot them an email, but I suspect they have it. In the archival world, digitization is an access tool (usually focused on high use materials) a nd not a preservation method. One of the off shoots of that is an archives digitized materials are usually only a very small portion of their holdings.

ITA97, now with more Jag @ opposite-lock.com > Snuze: Needs another Swede
07/25/2019 at 19:27

Taking it out of the recycling bin isn’t any different than someone dumpster diving in general, but it’s a thing we just don’t do in the field. It opens up potential ethical questions of why it ended up there in the first place. Asking kind of goes down the same pathway. I would guess my department head probably wouldn’t out right say no , but the fact I asked in the first place wouldn’t be a great look. I would cer tainly be reminded it isn’t a thing usually done, and I’ve been in the field long enough to know better.

Selecting something from the collection to display in your office (that remains University property/part of a collection ) is common, and raises no questions.