Wilson | Young Archives & Special Collections

Written by Christine Ameduri

This past summer saw no shortage of projects to tackle in McDonogh School Archives & Special Collections. History Department Chair, Ane Lintvedt, and I, (with an occasional assist from the Summer Work Crew), worked on reorganizing the Archives’ physical space, as well as its many archival, manuscript and artifact collections. Volunteer, Butch Maisel ’72, spent several weeks sorting through hundreds of McDonogh uniforms, and volunteer intern, Peyton Barranco ’17, dove into the Archives’ school publications.

Maintenance of official school publications is a component of the Records Management Program. Publications produced by McDonogh School – journals, newsletters, catalogs, programs, newspapers, yearbooks, and various other materials such as brochures and reports, are archival records and are processed intellectually, according to their appropriate “RG”(Record Group) number. However, because the volume of such material is usually so great, it is housed separately from the other records for ease of access. To manage this large volume of material, procedures and workflows are needed to facilitate the various steps of collecting, accessioning, processing, housing, digitizing, microfilming, and binding to maintain tight physical and intellectual control.

Over the summer, Peyton processed roughly 100 cubic feet of McDonogh yearbooks. (From 1917 to 1934, the yearbook was called The Dragon. It was renamed The Legacy in 1935.) She also processed The Orange & Black Varieties programs (1933-1943). These are only two of the many dozens of publications in the Archives that still need processing. This labor-intensive project also requires large amounts of physical workspace, so Peyton spent the bulk of her time in the Naylor Room of the Upper School Library, as it was the only available space on campus large enough to accommodate this project.

Thanks to Peyton’s efforts and attention to detail, these two publications are now easily physically retrievable and ready for patrons to use for research, as well as ready for digitizing and microfilming at a later date. McDonogh School Archives & Special Collections continues to process additional publications as time and workspace permit. We look forward to adding these full publication listings to the Archives’ web pages this year.