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"I have nothing to do here, but to take the Air, enquire for News, talk Politicks and write Letters."

John Adams to Abigail Adams, 30 June 1774

Friday, January 30, 2009

AP Catalog featured in MHS eNewsletter

Check out the latest edition of @MHS, the eNewsletter of the Massachusetts Historical Society for an article on the new NHPRC-funded project to digitize the Adams Papers Catalog.

Update to Initialed and Post-Dated 1954

The resolution to the previous question about editors who had initialed and dated the slips they created has been updated. While in many cases, this added piece of information may ultimately not be used, several editors felt that it is worth keeping in the rare event that we would need to track the creation of a slip. This most likely would occur with a blue lead slip that was created from incomplete auction information. 

New Resolution: Since the information will all be transcribed by the data entry vendor, information that is pertinent or useful only to Adams editors will be retained in a note field that will not show up in the public online presentation.

Tuesday, January 13, 2009

Initialed and Dated Post-1954

Question: As the control file was created over the past 55 years, there have been a variety of editors who "signed" each slip with their initials and the date. For example, "LCF, 14 March 1958." Presumably, this measure was taken to track the work if questions arose at the time. Alas, we cannot follow up with Mr. LCF in 2009.

Resolution: This information, usually found at the bottom corner of a slip, will be omitted from the final records and should be marked for deletion in the proofreading process. The project manager will make the deletion to ensure that it is not pertinent to auction sales, etc.