Volume 49 | No. 2 SPRING 2020 ISSN 0738-9396 Mid-Atlantic Archivist Delaware | District of Columbia | Maryland | New Jersey | New York | Pennsylvania | Virginia | West Virginia Inside: 1 From the Chair 2 The Buchanan County Courthouse Flood of 1977 4 African American Artists in the Archives: The Alva Rogers Papers at NYU 6 An Archive is an Archive No Matter How Small: A Deeper Look into the Treasure Trove of Information in the Archives 8 19th Amendment Anniversary 9 Following in Famous Footsteps 10 Caucus News 15 Diversity and Inclusion Session Scholarship Debuts 16 MARAC Spring 2021: Saratoga Springs 17 Volunteer to Serve on a MARAC Committee 18 New Members 19 Treasurer’s Report 20 Image Credits RACHEL GROVE ROHRBAUGH MARAC Chair Colleagues, is just beginning, but I appreciate that both of them volunteered to lead this committee. Thank you also to our This column marks my Historian Lauren Brown for the research he has done on last as MARAC chair. I the history of MARAC’s meeting model and Mary Mannix appreciate the opportunity for the advice she has already provided. I have had to serve in this role and want to thank Thank you to all of our outgoing committee members several people for the and congratulations to everyone recently elected. I want contributions they have made to send a special thank you to Michael Martin, newly to the organization over the past appointed co-chair of the Communications Committee. year. All of you made it a pleasure to Michael recently stepped down as associate editor of the be MARAC chair, and I hope to work with you again in Mid-Atlantic Archivist. Current editor Jodi Boyle noted the future. that Michael had been editor or associate editor of the MAA since the winter 2008 issue. That is a dozen years of First and foremost, I could not have asked for a better service! Thank you again Michael, and we are so glad to chair-elect than Jennie Knies. Jennie was always willing have you continue on the Communications Committee. to jump in and lend her expertise. I am excited to see what Jennie accomplishes as chair with our newly If you yourself feel like answering the call to service, elected Chair-Elect Tara Wink. Jennie and Tara, along please consider volunteering for one of the many with the rest of the executive committee, Mary Mannix, appointed positions with current openings. See Chair- Caitlin Rizzo, and Amanda Koss May, and MARAC Elect Jennie Knies’s article on page 17 for a full list of Administrator Sara Predmore are going to make a opportunities. wonderful team. MARAC is in very capable hands! I will miss seeing all of you in Harrisonburg. It was I would also like to thank several people for their unfortunate that we had to cancel the conference, but it dedicated committee work during my term as chair. Josué was the right thing to do. In the meantime, please take Hurtado and members of the Diversity and Inclusion care and be well. I hope we can all come back together in Committee, thank you for your work on our new Diversity the fall. and Inclusion Session Scholarship, which will first be awarded at our fall 2020 meeting in Long Branch, N.J. I look forward to attending the D&I-themed sessions that result and encourage all MARAC members to check Rachel Grove Rohrbaugh out the new scholarship (more details on page 15) and MARAC Chair consider applying. Another committee that deserves special attention is the Membership Committee chaired by Sara Borden. Membership along with D&I, Education, and the Meetings Coordinating Committee have been instrumental in making our 2020 Membership Survey a reality. Learning more about our members and what they hope to gain from our organization will be instrumental as we plan for the future. Speaking of the future, another important new venture is the Meeting Model Task Force headed up by Members- at-Large Elizabeth Scott and Hillary Kativa. Their work 1 | Mid-Atlantic Archivist All photographs for this article depict records salvage operations following flooding in Buchanan County in 1977.Records Salvage Operations Buchanan County Flood (1977) and Green County Fire (1979), Library of Virginia, Richmond, Virginia. The Buchanan County Courthouse Flood of 1977 By Eddie Woodward An earlier version of this article appeared in the summer 2019 issue in Grundy, Va., Brown noted in his report that the bulk of the of CCRP News, the Newsletter of Virginia’s Circuit Courts Records court records were lost in an 1885 fire. His survey also indicates Preservation Program at the Library of Virginia. that, in addition to the first floor clerk’s office, a portion of the records were stored in the basement with court exhibits. During he Library of Virginia can trace its preservation efforts his visit, he noted that the courthouse’s masonry construction back to the Civil War, and possibly earlier (depending on appeared to be fireproof. Grundy is located at the confluence of how one defines preservation). One of the most significant the Levisa Fork River and Slate Creek. When heavy rains fell in Tconservation collaborations between the Library of Virginia and a 1977, the town experienced the worst flooding in its history and Virginia clerk’s office occurred in Buchanan County in 1977. the fireproof masonry construction could not stop the rising floodwaters that rushed into the first floor records room and the In 1971, Connis Brown, the archivist who would become the overflow storage area in the basement. first head of the Local Records program, traveled across the state interviewing circuit court clerks and surveying the collections As a result, Buchanan County’s court records were under nearly and the conditions at each courthouse. Brown’s surveys provide three feet of water for two days and subject to dampness for nearly an unrestrained assessment of the courthouse, clerk’s office, a week before State Library staff members were able to make their condition of the records, environmental conditions in the records way into the disaster area. During their time underwater, the rooms and other storage areas, and, sometimes, even the clerks 300 affected volumes worked like sponges, absorbing so much themselves. moisture that they had to be pried from the roller-shelving units. By the time the water receded, the records in the basement were In his 1971 examination of the Buchanan County Courthouse a total loss and those on the first floor were thoroughly saturated. Mid-Atlantic Archivist | 2 After assessing the situation, State Archivist Louis Manarin determined that freeze-drying was the only acceptable solution. The records were then transported to Richmond, where they were stored at Richmond Cold Storage at below- zero temperature for nearly a month. In the meantime, Manarin negotiated the use of the space simulation (or decompression) chambers at the General Electric Space Center in Valley Forge, Pa. The books were then transported in a refrigerated truck to Pennsylvania, and, once there, were placed on rolling racks and pushed into the chamber. The pressure in the chamber was then lowered, causing the rapid evaporation of water. The “GE experts also used small auxiliary heaters originally designed to be used on water beds” to speed up the process, according to the report. At the end of the freeze-drying process, approximately one gallon of water was extracted from each of the 300 volumes. After they were removed from the chamber, the books were sterilized and treated to help reduce the growth of mold and mildew. The volumes were then returned to the county courthouse. Today, a large number of these records are stored at the Library of Virginia, where one can still find remnants of “flood mud” on the volumes. The Buchanan County Courthouse was renovated and expanded in 1982 and the clerk’s office was moved to the second floor of the building (just in case). 3 | Mid-Atlantic Archivist African American Artists in the Archives: The Alva Rogers Papers at NYU By Nicholas Caldwell s a dual degree student of New York University and Long Island University’s MA/MLIS program, I am currently working to get both my Master of Arts in English ALiterature and my Master of Library and Information Science. This is because, along with my love of the archives, I have a passion for African American literature. As an aspiring Black archivist, it is personally and professionally important to me to preserve the history of African American writers, artists, and cultures. I am currently nearing the end of a year-long fellowship with the American Research Libraries’s (ARL) Mosaic program. As a part of the program, I have been working as an intern in New York University’s (NYU) Archival Collections Management Department (ACM). The ACM team manages the collections of NYU’s Special Collections, which consists of three repositories: Fales Archives, New York University Archives, and the Tamiment Library & Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives. The goal of my internship is to participate in ACM projects around inclusive description and access by arranging and describing collections from underrepresented groups. My first large collection is the papers of African American artist, playwright, vocalist, actress, and songwriter, Alva Rogers. Rogers is best known for her role as Eula Peazant in the 1991 film Daughters of the Dust, the first feature film directed by an African American woman in the United States. However, Rogers has been involved in numerous creative endeavors throughout her career. As a playwright, Rogers wrote plays such as Nightbathing, The Doll Plays, and Scooping the Darkness Empty, which are inspired by themes of surrealism and magic realism.