The Value of Writing
As we have learned both in class and in our visits to the institutions around Case (in this case Severance Music Hall), writing is an important part of any collection even when the group/institution may not be widely known for its written documents. As I said, I had the chance to visit Severance Hall last week, and it was a very interesting trip to go on. We met with Amy Dankowsky, who is an archivist for the hall, and she told us a little bit about what she does, as well as the numerous types of medium she has to deal with.
Going into this experience I expected mostly to hear about how sheet music and other music related documents are stored. Surprisingly, there was very little talk about those types of items. A large portion of the collection is actually finance related documents, and things such as minutes from board meetings. While these item are not kept “forever”, they are very rarely requested for viewing, so are kept in offsite storage. In addition to this sort of remote storage, there are also a number of archival storage rooms within Severance itself. We had the opportunity and pleasure to visit two such rooms during our trip, the first of which contained many different types of documents, and the second with some items that are not typically thought of as archive materials.
The first room contained stacks upon stacks of documents that tracked the progress of the Cleveland Orchestra, with a large portion dedicated to the Blossom summer programs. In addition to the different paper documents that make up this collection, there are also a large number of recordings that are available and tracked as carefully archived as any paper document. These recordings are in fact just about the most used sets of documents that are available for use, largely due to the fact that musicians constantly use them to gauge past performances. By Listening to past performances, the musicians attempt to improve their next performance. The second room we visited had some unconventional items archived within. Flags, pictures, directing batons, awards (even a Grammy), and many more items were hidden away in boxes and cabinets, or tucked away in corners.
It is interesting to note the way in which all these different types of documents and items were stored. Most of the paper documents were simply piled into boxes, or kept within a sort of grey folio box. While the room’s temperature and humidity were controlled to help keep the documents from decaying as quickly as those that are not protected at all, and the boxes no doubt protected from physical harm, I can only wonder why more is not being done to preserve these items. For the amount of material that is being stored, not just here but around the world, I would expect a better mode of protection for this sort of document. While Ms. Dankowsky did say they are looking into digitizing parts of their collection, it still seems silly to me that more is not being done to keep these documents protected from the inescapable march of time.
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