This week I only had one shift, so I was relieved to have completed most of my survey of the George Chambers Papers. (One oversize box is left to go!) A profile of Chambers continues to emerge as I explore his papers. He was Republican during the 1964 presidential election, which I gathered from his cordial correspondence with Senator Barry Goldwater. He had a sense of humor, evidenced by a photo of him and a possible colleague in just shirts and boxers. There were also 7" tapes, where one recording from a day in the office of Arizona Silhouettes features someone telling adult jokes in Spanish.

Meanwhile, Meissner's reference title on arrangement and description has me reflecting on what lies ahead. He called arrangement "one of the most intellectually demanding and rigorous areas of archival theory and practice" (2019, p. 16), stressing that the granularity of the organization should be sustainable and efficient. As an intern, I am certainly constrained by time.

Unlike anything I read in class, this book seems to be aimed at the practitioner, and I appreciate Meissner's use of examples to illustrate the different levels of control. I also found his consideration of different kinds of "order" to be useful. These include: real and accidental, intellectual and physical, and necessary and unnecessary. Previously, I had not considered how accidental order could be imposed by the packing and transport of a collection to an archive; now I understand that kind of order is not necessarily sacred.

Meissner's concepts of organic and artificial also provide clarity. He said "the organic character of each series ought to be preserved" (2019, p. 19), but that a subgroup or subseries can be artificial. One of the big takeaways from my coursework relates to this artificiality and an archivist's influence on arrangement, and I continue pondering where the line is between the organic and artificial.

Meissner, D. (2019). Arranging and describing archives and manuscripts (Vol. 2). Chicago, IL: Society of American Archivists.

7" tapes of recordings from board meetings, presentations, and office life.