Day 20: Finalizing FUSE and blog posts — and learning about copyright!

We spent our last full day at the center finalizing our FUSE documents.  This included finishing up the narrative documents that the students have been working on and learning about the details of copyright law.  Lizette was our guide to the ins and outs of what we can and cannot post and how to find out who holds a copyright and how to request permissions.

Lizette and the group surrounded by acid-free boxes.  We will be preserved forever!

Lizette and the group surrounded by acid-free boxes. We will be preserved forever!

For photographs, the copyright belongs to the photographer. This means we have to figure out who the photographer is so that we can request permission to post the photo.  This is an easy task if the photo is stamped with this information on the back….but involves some detective work when it isn’t.  Reading all of those Nancy Drew books in my childhood is going to come in handy!

We ended the day with dinner at a Mexican restaurant — our last dinner as a group before people start heading home on Tuesday afternoon.  Somehow no pictures were taken?  We have become lax as the trip ends.  It certainly wasn’t the margaritas.

(Disclaimer: That was a joke.  Obviously if margaritas were involved pictures *would* have been taken.)

Day 15: Could it be? The end of sorting is in sight!

After four days away from the Center we were back at sorting with a vengeance.  We had three sections to finish organizing — Biography, TEACCH, and Correspondence — and we made a significant dent!  Only professional correspondence remains.  The rest of the collection is in folders and boxes.

Mary and Kieran started working on the finding aid,

Yes! Creating a finding aid IS as fun as Mary makes it look...

Yes! Creating a finding aid IS as fun as Mary makes it look…

…and Dov began scanning images for our FUSE page.

There is a lot of enthusiasm today! Perhaps the progress is going to our heads...

There is a lot of enthusiasm today! Perhaps the progress is going to our heads…

With only three full days left at the Center it will be a sprint to the end.  Do you think we will finish in time???

Day 10: More organization and a mystery solved!

Day 10 brought more organization, more filing, more plastic clips, and more acid-free boxes.  We also stumbled across the answer to one of the mysteries in the boxes —

Looks like my confusion over the puzzle earlier indicates that I behave like a typical child...

Looks like my confusion over the puzzle earlier indicates that I behave like a typical child…

Another neat item we found was Temple Grandin’s business card!

We wondered if Dr. Schopler had this for research related reasons or if he purchased things for his farm from her!

We aren’t sure whether Dr. Schopler had this for research related reasons or if he purchased things for his farm from her!

The students also had the opportunity to start searching the archives for material to write about for their blog posts (which will be posted at the end of the course).  I’d like to post about the cool stuff they are researching but I don’t want to steal their thunder…you’ll just have to check back in another week to see what they found.

Day 9: Organizing our piles!

Now for the hard part!  Today we started the process of sifting through all of the piles we created yesterday.  We began with the categories we thought would be easiest (published works, conferences, teaching).  Even though these categories were quite well organized to start, it still took us all day!  We looked through the contents of each folder carefully, removed items that weren’t supposed to be kept in the collection (e.g. old receipts, plane tickets, things that weren’t written by Schopler or his direct associates), swapped out paper clips for plastic clips, re-filed the contents into acid-free folders, and organized the folders by date.

So many folders!

So many folders!

After that, the organized folders were placed into acid-free storage boxes.  By the end of the day we had restored some order…

Organization makes Jenn happy!

Organization makes Jenn happy!

…but there is still a lot of work to be done!

...but it also might be time for a break...

It might be time for a break…

Our best finds of the day?

Schopler's ID card

Schopler’s ID card

Hmm...this seems as though it should go together...

Hmm…I really thought these pieces would go together…

And a sign of the challenges we face…

 

If Eric Schopler doesn't know where this goes...how are we supposed to know?

If Eric Schopler doesn’t know where this belongs…how are we supposed to know?