{"id":7592,"date":"2018-05-23T11:01:42","date_gmt":"2018-05-23T15:01:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vault217.gmu.edu\/?p=7592"},"modified":"2018-06-11T16:28:15","modified_gmt":"2018-06-11T20:28:15","slug":"student-reflections-lana-mason-a-first-foray-into-archives","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vault217.gmu.edu\/?p=7592","title":{"rendered":"Student Reflections – Lana Mason: A First Foray into Archives"},"content":{"rendered":"

This post was written by Lana Mason, Processing Student Assistant. Lana has an Associate of Arts degree in Fine Arts from Piedmont Virginia Community College. She is currently studying Art History with a minor in Arts Management at George Mason University.<\/em><\/p>\n

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Lana Mason.<\/p><\/div>\n

I\u2019ve been working as an archival processing assistant at SCRC since February 2018. My job is to reprocess collections and create better, more robust finding aids that detail exactly what the collections contain and how they\u2019re organized. Consequently, I spend most of my work hours going through folders and recording their contents into an inventory file, which then becomes the basis of the finding aid. On the surface it might sound mundane\u2014maybe even tedious\u2014but I\u2019ve found it to be a truly exciting and rewarding experience.<\/p>\n

The first collection I worked on when I arrived at SCRC was the Chester H. McCall Papers<\/a><\/span>. This collection (though quite small at only 3 boxes long) is absolutely chock-full of materials that provide fascinating and personal insights into the past. The collection’s creator and namesake Chester McCall was a member of the Department of Commerce during the New Deal era, serving as the Assistant Secretary of Commerce from 1933-1937. Working under Secretary of Commerce Daniel Roper, McCall was involved in numerous committees, a member of several different bureaus, and served as a representative of his department to other agencies and sectors. Given its creator\u2019s background, the collection naturally contains a wide variety of professional documents, correspondence, speech drafts, and memoranda, as well as personal writings and several play scripts. Some of the gems of the collection are:<\/p>\n