{"id":9494,"date":"2021-06-14T01:00:58","date_gmt":"2021-06-14T05:00:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vault217.gmu.edu\/?p=9494"},"modified":"2021-06-23T10:59:32","modified_gmt":"2021-06-23T14:59:32","slug":"the-james-m-buchanan-papers-processing-project-beginnings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vault217.gmu.edu\/?p=9494","title":{"rendered":"The James M. Buchanan Papers Processing Project: Beginnings"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n

Way back in spring 2020 (as noted by SCRC director Lynn Eaton in an earlier post)<\/a>, SCRC received some welcome good news at a moment when it seemed in short supply. We were informed that our application for a National Endowment for the Humanities grant to finish processing the James McGill Buchanan papers had been successful.\u00a0 We were going to receive funding which would allow us to hire a project archivist whose sole job would be to finish arranging and describing the 282 linear feet of papers taken from Buchanan House (on Roberts Road at the edge of Mason\u2019s campus) to SCRC.

Many SCRC and Economics Department staff members, myself included, had worked since the early 2000s to begin surveying, arranging and describing the collection with the goal of bringing it to Fenwick Library. We gathered scattered papers from around the house, placed them in boxes and folders, and titled and wrote dates on those folders according to their contents. The task, however, was monumental, and since everyone who worked on the papers had several other projects that they were responsible for, a significant amount of material remained unfoldered, unarranged, or both when we brought the papers to SCRC in 2016 and 2017. We realized that the only way to properly finish arranging and describing the collection and to create a complete finding aid with a folder level inventory was to hire someone to work full-time with the papers, and we submitted the NEH grant application in 2019.<\/p>\r\n

\"SCRC

SCRC Staff Members in 2017 heading to Buchanan House to pack up artifacts housed in display cases, one of many trips to bring manuscript materials, books, and ephemera from the house to Fenwick Library.<\/p><\/div>\r\n


Fast forward again to spring 2020 \u2013 SCRC staff was overjoyed that we received the NEH grant, but (again as noted by Lynn in her earlier post<\/a>), with the new realities of the COVID-19 pandemic constraining our ability to work in-person, we knew that the hiring process for a project archivist would have to be postponed and would take longer than we initially planned. Fortunately, the NEH was flexible, and on March 15, 2021 we welcomed Rebecca Thayer as our Buchanan Project Archivist. Rebecca\u2019s first tasks, in addition to acclimating to SCRC, Mason, and Northern Virginia in general, have been researching as much contextual information about Buchanan and the project as possible, and surveying the collection, including parts of the papers that have already been worked on, to determine how best to arrange and describe the materials. She will then create a processing plan and will hire and supervise graduate and undergraduate student assistants to assist with the work of arranging, foldering, titleing, and entering information into spreadsheets.

Stay tuned for our next post on the project, in which Rebecca will introduce her work so far and share some of the most interesting things she\u2019s come across during her initial survey of the papers!<\/p>\r\n

Image Source.<\/a><\/p>\r\n

Follow SCRC on Social Media and look out for future posts on our\u00a0Facebook<\/a>,\u00a0Instagram<\/a>, and\u00a0Twitter<\/a>\u00a0accounts. \u00a0To search the collections\u00a0held at Special Collections Research Center, go to our\u00a0website<\/a>\u00a0and browse the finding aids by subject or title. You may also e-mail\u00a0us at\u00a0speccoll@gmu.edu<\/a> or call 703-993-2220 if you would like to schedule an appointment, request materials, or if you have questions.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Way back in spring 2020 (as noted by SCRC director Lynn Eaton in an earlier post), SCRC received some welcome good news at a moment when it seemed in short supply. We were informed that our application for a National Endowment for the Humanities grant to finish processing the James McGill Buchanan papers had been […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9648,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[272,882,3],"tags":[20,37,866,422],"class_list":["post-9494","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-gmu-fairfax-campus","category-neh-buchanan-papers-project","category-news","tag-economics","tag-james-buchanan","tag-neh-grant","tag-processing"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/vault217.gmu.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/buchananhouse_landscape-530x342-1.jpg?fit=530%2C342&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8Ep5i-2t8","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":9617,"url":"https:\/\/vault217.gmu.edu\/?p=9617","url_meta":{"origin":9494,"position":0},"title":"NEH Buchanan papers project update – introducing GRA Rachel Barton","author":"admin","date":"September 7, 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"We are now approaching six months of renewed processing work on the James M. 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Buchanan Papers","author":"Amanda Menjivar","date":"May 24, 2023","format":false,"excerpt":"The Special Collections Research Center (SCRC) at George Mason University (GMU) is pleased to announce that the James M. Buchanan papers are now open for access! This collection consists of the papers of the Nobel Prize-winning economist James McGill Buchanan, documenting his career and research from the mid-20th century through\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "NEH Buchanan papers project"","block_context":{"text":"NEH Buchanan papers project","link":"https:\/\/vault217.gmu.edu\/?cat=882"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/vault217.gmu.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/JMB_001.jpg?fit=1200%2C833&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/vault217.gmu.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/JMB_001.jpg?fit=1200%2C833&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/vault217.gmu.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/JMB_001.jpg?fit=1200%2C833&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/vault217.gmu.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/JMB_001.jpg?fit=1200%2C833&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/vault217.gmu.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/JMB_001.jpg?fit=1200%2C833&ssl=1&resize=1050%2C600 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":9358,"url":"https:\/\/vault217.gmu.edu\/?p=9358","url_meta":{"origin":9494,"position":2},"title":"NEH Grant for the Buchanan Papers update\u00a0","author":"Lynn Eaton","date":"October 8, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"This past spring, the\u202fGeorge Mason University Libraries\u202freceived a grant in the amount of $334,720 from the National Endowment of the Humanities\u2019 Humanities Collection and Reference Resources program for the \u201cPreserving the Legacy of James M. Buchanan\u201d project.\u00a0\u00a0 The purpose of this processing grant project is to preserve and make accessible\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "George Mason University History"","block_context":{"text":"George Mason University History","link":"https:\/\/vault217.gmu.edu\/?cat=529"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/vault217.gmu.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/BuchananGustaf-copy-1.png?fit=1200%2C833&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/vault217.gmu.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/BuchananGustaf-copy-1.png?fit=1200%2C833&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/vault217.gmu.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/BuchananGustaf-copy-1.png?fit=1200%2C833&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/vault217.gmu.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/BuchananGustaf-copy-1.png?fit=1200%2C833&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/vault217.gmu.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/BuchananGustaf-copy-1.png?fit=1200%2C833&ssl=1&resize=1050%2C600 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":10301,"url":"https:\/\/vault217.gmu.edu\/?p=10301","url_meta":{"origin":9494,"position":3},"title":"Student Reflections – Processing the James M. 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The Life of an Economist by Colin McDonald When I first came\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "George Mason University History"","block_context":{"text":"George Mason University History","link":"https:\/\/vault217.gmu.edu\/?cat=529"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/vault217.gmu.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/Student-Blog-Cover.jpg?fit=1200%2C676&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/vault217.gmu.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/Student-Blog-Cover.jpg?fit=1200%2C676&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/vault217.gmu.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/Student-Blog-Cover.jpg?fit=1200%2C676&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/vault217.gmu.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/Student-Blog-Cover.jpg?fit=1200%2C676&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/vault217.gmu.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/Student-Blog-Cover.jpg?fit=1200%2C676&ssl=1&resize=1050%2C600 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":10165,"url":"https:\/\/vault217.gmu.edu\/?p=10165","url_meta":{"origin":9494,"position":4},"title":"Processing from the Outside In: Care of Betty Tillman","author":"Rebecca Thayer","date":"July 14, 2022","format":false,"excerpt":"This post is one in a series about the Buchanan Papers processing project. 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