Radicalism Collection
The second collection I went through was the Radicalism Collection or MSS 431. It contained items from very different backgrounds. There were posters from Hippie communes, anti-communist sentiments, Black Panther propaganda, and even world war two strikes! This collection was my personal favorite to work with as I never knew what each folder held. For this collection, I not only had to sort and properly store the items but also create cataloging numbers for them and put them in ArchivesSpace. This was done by box which were sorted by size. Compared to the previous collection, this one will be easier to find items in based on number. There were only approximately 250 posters and pamphlets in this collection so it made creating the finding aid much easier. A previous student had made one on an excel sheet and I used it to make the new one. It was difficult though, because I had to figure out their organization and it was not the way I would have done it. Figuring out how to use ArchivesSpace proved to be difficult but, I learned a lot about the program. This finding aid now has the numbers, correct title information, and some minor description of the items. It will be used to further catalog the items so that patrons have an easier time finding specifically what they are looking for.