Presentation!

Things are rolling right along at UMass- still going through all of the boxes. The real big news is our presentation happening in the Loomis Village auditorium on September 15! It starts at 2:30pm and should go for about an hour, depending on how long the Q&A session goes for.

Molly and I will be talking about what this project entails from each of our standpoints. She will be going over oral histories, both in general and the ones that she has done at Loomis so far. I will be sharing a lot of the story that has been posted on this blog; where everything has been coming from and the process up in the archives at UMass. All are welcome to attend!

The fact remains that this project is still in its' early stages. We can talk about what we've done so far, but we'll also be asking for people who are interested to help out with finding more materials and taking more oral histories. One person on the history committee already recommended doing an I.D. party . . . we have a lot of albums full of photos but most of them are unidentified. That's what this is all about! So come to the presentation, bring your friends and get excited about this archive!

Up on the 25th Floor

Two weeks ago, Carol from Loomis Village was nice enough to take me down to Applewood and Reed's Landing. While we won't be working within these communities for a while, it was necessary for me to find out how much material is housed at each place. Based on what we saw, both Applewood and Reed's Landing have about the same amount as Loomis House/Loomis Village. The conclusion here is that the series' for the archive will be split into living community. That means that the organization of the materials will look something like this.

The addition of the 'Loomis CEO' series is necessary because after Loomis Village was built some of the paperwork has to do with both Loomis House and Loomis Village. As you can imagine, things get more complicated by the time that Applewood and Reed's Landing join the bunch.

As for the boxes that I have from Loomis Village- I am still doing the inventory. I have been going through each box and making a list of all of the folders inside. When I come across folders that need to be removed (either empty or content that we don't want) I am putting them aside to be sent back to Loomis. I have done 9 boxes so far along with a few stray smaller boxes and binders, miscellaneous stuff. I am about half way done with this step.

As an example, here is the list from Box #8:

ID Marks: History

History Committee (unlabeled, crossed out)

History

Newspaper Articles

Loomis Village History

Undated Histories

Organization 1960's

Organization 1970's

Organization 1980's

Organization 1990's

1965

1966

1967

1968

1969

1970

1971

1972

1973

1976

1975

1977

1978

1979

1980

1981

1982

1983

1984

1986

1988

1989

1990

1991

1992

1993

1994

Misc. Newsletters

Strategic Planning Committee Loomis House

William S. Loomis

Board Lists

Two white binders with photographs/Obituaries 1960's

I think that this box is one of the most interesting; it is labeled 'History', and although it is only half the size of the other long boxes I have, it probably contains the most information about how Loomis got to be what it is today. I have not been able to actually go through the folders yet- the titles you see here are all I've seen of what is actually in the box. I can't wait to be able to go through this one with a fine comb!

Before I can go through anything, I have to finish this inventory! The plan is to have that done in the next week or so. By next Wednesday, I should have a better idea of what the time frame will be.

Thanks for reading!

The Farmhouse

I started my work at Loomis Village back in June. In the attic of the farmhouse there were more than a dozen boxes set aside that needed to be looked at. When I first went up, I was with Rob and Danielle, both from SCUA (special collections and university archives). They gave me my instructions and I started doing a rough sort!

Instead of taking the whole lot of boxes up to UMass, I went through each box and took out the ones that held materials that we won't be taking to the archives. Since what we want is the social history, there are certain things that stuck out to me as being important. A short list of examples:

1. Board meeting minutes

2. All resident meeting minutes from groups like LARA

3. Marketing materials

4. Blueprints and plans for new acquisitions (mainly Loomis Village)

5. Photographs

6. Administrative documents and memos

Those are the main things that I was finding. One important thing worth noting is how they were all kept together. For the most part, the boxes in the attic were kept according to the person who had been keeping the boxes. A couple of them are actually labeled with names of adminstrators/assistants. Normally, when a collection is being processed it gets split up into 'series'. These are categories that make it easier for a researcher to find what they are looking for, but it also reflects the structure of the entity/organization. In this instance, the organization of the documents does not give a clear picture of what the series should be.

After talking with Rob and Danielle, we came up with two options for the series:

Choice A

1. Board of Directors

2. Administration

3. Finance Committee (tentative)

4. Facilities

5. Marketing/Advertising

6. Residential Life

Choice B

1. Loomis Communities Administration

2. Loomis House

3. Loomis Village

4. Applewood

5. Reeds Landing

While choice A works as a set of "classic" series, choice B is probably the way to go in this case. I still have to talk to Rob and confirm what he and Danielle want to do, but what I looked at as the determining factor was the volume of documents from each community. Since each community has kept its own documents (they have never been consolidated at one location) and there is a good amount at each location, that says a lot about how Loomis Communities works as an organization. We will most likely end up keeping each of the communities separate as they have been kept in the past.

This will be decided for my next post, along with more details on what is coming from Applewood and Reeds Landing, and the developments on the boxes from Loomis Village.

Til then!