During this past summer, I assisted José Hernández in the documentation and digitization of the Historic Building Materials Collection housed at the Architectural Conservation Lab and the Center for Architectural Conservation. The work I did focused on the stone part of the materials collection and included specimens from famous works of architecture, quarries around the world, and the thousands of beautiful samples donated by the Walker Zanger company. Guided by José, my work consisted of three central parts; data capture and digitization of the materials housed at the ACL, data management and cleaning of the spreadsheets provided by the Walker Zanger company, and reorganization of the Walker Zanger Stone collection housed at the CAC.
The process of digitizing the stone collection housed at the ACL consisted of several steps. First, I captured any information connected to the specimen. Often, this consisted of notes written by the person who collected it, found inside the specimen containers. From this information, a new, unique I.D. was assigned to the specimen that contained information about the type of material, the location of origin, the year of creation, and the type of specimen (fragment, artifact, etc.). Next, I would photograph the specimens, editing the photos digitally to correct for any color distortion. Then, I would measure the specimen in three axes. Finally, all the information captured would be uploaded to the new HBMC digital catalog.
My work with the Walker Zanger collection began with assisting Jose in cleaning the existing Walker Zanger spreadsheets. In this cleaning process, I cross checked hundreds of entries in the spreadsheet, using the names, locations, and other identifiers to find duplicates in the collection and ensure that all the information available was consistent across each duplicate entry. This work proceeded our time in the Walker Hanger archive space at the CAC, and simplified the stone sorting process by ensuring that as many entries in the database as possible had all the information needed to locate, identify, and relocate the stone samples into a system that would eventually be searchable within the HBMC catalog.
Through this internship, I got hands-on experience in archival data capture, managing and digitizing an existing archive, and identifying geological stone types. Through the work I did this past summer, I have gained a greater understanding of the importance of building material libraries and the applications for such resources as are housed in the HBMC. It has been an honor to work beside José and learn from his tremendous attention to detail and care for the materials.
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