Legacy in flight: processing the Marlon D. Green collection

Abstract

Purpose Two graduate LIS students interested in archival studies describe their first effort processing a manuscript collection belonging to Marlon D. Green, the first African American commercial airline pilot in the US. Design/methodology/approach The students locate introductory readings and seek the advice of professional archivists to organize the collection and write a finding aid that describes its contents. The novice archivists explore issues of appraisal, arrangement, description and preservation of items in the collection, and discuss the challenges archivists face in organizing collections objectively. Findings The students find organizing a manuscript collection to be a surprisingly collaborative and social process. Learning about Marlon Green's life directly from his family members gives the student archivists the advantage of knowing the context of his papers, which helps them order and group items more effectively. Practical implications Archivists will benefit from researching a collection's subject thoroughly at the beginning of the process. Collaborating with other archivists on processing collections may help archivists test and hone their methods and achieve greater consistency. The paper is an informal case study about organizing a manuscript collection or collection of family papers. Originality/value The discussion of an archivist's role may be useful to novice and student archivists or LIS professionals who have in their care a collection of papers that must be organized and described.

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