Log 10: Completion of Barbara Dent Papers; exploring Charles Ewing Waterhouse Collection items with Laura, beginning Photo Archive Project, the Casasola Photo Database
Updated: Jul 19, 2024
June 18, 2024 9am-5pm
UTEP Special Collections
TiJeat Berry
Supervisor: Joy Urbina, Special Collections Supervisor: Claudia Rivers
Archival Project Supervisor: Susannah Holliday
Charles Waterhouse Collection
While working on Barbara Dent papers I had a talk with Laura, one of the archivists who is working on the Charles Ewing Waterhouse Papers which includes architectural drawings, art, sketches, photographs, and negatives. She has spent two years working on this collection going through the items, organizing them, and describing them and typing up a finding aid. She states that she tries to stay as close to controlled vocabulary as possible but that sometimes it can't be done. Comparing manuscripts vs. a book; the later can have 3 subject headings that describe it, while the former can have up to 50! So she has to do her best to bring that down to a reasonable number while also representing the item correctly.
During this time I learned interesting information on Charles Waterhouse, he did a little bit of everything photography, engineering, drawing, writing. Above is one of the Diaz Type's from Charles Ewing Waterhouse. Below You will find links to the videos I took when Laura was discussing what was found in the collection.
Link to videos on the Charles Water House Collection: https://photos.google.com/album/AF1QipMY-duzOL4z7ImMUjgKsjKXnwumfl2ZIjSr6TOv/photo/AF1QipOg-S8mmqrqEnYk5RwRqO15Dh5lYYfHHBy45ouS
Laura discussing the blueprints drawings, and Diaz types of Water House Collction
More of the Waterhouse Collection, all these are housed in two rooms on the 5th floor; there is also another room where she works that has more items.
In the below there is a map of the Yuchtan Peninsula that is rather large and that does not fit into the collection due to the area. The special collections department focuses on materials from South West America and Juarez, MX. They are trying to find where the map can go. Because it is already part of the collection it is property of the state of Texas.
She is coming to the end of the archival work which she has been working on for 2 years, she suspects she will be finished by late August. Below is one of the pencil drawings done by Charles Waterhouse that Laura showed me.
Additional work with Barbara Dent papers
Barbara Dent's items were given to the department with her own descriptors for what was entailed in the boxes and folders; these are the few of the "headings" she used to describe
Box 15 Places & Medical Organizations
"E" folders
El Paso Medical Society History, Membership
El Paso County Medical Society History
El Paso Black Physicians
"H" folders
Health Chronicles
The Henderson Clinic, The Rawlings Clinic, Jose De Rivera
Box 43 July 2011 Accretion
"D" Del Sol Medical Center
"E" Dr. Escamilla' Dr. Willarda Edwards
Obituaries--Obituaries—Colbert Coldwell; Judy Blumenfeld; Charles Alvis Gunter; John Anderson Ponsford; Richard Lee Saunders; Alma Goldfarb; Robert Saint Lo; Helen Francis Boehler; David Weinstein; Ira Budwig; John Dyal; Jose Maria Palafox, Jr.; Lyndon Denny Moses; James Sabal; Carol W. Sonnichsen; Elizabeth Bates; Richard K. Thompson
"P"--Plaza Hotel; Polo for Aids; Providence Hospital
Barbara Dent provided her own descriptors for the items she collected and the archivists will stick as close to hers as possible.
There are instances when Laura pulls out items from the Waterhouse Papers because they do not fit into the collection, but if the item is entered into the UTEP system it must be kept by UTEP or another Texas institution as it is now property of the state. She stated that he most recent item that was "weeded" from the Waterhouse collection was a map Airforce navigational map of the Yucatan Peninsula.
Learning about the Waterhouse project and the special collections map cases with Laura.
End of Archival Project 1: Barbara Dent Papers
Start of Archival Project 2: Photo Archives with Gia
Casasola Project
The Casasola Project is working on digitizing and identifying individuals in photographs that were taken by Alfonso Casasola in Mexico and El Paso during the 1940s and 1950's. He was part of a family of photographers and though he died in 1948 others continued his work. The archivists are uploading the negatives of his photos to be published in the El Paso Times newspaper for people to identify the individuals in the photos. I uploaded a box of photo negatives and passport pictures using a white board, light table, and a digital camera; the software used was My Nikon 5.6.98.99 pro. I learned how to adjust the camera which was hooked to a column and had to be vertically adjusted to get a good image. They would like there to be some visual white from the lightboard with the image to help them better comprehend what they are working with in terms of where the actual photo stops. Below is a group of pictures of me working with the Casasola negatives; putting the image on the light table and uploaded into the software. I learned that using gloves made it easier to work with the negatives.
During this project, I continued to ask Gia if there was something I needed to do with negatives that were too bright after uploading, she stated that at this point of the project we would leave them as is and they could be worked on in the next phase. At this point I thought that the images sent to the newspapers were going to be the negatives.
I did not take a picture of this, but across from me the lead Photo Archivist, David, was working on preserving an audio collection of radio programs with a reel to reel machine.
Above is an image of the negatives digitized and saved in the Casasola project folder. Some of the images appear very bright and are not visible. I misunderstood the process and thought that these were going to be sent to the newspaper. In the next phase of the project I learned from Gia that the reason these images appear so bright is because the actual photo is in shadow.
The Software would stop working when the batteries camera was dead, I spent a few moments trying to figure out why I was no longer able to upload because there was no message that let me know that the battery needed to be replaced. There were 3 batteries in all and they would drain in less than 2 hours. Over time I would recognize the issue and became more adept at changing the battery and rehooking the camera back to the adjustable column.
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