Ralph Guilliams Photographic Collection at the Southwest Collection

This is a project description for the archival project undertaken by Simmons LIS 438 student Georgeanna (Georgie) Gaines.

Overview:
Gaines will be arranging and describing at the folder-level (i.e. between item- and MPLP-level) the Ralph Guilliams Photographic Collection. Guilliams was a prominent El Paso, Texas, photographer whose career centered around documenting historic El Paso architecture. The collection bulks with such photographs but includes photographs of architecture and scenery ranging from the rest of Texas to the greater Southwest, and to Guilliams's international travels. The collection consists of approximately 8 linear feet of slides, negatives, photographs, and a small amount of manuscript material relating to Williams and his work. It also includes two mid-sized metal filing cabinets containing thousands of slides. The latter was donated alongside an itemized list of the cabinets’ slides, which lists titles, locations, and dates for each item. Taken altogether, this amount of material can reasonably be arranged, described, and made discoverable by Gaines within the hours stipulated by the LIS 438 project guidelines. This collection is of immense value to the SWC because, although not yet arranged and described, researchers have nonetheless requested access it.

Project Outcomes:
Translating the itemized list of slides into a patron-friendly guide to the collection. This will be incorporated into a DACS-compliant finding aid, encoded into XML using EAD 2002 standards, and will be uploaded to Texas Archival Resources Online (TARO) at txarchives.org.
Sleeving, labeling, and inventorying the 8 linear feet (non-filing cabinet) photographs to the extent possible within the project's timeframe. Should this facet of the project not be completable, Gaines will provide detailed instructions of work accomplished and next steps for the next archival processor to use.