It is rather exciting to be getting such immediate access to the papers in the Rosenstein research files on Sylvia Plath. Getting the email each day that the files are ready for me to download is a highlight. I appreciate more than I can say the help from Emily Banks (Twitter), the research proxy suggested by the Rose Library at Emory. She has been fantastic and patient and if you have research needs at Emory please try and get her.
But downloading is just the beginning. So I figure I should explain a bit about the method to my madness; or, the madness to my method (they really are interchangeable).
I am obsessed with order and organization. When the files come to me they are named IMG_3409. That is something done by the camera or by the people of developed...whatever it is they developed. That is not useful at all. That tells me nothing about what is depicted in image. So most of my efforts now have been looking at the files to glean as efficiently as I can what the image is of. Is is a letter? A pamphlet? A newspaper article? An interview? And then it's renaming the files so that it does mean something; so that the computer can search for and find it once those files have been indexed.
I set up some folders and sub-folders on my computer to match the Emory finding aid. This is the first thing I do with archival materials -- try to match the physical arrangement of the collection in a digital setting. It looks like this (I put the screenshot together badly, forgive me):
Yesterday I was reading the Norton file and a letter from Plath was included. Oh was I excited because there was not a Plath letter from 11 September to any Norton in The Letters of Sylvia Plath. But as I started reading it, my heart sank because I recognized it. Looking into Volume I, I saw that it was a letter to Marcia (Brown) Stern from 1951. That was a stinker. How Perry Norton got that letter is beyond me. It is about him and his brother & Plath's recent trip to Cape Cod after her summer babysitting in Swampscott. I guess it's possible Rosenstein put it there; or it is possible even that through the years Perry met Marcia as they both lived in the greater Boston area.
Today promises more files.
All links accessed 24 January 2020.
But downloading is just the beginning. So I figure I should explain a bit about the method to my madness; or, the madness to my method (they really are interchangeable).
I am obsessed with order and organization. When the files come to me they are named IMG_3409. That is something done by the camera or by the people of developed...whatever it is they developed. That is not useful at all. That tells me nothing about what is depicted in image. So most of my efforts now have been looking at the files to glean as efficiently as I can what the image is of. Is is a letter? A pamphlet? A newspaper article? An interview? And then it's renaming the files so that it does mean something; so that the computer can search for and find it once those files have been indexed.
I set up some folders and sub-folders on my computer to match the Emory finding aid. This is the first thing I do with archival materials -- try to match the physical arrangement of the collection in a digital setting. It looks like this (I put the screenshot together badly, forgive me):
Once all the files are renamed, they look like below. This is from Box 3, Folder 6, on papers dealing with Otto Plath. There is a chance in the future I may tweak something once I have the time to read through everything. Everything. Ha! That is a lie. Shame to say it, but there is some stuff likely I will not ever read. But you get the point.
Yesterday I was reading the Norton file and a letter from Plath was included. Oh was I excited because there was not a Plath letter from 11 September to any Norton in The Letters of Sylvia Plath. But as I started reading it, my heart sank because I recognized it. Looking into Volume I, I saw that it was a letter to Marcia (Brown) Stern from 1951. That was a stinker. How Perry Norton got that letter is beyond me. It is about him and his brother & Plath's recent trip to Cape Cod after her summer babysitting in Swampscott. I guess it's possible Rosenstein put it there; or it is possible even that through the years Perry met Marcia as they both lived in the greater Boston area.
Today promises more files.
All links accessed 24 January 2020.