Processing for the National Park Service: A lesson in patience and government records.

In the fall of 2016, I set out on an amazing journey as an intern archivist for the National Park Service under the supervision of Liz Banks, senior archivist at the Northeast Museum Services Center in the Charlestown Navy Yard. With a Congressional Act in 1872 to protect what is now known as Yellowstone National Park, a movement was born to protect our nation’s cultural and natural resources for perpetuity. This campaign resulted in a bill that founded the National Park Service in 1916 by President Wilson. The signed bill mandated the agency “to conserve the scenery and the natural and historic objects and wildlife therein, and to provide for the enjoyment of the same in such manner and by such means as will leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations.”¹ Today, the NPS cares for over 400 national parks and historic sites and strives to preserve our local history and provide recreational spaces for all.

 

The Chief Regional Scientists’ Records, 1962-2012 (bulk 1974-2010)

My mission for the Park Service was to begin to process the collection of the three Chief Regional Scientists for the Northeast Region. The organization and philosophy of the NPS treats research as part of resource management and the two areas were combined to enhance cooperation between the two functions. Park Service research and resource management were organized at three levels of authority: in the Washington office, in the 10 regional offices, and in the individual park units. In fact, when the NPS science program was being developed in the 1960s the original structure selected was a centralized organization patterned after the U.S. Forest Service and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. This structure gave the NPS a chief scientist in Washington with authority to supervise all field scientists, whether they were assigned to parks, universities, or regions. However, the records reflect an organizational change in 1971 when the current decentralized plan was instituted. The regional chief scientists now administer the regional programs in concert with the regional directors and superintendents. The regional chief scientists serve as the technical directors of their programs, and the regional director  and superintendents administer them. 

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I had 22 boxes to sift through and find the story of natural resource stewardship under the three Chief Regional Scientists, Paul Buckley (c.1977-1979), Mike Soukup (c.1985-1989), and Mary Foley (c.1989-2013). I quickly found that there was minimal discernible order to how the files were arranged in the boxes and the newer files were less so.

All my boxes stacked on the floor.

 

Inventory

Taking an inventory of the collection proved to be more difficult than I originally thought. I sifted through budget proposals, budget discussions, scientific reports, scientific data, correspondence between the scientists and the park scientists. Not only was I attempting to find out who the major players were in the collections but also trying to figure the different types of records. Budgets and correspondence were easily identified but scientific data sheets were challenging to find context, or even dates–many of the scientists did not date their reports or data sheets so I had to refer to NPS website to see if there was information regarding the different projects.

From the inventory, I was able to take some time to devise a solid processing plan, which we deviated from and readopted several times. As the records told me more about the story of natural resource management in the Northeast Region, I began to see some obvious areas that could be grouped together. I was not anticipating having an entire series dedicated to the Fire Island to Montauk Point Reformulation Study project (FIMP) that spanned from the 1960s to the present but 4.38 linear feet of material out of the total 27.5 warranted a separate series.

Program files vs. park files

After finishing a thorough inventory, I was tasked with flagging folders that I thought were park files that should be shipped off to the individual parks as well as flagging folders with file codes that told whether the folder had permanent files or files that needed to be destroyed according to the disposition schedule. This was a difficult task for many of the items I encountered at first, but what I learned from Liz was if the item helps tell the story of natural resource management from the regional level (budgets, decision making, final reports), then it is a program file. If the item is very detailed and is mainly data gathered for the project, then it is most likely a park project file that can be sent to park of origin.

Flagging folders with file codes

Nearing the end

On the last two days, Liz and I finally felt confident that we had enough of a grasp on the files that we could start moving them to their proper places. We spread out all 22 boxes over 2 folding picnic tables and started pulling files by decades to place on additional tables that were marked for the decades and stacked them by year on the tables. The only files that stayed in place were the FIMP files, since they had been pull together a week prior. Once we had all the boxes emptied, we placed all the Series I: Budget and Administration files together and arranged them by year, then Series II: Projects, which we arranged by year first, then park.
I will admit that it was tough for me to walk away from this project, especially when I felt that i had not been able to do enough. I envisioned a finished product, neatly organized with a finding aid in hand, but I was assured by Liz that it would have been impossible to achieve a finished product in the time span I was given.

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1. https://www.nps.gov/aboutus/history.htm

5 December – 9 December 2016: BINGO!!!!

Most of my day was spent organizing the documents in the yearly budgets; each folder needed to be arranged chronologically. This is a slow process even though it doesn’t seem like it should be.  In some cases, there were several project proposals from different years grouped together but with nothing to tell me why. If projects were being approved for a specific fiscal year, then why are there old proposals from as much as a decade before there. Hmmm…a conundrum–was this on purpose or did someone just stick proposals into different folders. If it was an isolated case, I might have concluded that it was an isolated case, but since it happened in almost every folder I encountered I knew there was something else going on. I asked Liz and she explained that many times project proposals will stay active for years because of budget constraints, so while a proposal was submitted in 1980, it may not be funded until years later. I did what I thought was best and wrapped the proposals that were together in their original order so show that this arrangement was on purpose.

Our big triumph for the day was an enthusiastic response from Acadia National Park regarding found park project files. When I began this internship I was told that Acadia was looking for some specific project files from a study on vegetation management on three of the mountains in the park. I found what I thought was a match in September and flagged them for Liz to confirm.  After she looked through the folder I flagged, she suspected that I had found the right study and emailed Acadia. We received a happy email in return: “BINGO!!!!” in purple and pink letters. They are clearly thrilled that I found the data sheets and project information they were missing. So these will be packed up and sent to the park asap.

As I am arranging the Series I. Administrative, subseries i. Fiscal Year Budgets and Projects, Liz is getting down to the nitty gritty weeding out of files. We are running out of time and since she has decades of experience in government records management, she has taken over the deep weeding. She can pretty much tell at a glance whether a record is permanent or not, whereas I agonize over it. When she runs across an interesting item, she brings it to me to explain why it stays or goes to help me understand the process more. I truly appreciate that because when I passed through these records the first time, I was extremely cautious and erred on the side of keeping files that were not obvious dispositions.

Starting to arrange…this was the table before it got really messy with documents and folders strewn about.

As this is my tenth and last blog post for this project, I would like to thank you all for reading and for the support. This project has brought me great joy and some frustrations–all totally worth it. Working with Liz Bank has been a privilege and she made an unwieldy project a great learning experience and fun.

Cheers,

Corinne

28 November – 2 December 2016: It’s all about the groupings.

This week was spent hauling all 22 boxes down to my workspace on the first floor and starting to group files according to the arrangement scheme. The first four hours I pulled all the fiscal year budgets together from the various offices and put them together according to the year. Ranging from 1977-2006, the budgets take up a good portion of space –a little over 4 linear feet or 3.25 paige cartons. Most of the budget and project award files had several folders for each year but they tell a great story of how the Park Service chose projects to fund. Just as air pollution was the focus of inland parks in the late 1970s and early 1980s, coastal erosion, dune management, and breach management certainly took center stage as scientists really began to see the effects that climate change was having on the coastal areas of the northeast region in the 1990s and 2000s.

Although the date span given for the collection is 1974-2012, I do not have budget information for 1974-1976 and the folders I do have for the 2000s are quite sparse–2000, 2001, 2002, and 2006. I can’t help but wonder as to what happened to the rest. Could the newer files be electronic records that I don’t have or (gulp) weren’t captured?

The second half of my day was gathering all of the Fire Island FIMP project records together. Most of the 3.5 boxes of records are going to be packed up and shipped to Fire Island National Park. Unfortunately, Fire Island no longer has a park curator to care for the records but hopefully they will be stored properly once they are there.

Putting  together the two obvious record groups has made both Liz and I reconsider our arrangement plan slightly because of the multi-year and multi-park projects. We have tentatively decided that those will become a separate series so as to keep them in proper order. So the proposed new arrangement goes as follows:

Series I. Administrative

Subseries i. Fiscal Year Budgets and Projects (arranged by year)

Subseries ii. Northeast region administrative reorganization (arranged by year)

Series II. Projects

Subseries i. Multi-park projects (arranged by year)

Subseries ii. Multi-year project (arranged by park, then by year of start of projects)

Series III. Meetings, Conferences, Workshops (arranged by year)

Series IV. Reports (arranged by year)

Moving all of these files around has reeked havoc on my inventory spreadsheet and it is no longer useful as a guide to find specific folders. Hopefully, when Liz and I dive into the boxes next week to weed out more project records to send off to the parks, I can reorganize my spreadsheet into something useful again.

21 November – 25 November 2016: Let the weeding begin!

I finally finished flagging the folders with file codes and have begun getting rid of duplicate files and other obvious non-permanent files. Now that I have a better grasp on what needs to be disposed of and what is permanent, I will start next week with pulling together the yearly budget folders to be put arranged by year. A preliminary arrangement will allow me to see what and how things go together to tell the story of natural resources stewardship by the National Park Service.

Liz and I will also begin going through the park project files to decide which can be packed up to  to send to the parks and which need to stay. We will also do a preliminary arrangement of those. The one caveat of these projects is that there are several multi-year projects that should not be broken up by year. For example, the Fire Island to Montauk Point Reformulation (FIMP) project began in 1960 and has continued to the present. It has

Image courtesy of the National Park System and the Army Corps of Engineers.

had multiple studies and multiple projects to the provide hurricane protection and help control beach erosion on the 83 miles of shoreline on Fire Island. As with any large scale restoration project, FIMP has been surrounded by minor controversies and the records reflect them. From disturbing the nesting sites of Piping Plovers, to the threat of moving oceanfront homes, the National Park Service and the Army Corps of Engineers have worked for decades to protect the seashore and its inhabitants. FIMP will be a big bulk of the overall records because of the involvement of the towns in which the construction projects took place and the plans from the Army Corps of Engineers. The records for FIMP are spread out throughout nine boxes and cover the project from roughly 1976 to 2010. We have decided that the multi-year projects might need to be a separate series in order to keep them all together.

You can see the tiniest bit of my ID sticking out as it was being set up for me.

The last part of my day was spent setting up my ID card to work on the laptop I was loaned by the NPS. I finally have internet access while I am working! And an official NPS email address! I may be almost finished with my time at the NPS, but it is still exciting to have everything I need to get as far as I can before January 10th.

7 October – 11 October: I’ve got a plan… a processing plan.

This week was much like the past couple of weeks. I worked industriously on file codes for the 22 boxes (almost done!!) but with one twist: I was wearing my brand new ID

My brand new gov’t ID. Yes, there is a glare over my picture on purpose. Not the best picture I have ever taken.

badge. Next week Liz and I will make our first pass at weeding out the duplicates and non-permanent records to try to bring these 22 boxes down to something more manageable.

A couple of interesting things came up as I was flagging the files this week. As I delved deeper into the the boxes from the mid-1990s, I saw an obvious uptick in the amount of email correspondence and it made me wonder if these emails had been digitally captured somewhere and I could dispose of the hard copies as duplicates. I sat down with Liz for our weekly meeting and we discussed. It turns out that NPS, like so many government and non-government organizations, had not had a way of permanently archiving emails until recently. So more than likely, these emails are the only copy and need to be treated as a permanent record. Liz also explained to me that the NPS has had many changes in their email systems over the last decade and much has been lost, even for someone like her, an archivist who knows the importance of saving records. Many of her archived files disappeared over the course of several system changes.

Liz and I also discussed  the processing plan I had submitted to her over the weekend. Overall, Liz was very pleased with my arrangement ideas and was happy to let me move forward with the plan. She did have one suggestion for a change that makes sense. I had consulted other finding aids on the NARA website and saw that photographs usually had their own series so I corresponded my arrangement plan to follow suit. During our discussion, Liz suggested that I make my series of aerial photographs part of the park project records as a subseries. This makes total sense to me since most of the photographs were taken as part of coastal and beach erosion studies and they should be with the project files.

The last thing we discussed for the actual processing is oversized items. In our Archival Methods course, Marilyn taught us that the proper way to handle oversized items is to remove them, place a separation form in the folder, and have them stored in oversized folders and drawers. Apparently, NARA is not a big fan of the separation of oversized materials so all of the folded maps that are included in the park project files will remain there. Most are still in very good condition and properly folded, so from a preservation standpoint, they are okay for now.

Lastly, I came across an interesting folder of materials this week that needs some mulling over on the Gateway National Recreational Area salt marsh restoration project. I am trying to decide as to whether these are park project records that should be sent to Gateway or permanent NPS records. The contents suggest to me that they should be sent to Gateway because the folder contains local committee notes from New Jersey, correspondence that Mary Foley was CC’d on but no Chief Scientist decision making notes. In other words, this was a NPS regionally funded project but nothing in the folder makes that clear and feels like more of park records than regional records. Liz and I will discuss this next week and come up with a decision.

31 October – 4 November 2106: No better feeling than being approved.

A collective sigh of happiness was released by my fellow National Parks people yesterday when we all received the email informing us that I have been adjudicated favorably and will be receiving my PIV card and credentials next week. YEA! Now I can get into the building and use a government computer to do my work.

This week I continued working on assigning file codes to the documents and came across an item I can share with you because it poses an interesting dilemma as to whether it is permanent record or a record to be disposed of. Ominously called “deer/child incident report,” a deer knocked a child down in a park after it ate out of a food bowl left on park grounds. No one was hurt and there was no lawsuit. Because this is technically a minor incident, it should fall under a 7 year record and be disposed of because it has been nearly twenty years since it was resolved. But as I have learned with government records, there is always a caveat. The incident report also has the NPS response and what they did to prevent further incidents between deer and humans at this particular park. This tells the story of natural resource management unless there is documentation of the NPS response elsewhere. I have not seen any other reference so that leads me to believe that it could be a permanent record. Welcome to my weekly dilemma: deciding if a record is permanent. Sometimes it is perfectly clear, a park project funding decision is permanent; human resources material is not. Sometimes, it is not as clear, as it is in this case, and I have to really think it through to make a decision. As Liz says, if you are in doubt treat it like a permanent record.

Through assigning of file codes I have come to a solid idea of how I am going to arrange my files and began a processing plan to submit to Liz on Saturday. Four central series have stuck out to me so far that will be arranged by year. The first is Administration Natural Resources Management under which administrative decisions, such as region restructuring and department restructuring, will fall. The second is Park Projects in which individual project funding decisions are made with progress reports and final reports when the project finished. The third, Meetings, will contain meetings, conferences, and symposiums of the Chief Regional Scientists that discuss Natural Resources stewardship. Then, lastly, Reports, will have reports that do not have a corresponding Park Project file. As there are a lot of these, it does deserve it’s own series.

I am looking forward to getting to work on the processing plan this week and beginning to weed out the duplicate disposable files next week. I have so much work to do before this project is ready to send off to NARA!

October 24 -28 2016: Flagging files in the deep freeze

Last week I discussed how I was learning the government file codes in order to flag my boxes more appropriately.  I composed a list with examples from the records management book for the NPS that I thought would apply to records I have seen to compare with the list Liz, my supervisor, compiled. There are ten categories to choose from and within each category there are several subcategories to assign records to — and will be discussed further below.

This week Liz and sat down for our weekly meeting to discuss our file codes lists. At first, I felt like I was being tested but that wasn’t really the case. Liz was really just making sure I had a firm grasp on the subject. I went through my list carefully describing what I thought each file code meant and to what files I thought they applied. Liz seemed really happy with my assessment and thankfully, it closely matched her list.

There will be a sprinkling of other file codes used but the below represent the majority of the records. Here are the main categories we came up with:

♦Category 1: subcategory 1.A.2: Cultural and Natural Resource Program and Planning. Most of the files fall under this category and includes general management plans for the parks, inventory and management of flora and fauna, controlled fires, and decisions regarding which research projects for individual parks would be funded. These files are permanent for both the NPS and for NARA so a copy will be sent off to NARA.

♦Category 4: subcategory 4.A: Park Facilities and Maintenance. Under this file code will fall the Corps of Army Engineers project to the inlet around Montauk in Long Island against storm damage in the 1990s. These records are also permanent for both the NPS and NARA.

♦Category 7: subcategories 7.A and 7.B: Partnerships Programs. The NPS had many cooperative and partnership agreements with various colleges and universities for research. This file code will represent them and the actual agreements and final research reports.

After our meeting I got to work on applying the file codes to the boxes. The heat was broken in the building and so I just kept moving in order to stay warm. I got through 7.5 boxes before my day was done. I also flagged a lot of files that meet the disposal schedule and can be pulled when we begin weeding out the files in the next two weeks.

Flagged files: Program files with file code and the park code

17 October – 21 October 2016: Files codes, processing plans, and organizational frameworks

Still waiting for my credentials….I now know that I may not actually receive them until this project is nearly over. That certainly puts a damper on things but I am figuring out ways to work around and with this obstacle.

I came back to the National Park Service with renewed vigor this week because I was able to figure out some goals and things to learn in order to do the job more effectively. Sometimes you really need to take a step back to see the bigger picture. I set out this week to learn more about the organizational structure of the NPS and how it has changed over the course of the records I am working with. As I was flagging project records to send to individual parks, it occurred to me that marking these records with the file codes would be an effective way to discern which files only stay with the NPS and which needs to be copied and sent to NARA.

Funny coincidence, my supervisor, Liz Banks, came to my area to have a chat about next steps and the first thing she said was that I should really familiarize myself with the file codes now that I have looked through the boxes so I can flag items and folders more appropriately. Ha! Great idea, Liz! So I spent the next hour reading my NPS “records bible” and wrote down the codes that I thought I would be using the most. I read through these on my first day, and to be honest, nothing made that much sense to me then because I had not seen the records yet. This time reading through them was like a screen was lifted and I understood what all the different designations meant.

With file codes firmly in my head, I went back to the boxes. I noticed that I have less files to send to the individual parks than I originally thought because much of the folders reflected regional decisions rather than the nitty gritty details of the project. Glad I caught that before I starting pulling them. Looking through box one I affirmed that all the folders contained budgets and park project decisions by each fiscal year but one thing began to trouble me. I had three different folders for each year with basically the same information in them but all titled differently. Bad filing? Maybe but after talking with Liz, we thought that perhaps each folder marked with a fiscal year but different name reflected the different department head working under the Chief Scientist. In other words, the geomorphologist had a budget folder, the scientific studies had a budget folder, and lastly, the Chief scientist had a budget folder. I still am not sure as to whether these can be combined to reflect the overall budget decisions for the year with a scope note describing the three players or to keep them separate.
My goals for next Tuesday are to look at other NPS finding aids to get a better grasp as to how they are set up and what they entail. As Liz has told me, the government always does things different, which makes me uneasy. I will also learn the history of the Chief Regional Scientist office better with some research in order to write an effective historical note and lastly, I start digging in on the processing plan. The sooner I have my plan in place the sooner I can get back to digging in those boxes.

September 19-23: Organizing and searching for the story.

First things first. I am still waiting for my PIV card (credentials)  in order to access the government computers and internet. This hold up is affecting everything because I cannot move forward much more without it. As it is I am committing a faux pas by bringing in my laptop to work on, even if it is without the internet access. Furthermore, I found out on Tuesday that I have to send my inventory spreadsheet and notes to IT at the NPS to have it scrubbed before I can upload it to my future government computer. It’s never smooth or easy. Hopefully I will get my card next week so I can keep going on the project.

This week I concentrated on finding out who the major players were in the records of the Chief Regional Scientists and the inclusive dates for the files. I went through the boxes again and recorded all the chiefs of the various offices in the northeast region, the head rangers, and the superintendents of each park. That took most of my day but I figured some rough dates for each Chief’s reign. Paul Buckley was Chief from roughly 1974-1979, Michael Sukoup was Chief from 1979-1989, and Mary Foley was Chief from 1989-2012. You would think that this was straightforward information that the NPS would give me, but I actually had to do some detective work to figure it all out. This project is anything but dull!

I also spent some time rearranging that wall of boxes to separate out the materials I am working with from the others and lowered the stacks to only 4 boxes. Having six or more boxes stacked up made me nervous and was damaging the bottom boxes. Ideally, I would love to place them on the shelving but since the renovations team seems to think that empty plastic magazine holders are more valuable than the valuable records on the floor, I can’t. I only hope that they don’t decide to re-stack my boxes to six high again!

Next week I will begin to build my framework based on the current organizational chart for the Park Service and lay out all the different iterations of how the Northeast region has been organized. This is definitely going to take some time and detective work. However, once that is done, I can start weeding out the duplicates. There is something so gratifying to throwing away the clutter!

22 August – 13 September 2016: Inventory, Inventory, Inventory

The last couple of weeks I delved into the 27.5 linear feet of material and write up my

Non-archivists should not pack boxes of documents. I placed cardboard in the back of this one to keep the documents from further damage.

inventory. I now understand much more about the scope of this project. The picture I posted last week does not accurately reflect my workload …there are so many more boxes in the picture than I am working with. Phew! I was afraid of I would not be able to finish in a timely manner. The files I am working with are specifically from the three Chief Regional Scientist records that span from 1974 to 2013, including the most recent Chief, Mary Foley. Twenty-two boxes is still a lot but not overwhelming. Looking through the boxes also got me thinking about how I was going to arrangement it, while keeping in mind the records disposal schedule and how the records reflect either program files or project files.

Let me explain this a bit further. Program files and project files reflect the hierarchy of the files that either are packed up to be sent to the individual parks or are copied and a set sent to NARA. On the top of the hierarchy are the budgets for the Northeast region, documents that reflect the decision making process on which individual park projects are funded, and other regional decisions. Project files, on the other hand, document the projects conducted at the individual parks. In other words, project files are the day-to-day aspects of the studies done at the park.  I had to draw myself a picture at first to see how it all fit because I hadn’t seen the both types of files yet in the boxes I looked through. I had only seen what would be considered project files so far. Once I did see a program file, it was pretty obvious and I felt foolish about worrying about if I would be able to tell the difference.

My surroundings were extra chaotic during the last week of August because the NPS was not only undergoing renovations in the building but celebrating their centennial. Park rangers and event coordinators were hauling items over to the Charlestown Navy Yard for the celebration activities. So thankful for my headphones. The upside was that I was able to meet the Deputy Director, Rose Fennell, who was incredible engaging. Turns out she originally went to school for library science, so she was familiar with the archival process and records management.

I finished the last four boxes this week and consulted with the Natural Resources Management Policies book and a clear picture of the overarching themes to the documents emerged. There are several categories of documents outlined: Biological Resource Management (flora and fauna studies), Special Designations (), Fire Management, Water Resource Management, Air Resource Management, Geological Resource Management (), Soundscape Management, Lightscape Management, and Chemical Information and Odors. These designations will certainly come in handy as I decide on how to arrange this collection.

For the next week, my goal is to better acquaint myself with the cast of characters I see on many of the documents and nail down a timeline for each Chief’s reign in order to begin to sketch an historical note for the finding aid that will be sent to NARA.