Archival Management and Perfect Pasts

One of my favorite aspects of my time with the Ritz so far has been the chance to learn more about the archival system in place at the museum! The archivist was relatively new to the position and was undertaking a complete survey of the archival documents and artifacts housed at the Ritz.

I had the wonderful opportunity to be trained on the PastPerfect archival system, which is a digital database where specific documents and artifacts can be easily searched up and located for each archival location. I was able to learn how to update the Ritz files and log archival documents on PastPerfect, starting with the Professor Abel A. Bartley collection: around 10 boxes of the African American Studies scholar’s research, essays, and early drafts of work.

Happily, I found that Bartley’s collection was intimately connected to a subject I was independently studying at the time, that being the African American schools of Jacksonville. Bartley’s work focused intimately on the legacy of said segregated schools in Jacksonville dating back to the founding of the first Black secondary school in Florida, Stanton, in the 1860’s. From his writings and his research, I was able to know precisely where to look for more relevant information as I continued work on my tour script.

The poems included above can be found in the museum and were written in the early 1900s. While I did not archive them, they are a great example of how archiving historic documents can paint a richer portrait of the past: not only is there the military regalia and newspaper clippings that provide a clipped, typical view of the war, there are also the affectionate poems that show the human weight as well.