James H. and Candace Van Alen papers (RLC.Ms.003)
Redwood Library and Athenaeum
50 Bellevue AvenueNewport, RI 02840
Tel: (401) 847-0292
Fax: (401) 841-5680
email: redwood@redwoodlibrary.org
Administrative Information
| ABOUT THE COLLECTION | |
| Acquisition: | Gift of the estate of Candace Van Alen, 2002 |
| Processing information: | When this collection was first received in 2002, it consisted of 86 boxes (63 record boxes, 21 oversize flat file boxes, and two textile boxes). One section of this acquisition was highly organized, while the other was in a state of disarray. The organized part of the collection was the result of the work completed by a private secretary, hired by Candace Van Alen sometime after the death of her husband, to arrange his papers. This secretary, who remains unknown, created a meticulous filing system for these records. Each individual item was enclosed in a page protector and labeled with information such as the series it belonged in, the date, and a description of its contents. All of the items in page protectors have a smaller label on the reverse side with an ID number for the document. (These numbers may have served a purpose during the secretary’s work with the records, but this is unapparent in the collection’s current arrangement.) Each item was then placed within a file folder and then housed in a vertical hanging folder – all labeled with a description of the contents and the series created by the secretary. Photographs that were found within documents were oftentimes separated and could be found within the series of photographs. Volunteers and staff at the Redwood Library first began processing this collection in 2005. At this time, they replaced the file folders and vertical file folders with archival folders. The second part of the collection, which was not in any discernable order when acquired by the Library, was surveyed and sorted according to records pertaining to James H. Van Alen, Candace Van Alen, and the two of them as a couple. The series arrangement established by Van Alen's secretary was maintained with additions made in order to accommodate the records belonging primarily to Candace Van Alen. Processing of the collection was incomplete, leaving the bulk of Candace Van Alen's records and photographs to be organized and arranged. A preliminary finding aid for the collection was drafted, which served as the framework for this current version of the finding aid for the James H. and Candace Van Alen papers. During the 2014 arrangement of this collection, box numbers and folders were assigned to all of the previously processed records. Materials that were not yet arranged were sorted and interfiled according to the series and subseries structure established by the previous archivists and the Van Alen secretary. Photographs were arranged according to approximate date ranges, in interest of time, and not further described according to their image contents as seen in earlier processing efforts. |
| ABOUT THE FINDING AID | |
| Author: | Finding aid prepared by Elizabeth Delmage. |
| Encoding: | Finding aid encoded by Elizabeth Delmage 2014 March 19 |
| Descriptive rules: | Finding aid based on Describing Archives: A Content Standard (DACS) |
| Sponsor: | Funding for processing and cataloging this collection was provided by the van Beuren Charitable Foundation. |
