John Preston papers (Ms.2011.032)
Brown University Library
Box ABrown University
Providence, RI 02912
Telephone: Manuscripts: 401-863-3723; University Archives: 401-863-2148
Email: Manuscripts: hay@brown.edu; University Archives: archives@brown.edu
Administrative Information
| ABOUT THE COLLECTION | |
| Acquisition: | Collection received as gift of John Preston and the John Preston Estate (1992-1995). Additional materials received from Celeste DeRoche (2000), Lark Hapke (1995), Diane Hamer (2007-2009), Gail Hinand (1995), Michael Lowenthal (1995-2007), and various other sources. |
| Processing information: | As I processed the John Preston Collection, I attempted to remain respectful of provenance (original order) whenever possible. As part of this effort, I broadly categorized the materials into correspondence, writings, floppy disks, etc., visual materials, printed materials, additions, and subject files while allowing for a fair amount of overlap between series. This entails that the correspondence boxes contain some manuscripts and printed materials; the writings series contains some letters and printed ephemera, and so on. The Preston estate donated several boxes' worth of his own personal alphabetized subject files; we kept these mostly in order while organizing the materials. The Additions series was something of a complication: rather than attempting to categorize each non-Preston accession on its own, we arranged them together as a large group and divided them into the subseries correspondence, printed papers, and writings. This allowed us to accommodate diverse materials without losing any of Preston's original order. Some of Preston's letters included correspondence with people of renown such as Anne Rice and Michael Lowenthal; however, rather than distract from the main subject of this collection, John Preston, by creating special series for others, we merely integrated their materials with the rest of the additions. Several preservation efforts were taken: in addition to re-foldering and re-boxing the materials when necessary, we examined one water-damaged manuscript for conservation possibilities (although little was able to be done for it). We removed some of the large-scale images from their mounts and frames and placed them in one-sized boxes. The most rearrangement we did in the collection was in the writings series. The series was re-organized into two broad categories: the writings of John Preston and the writings of others. The Preston writings were further arranged into works of fiction, works of nonfiction and short writings in order to improve user access to the collection. The Realia and Printed Materials portions are also comprised of materials we combined in order to create more cohesive series. I dispensed with very few materials; almost everything that was donated in the Preston accessions was retained during our processing. Overall, the most important features of original order have been retained and I believe we have maximized user access with what liberties we took in rearranging donations. |
| ABOUT THE FINDING AID | |
| Author: | Rachel Taylor |
| Encoding: | This finding aid was produced using ArchivesSpace on 2022-10-05. |
| Revisions: |
2018-11-07
|
| Descriptive rules: | Describing Archives: A Content Standard |
| Sponsor: | Processing funded by a grant from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission. |
