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Recently processed and now available for research at PHS are the personal papers of two prominent African American leaders in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.): Gayraud Wilmore and J. Oscar McCloud.
Rev. Wilmore’s papers were brought to the Society by his son Jack and daughter-in-law Carmen in July 2019. Rev. McCloud began donating his papers to the Society in 1999 and also deposited the last few boxes in July. Since then, I've had the privilege to prepare both collections for researchers.
Processing is one of the most important and enjoyable tasks we do as archivists--arranging, describing, and properly storing the papers of an individual or family or the records of an organization according to archival standards. For one week this year, I processed the personal papers collection of Alonzo Edmiston, a missionary to the American Presbyterian Congo...
On May 1 and 2, the Presbyterian Historical Society hosted a “More Product Less Process” workshop sponsored by the Mid-Atlantic Regional Archives Conference. PHS archivists Bill Brock and David Staniunas joined a dozen other archivists to learn more about MPLP, or minimal processing, an approach designed to make archival materials more rapidly accessible to researchers.
Holly Mengel and Courtney Smerz, project managers of a three-year grant project to process hidden Philadelphia-area collections, led participants in hands-on work with four groups of materials from PHS...