Processing of the Verlin W. Smith Business Records Collection in the Virginia Historical Society with generous funding from the Claude Moore Charitable Foundation
Established in 1831, the Virginia Historical Society (VHS), the Center for Virginia History, collects, preserves, and interprets the commonwealth’s past for the education and enjoyment of present and future generations. It serves as Virginia’s premier research library and as its award-winning history museum, as well as offers statewide educational services, publications, research fellowships, and a strong presence on the World Wide Web. The VHS recently completed a successful $55 million capital campaign. Its results are a 54,000 square-foot wing which provides much-needed space for collection storage, public programs, and the Reynolds Business History Center. Our current collection of business and economic history is virtually unparalleled in the state, either in a public, private, or university setting. The Reynolds Business History Center will continue to strive to collect the records of businesses that have been important to, and have shaped, the history of the state, as well as representative collections that document private enterprise, minority businesses, and the experience of workers on all levels of endeavor. With the launch of this unique initiative, the VHS has gained a reputation as an appropriate repository for business records and archives. These records have become a significant part of our research collection at the same time that scholars nationally are seeking primary sources in this growing field. In January 2007, Verlin W. Smith and his wife, Maryan, of Oakton, Virginia, donated to the VHS an extensive and rich collection of business records primarily related to Mr. Smith’s career in real estate as the head of Farms & Acreage, Inc. Through the firm, originally organized in the 1950s in McLean, Virginia, and through other enterprises, such as his company Soil Consultants, Inc., and activities such as his involvement in the Fairfax County Chamber of Commerce, the recently deceased Mr. Smith played an enormous and vital role in the development Fairfax County and the Northern Virginia region in general in the decades following World War II. A meticulous, almost obsessive, record-keeper, Mr. Smith developed a collection of documents, articles, maps, and related materials that became a superlative and much sought-after resource for developers, investors, and even local government officials. Stories abound of persons coming to Mr. Smith—and his collection—for information that would prove helpful to various plans and proposals for land use and development and a broad range of related projects. The Processing of the Verlin W. Smith Business Records Collection is a one-year project involving the sorting and arrangement of 425 linear feet of records contained currently in approximately 275 standard archival boxes, plus seven cartons holding oversized materials, such as maps, plats, plans, and related documentation. All of this material must be assessed and inventoried, re-housed, and described for access purposes. A project archivist is undertaking other basic preservation efforts, such as cleaning specific materials and identifying items or groups of papers that require the added attention of our on-site conservation staff. Conservation treatments may include humidification (to relax materials that have been rolled for storage for many years), de-acidification, mending, and encapsulation in Mylar for stabilization and protection. The ultimate goal is to process the entire record group not only for preservation purposes, but also to provide potential users with specific information about its contents and offer them the tools to locate that information within the collection itself. The project will result in a fully integrated collection, re-housed in approved archival containers, as well as described in online records that will provide access at the collection level, and also to the various sub-series that will be created to identify components of the overall record group. The online records will consist of a US MARC mixed materials record created to Library of Congress cataloging standards, along with a supplementary finding aid that will serve as the primary locator of materials within the collection. Both the US MARC record and the finding aid will be available on the VHS web site. This will allow researchers from across Virginia, the United States, and even the international community to access the descriptions and plan visits to the Society or contact its reference librarians for further assistance. As indicated above, the primary goal, after preservation of the collection, is to make it accessible to researchers and other potential users. This will be achieved by creating an online catalog record (the primary scholarly tool for providing access), a supplementary finding aid (targeted toward a more general user audience but with greater detail about content), and a series of web pages on the VHS site to highlight both new acquisitions and resources in Virginia business history. Project staff may also have the opportunity, as has been the case with most similar projects in the past, to write articles for various publications and to make presentations on the collection at scholarly and professional meetings and in other venues. |
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