Preservation Assessment of Archives

FAIN: PA-51559-06

Perkins School for the Blind (Watertown, MA 02472-2751)
Jan Seymour-Ford (Project Director: May 2005 to August 2007)

A general preservation assessment of correspondence, manuscripts, photographs, and books related to the history of a noted school for the blind, 1820s to the present.

The Perkins Archives are a rich resource in the history of the education of people who are blind or deafblind, for the life of Helen Keller, and for local history. However, the materials have never been organized or catalogued, and finding information is extremely difficult or even impossible. The Perkins Research Library is applying for an NEH Preservation Assistance Grant to hire a qualified preservationist/archivist to evaluate the preservation and organization needs of the Archives. Perkins will use the archivist’s written assessment as a guideline for its long-range plans to arrange, describe, preserve, and catalog the material in its Archives.