The papers recovered in October, and the accession of March 1999

The papers

Every item is already held in the catalogue and may be read there in full. Nothing was written for this file.

• MIN/1998/11 · Record · 12 November 1998

  Stewardship Meeting — Minutes

  Item 5 directs that papers recovered from the ground floor be conserved at the North House and accessioned in the ordinary course, and enters the upper-floor materials as outstanding.

• LED/1998/04 · Record · 31 December 1998

  Statement of Loss and Reinstatement, autumn quarter 1998

  Carries the conservation of recovered records as a stated cost in the autumn quarter, against the making safe and the removal.

• MEM/1998/06 · Correspondence · 29 September 1998

  Memorandum: the disposition of the Record following my death

  Written in September, before the loss, and filed with the accession note. The description states which classes of material were to be entered and which returned; the body is restricted at the author's instruction.

• CON/1999/02 · Record · 21 January 1999

  Conservation note: recovered papers, October loss

  States what was carried out of the ground-floor study, how long it took to dry, what was lost in treatment, and that the upper-floor material is entered as not held.

• ACC/1999/03 · Record · 4 March 1999

  Accession note: the effects of Eleanor Vale

  The accession itself: 418 items, their condition, the four retained unconserved, and the three classes recorded as not received.

• PHO/1999/A/12 · Photograph · Undated. Returned 1999

  Photograph: house group on the steps

  A copy print entered as returned rather than as given, among the accessions of the 1999 recovery. The original is not held.

• PHO/1989/07 · Photograph · Catalogued as c. 1989

  Photograph: E. Vale at her desk

  Received with the papers in the 1999 accession; earlier custody not recorded. The cataloguer's note keeps the entry for the second likeness so that the count stays legible.

• REC/1991/04 · Sound recording · 14 February 1991

  Recording: E. Vale, answer to a question from the floor

  Vale, seven years earlier, on whether a thing remains continuous after the thing itself is gone. The reel is held at the North House; a transcript is printed and no transfer is published.

• REC/1979/02 · Sound recording · 17 February 1979 · transfer held

  Remarks at the first reconciliation

  Vale on an absence in the book not being the end of a matter. A preservation transfer is held and may be listened to.

• COR/2004/077 · Correspondence · 18 May 2004

  Letter, the archivist to a member, on the naming of a former property

  Six years afterwards, the archivist's account of why the property's older name is not printed, and his refusal to invent a reason for the earlier omissions.

What the papers settle

The interval of nearly four months between the November minute and the March accession is accounted for in full by the treatment of the papers, and by nothing else.

The stewardship met on 12 November 1998 and directed at item 5 that the recovered papers be conserved at the North House and accessioned in the ordinary course. The direction is to conserve first and accession afterwards, in that order.

The conservation note of 21 January 1999 sets out the treatment that followed: air-drying under weight for six weeks in the unheated end of the archive room, interleaving renewed twice, and nine items sent out for freeze-drying and returned in December. Six weeks of drying begun after the November meeting, with items away until December, reaches the turn of the year without any further step being required.

The quarterly statement carries the conservation of recovered records as a stated cost of the autumn quarter, which places the work inside the interval rather than after it.

The accession note is dated 4 March 1999, some six weeks after the conservation note, and records twelve items conserved and boxed separately and four retained unconserved at the archivist's instruction. Both figures are the output of the treatment described in January.

The interval therefore requires no explanation beyond the one the file already gives. The papers were wet; drying them took the winter; they were entered when they were dry.

Rests upon

• MIN/1998/11 — Stewardship Meeting — Minutes
• CON/1999/02 — Conservation note: recovered papers, October loss
• LED/1998/04 — Statement of Loss and Reinstatement, autumn quarter 1998
• ACC/1999/03 — Accession note: the effects of Eleanor Vale