Barbara Eberhard's Blog - Posts Tagged "source-materials"
So Much Source Material!
I suppose every biographer has this challenge, or wants to have this challenge, but I feel like I have so much source material for Dad's biography, it's hard to keep track of it all.
Today, I spent part of the day working in the biography file and part of the day reading what I have of Dad's thesis from graduate school (I'm missing a lot of it - it may be in another file somewhere).
As I've mentioned before, I have some materials that Dad wrote himself about his various jobs. I also have his book, Extraordinary Events in My Life, which I've used extensively throughout the biography. I also have his professional files (or at least a lot of them) in a very large plastic bin. Dad had organized most of the files by his work life, but I found some "extras" in another box the other day, so I've added more to this box of professional papers. Officially, his professional papers have gone to an archive at the American Heritage Center at the University of Wyoming. So what I have are either duplicates or papers Dad found later and didn't send along. Along, with these professional papers, I have an entire file cabinet's worth of personal papers. I also have my parents' "loose" photographs and albums of photographs, including a couple of albums from before they met and their wedding photographs. Finally, I have an entire case of Dad's drawings - about 200 drawings and lots of other papers (like trip reports Mom put together to describe what they did, along with photos of places they went and Dad's drawings) and correspondence.
I have two files of tributes to Dad - one from ANFA and one from his colleagues at AIARC - in soft copy, making it easy to incorporate them into the biography. I've also searched on Google any references to Dad, including a bunch of obituaries that were written after Dad's death, most of which included some parts of the obituary I had written. And I have the obituary I wrote of Dad and the original Wikipedia article I tried to get published, which is based on the obituary.
Plus, other materials on some of the people mentioned in the biography, like Don Schon and others.
It's a lot of material.
What's in the biography as of right now are Dad's autobiographical notes from the many flash drives I inherited from him, as well as retyping of many of the sections of Extraordinary Events. Then I've folded in some of the pieces from the tributes and obituaries, particularly where they made sense with regard to certain jobs. For example, there is a wonderful obituary from SUNYAB that includes some of the history of how Dad got that job, which makes for very useful information for the biography. I've put in some of tributes in their own format, so it's obvious they are tributes.
I've been working my way through Dad's career, and thought I had done most of the work for his early work at Creative Buildings, Inc. and Sheraton Corporation. This would take me through 1963 (shortly after I was actually born). But I've only made it through about a half dozen of the files of professional papers - meaning there are probably two or three dozen more to look through. I haven't read all the papers I've downloaded that Dad managed the publishing of at both AIARC and BRB, which I'm sure will need to be folded into the biography. And I haven't even begun to look at the personal papers, which I'm sure will add some "color" to his working life, as well as adding in Mom and other important people in Dad's life. The artwork is starting to get into the biography in bits and pieces. I'm sure the photos are making the file substantial in size.
At this point, I only have about 120 pages of biography "written", most of which is notes and pieces of articles from 1963 onward. I keep trying to figure out how to "track" what I've used and what I haven't. And it's still mostly a jumbled mess at this point. Particularly challenging are the hard-copy files; I think I'm going to have to have some kind of divider in the bin for what I've looked at and what I haven't. And someday I have to start looking at the personal files.
And I still have a lot of reading to do!
Today, I spent part of the day working in the biography file and part of the day reading what I have of Dad's thesis from graduate school (I'm missing a lot of it - it may be in another file somewhere).
As I've mentioned before, I have some materials that Dad wrote himself about his various jobs. I also have his book, Extraordinary Events in My Life, which I've used extensively throughout the biography. I also have his professional files (or at least a lot of them) in a very large plastic bin. Dad had organized most of the files by his work life, but I found some "extras" in another box the other day, so I've added more to this box of professional papers. Officially, his professional papers have gone to an archive at the American Heritage Center at the University of Wyoming. So what I have are either duplicates or papers Dad found later and didn't send along. Along, with these professional papers, I have an entire file cabinet's worth of personal papers. I also have my parents' "loose" photographs and albums of photographs, including a couple of albums from before they met and their wedding photographs. Finally, I have an entire case of Dad's drawings - about 200 drawings and lots of other papers (like trip reports Mom put together to describe what they did, along with photos of places they went and Dad's drawings) and correspondence.
I have two files of tributes to Dad - one from ANFA and one from his colleagues at AIARC - in soft copy, making it easy to incorporate them into the biography. I've also searched on Google any references to Dad, including a bunch of obituaries that were written after Dad's death, most of which included some parts of the obituary I had written. And I have the obituary I wrote of Dad and the original Wikipedia article I tried to get published, which is based on the obituary.
Plus, other materials on some of the people mentioned in the biography, like Don Schon and others.
It's a lot of material.
What's in the biography as of right now are Dad's autobiographical notes from the many flash drives I inherited from him, as well as retyping of many of the sections of Extraordinary Events. Then I've folded in some of the pieces from the tributes and obituaries, particularly where they made sense with regard to certain jobs. For example, there is a wonderful obituary from SUNYAB that includes some of the history of how Dad got that job, which makes for very useful information for the biography. I've put in some of tributes in their own format, so it's obvious they are tributes.
I've been working my way through Dad's career, and thought I had done most of the work for his early work at Creative Buildings, Inc. and Sheraton Corporation. This would take me through 1963 (shortly after I was actually born). But I've only made it through about a half dozen of the files of professional papers - meaning there are probably two or three dozen more to look through. I haven't read all the papers I've downloaded that Dad managed the publishing of at both AIARC and BRB, which I'm sure will need to be folded into the biography. And I haven't even begun to look at the personal papers, which I'm sure will add some "color" to his working life, as well as adding in Mom and other important people in Dad's life. The artwork is starting to get into the biography in bits and pieces. I'm sure the photos are making the file substantial in size.
At this point, I only have about 120 pages of biography "written", most of which is notes and pieces of articles from 1963 onward. I keep trying to figure out how to "track" what I've used and what I haven't. And it's still mostly a jumbled mess at this point. Particularly challenging are the hard-copy files; I think I'm going to have to have some kind of divider in the bin for what I've looked at and what I haven't. And someday I have to start looking at the personal files.
And I still have a lot of reading to do!
