Architectural Records: Preserving and Managing the Documentation of Our Built Environment

Karen DeWitt and Beth Dodd participated in an intense three-day conference on architectural records developed by the Conservation Center for Art and Historic Artifacts, the National Park Service Museum Management Program, and co-sponsored by the Athenaeum of Philadelphia, Architectural Archives of the University of Pennsylvania, Historic American Buildings Survey/Historic American Engineering Record, and the Independence National Historical Park. Philadelphia proved to be an ideal location as it was concurrently host to the annual American Institute of Architects National Convention and twenty-five public exhibitions on architecture.

Twenty speakers provided valuable information on improving practices for preservation, management, and access to the documentation of our architectural heritage. Presentations for both theoretical and practical levels included keynote addresses, lectures, case studies, demonstrations, and tours. Topics covered the significance of architectural records, history and array of materials and methods used to create them, collecting policies and appraisal, intellectual control, preservation measures, access methods, fundraising, legal issues of copyright, and electronic records. One hundred sixty-two participants (archivists, librarians, curators, historic preservation officers, record managers, historians, and architects) from twenty-nine states and seven different countries attended the conference. They represented institutions such as archives, libraries, museums, historic sites, historical societies, and architectural firms.

The keynote speaker started off with a lecture on the purpose of collecting architectural records and what they can tell us. Over the first day and a half of the conference, speakers addressed how records are created in an architectural firm, the types of records created, and the materials used in blueprints and drawings produced prior to 1950 and from 1950 to the present. Others spoke on creating descriptive records for materials housed in architectural archives and presented schemes for the arrangement of architectural records, for publishing finding aids and records online, and discussed archives which have publicly accessible online records.

The latter half of day two was largely taken up with issues of housing, preserving, and storing architectural drawings, including reformatting issues and the problems associated with digital and CAD records. Day two ended with a tour of the First Bank of the United States which currently houses the archives of Independence National Historic Park and the Architectural Fragments Collection, a collection of building fragments used to study construction in colonial times. Day three presented legal issues relating to architectural records, and archivists from various collections presented case studies from their archives.

This conference was made possible, in part, by special funding from the National Park Service Cultural Resources Training Initiative. Grant funding was provided by the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, The Pew Charitable Trusts, The Independence Foundation, Nielsen & Bainbridge, Conservation Resources and The Barra Foundation.

A notebook of conference events, relevant readings, and summaries of each speaker's talk was given to every attendee. The conference was useful in presenting all the issues of architectural archives management, and in providing information about various collections and websites around the country that we, in turn, can provide to our library users.