Toby and Betty Bruce collection of Ernest Hemingway

This collection was originally inventoried and sorted by Brewster Chamberlin prior to purchase and appraised by an independent appraiser. At the point of shipment, Penn State faculty member Sandra Spanier verified the contents of the appraisal inventory. The collection was shipped to Penn State Libraries in October 2021. At the point of receipt, Lexy deGraffenreid, Robyn Dyke, Sarah Meyer, and Yunior Rodriguez verified the contents of the original inventory and minimally rehoused materials into archival boxes. Materials originally housed in albums and binders were placed in archival boxes while remaining in their original albums. Loose materials and materials housed in sleeves or envelopes were housed in archival folders in Paige boxes. The accessioning staff used the original entries in the original inventory to title folders for rehoused items. Accessioning archivists adapted the original appraisal inventory into a preliminary inventory of the unprocessed collection, assigning entries pre-processing box locations in order to provide access. Lexy deGraffenreid uploaded the preliminary inventory to this ArchivesSpace repository in order to provide researcher access prior to collections processing.

Lexy deGraffenreid processed this collection between January-March 2023 and imposed a physical and intellectual arrangement based on the arrangement created by the Bruce family. The Bruce family loosely arranged these papers geographically by locations where Ernest Hemingway lived and travelled. In addition, they generally grouped writings, correspondence, and photographs together by item type. Through their decades of stewardship, the Bruce family also added material related to Ernest Hemingway, such as their correspondence with the Hemingway family, correspondence with others about Ernest Hemingway, and clippings, ephemera, and other materials relating to their relationship with Hemingway and Hemingway's legacy. To showcase the Bruce family's stewardship and contribution to this collection, as well as to separate Hemingway's personal papers from the Bruce family's papers, Lexy deGraffenreid separated the Bruce family's records into their own series. The majority of the material in this series post-dates Ernest Hemingway's lifetime and was not part of his original papers. Lexy attempted to preserve the Bruce family's original groupings to the best of her ability in order to preserve the Bruce family's understanding of Ernest Hemingway and his papers. As a result, she arranged the collection into the following series: Artifacts, General correspondence, General photographs, Hemingway's travels, Writings and publications, and Bruce family papers. She further subdivided the Hemingway's travels series geographically to best preserve the Bruce family's original arrangement of the materials.

To better preserve this collection, Lexy further removed items from their original binders, sleeved photographs and delicate papers, and foldered items using archival-grade folders. Where items were originally housed in a titled binder or envelope, Lexy indicated this original order through the general note "Original binder: or "Original envelope" in each applicable item record so that researchers could reconstruct these original binders. She further sleeved nitrate negatives into individual paper sleeves and housed them in Cold Storage for better preservation and to mitigate risk. Lexy further housed artifacts into artifact trays and boxes. At accessioning and processing, she further identified damaged items and transferred them to Penn State's Conservation Centre for assessment and treatment. As no original folder titles existed (other than the preliminary inventory created for the appraisal), Lexy imposed folder titles for the entire collection.