nearing the end

With the completion of a formal condition report that I created with the help and feedback of Dr. Decker, I can finally place all my notes that I took for the assessment of the collection and start putting them into formal documents. This will allow me to easily sight and of the objects that I may refer to in my paper, will show my thought process while looking at the pieces, and in the long run, will give the RIT archives a consistent way to evaluate pieces. There may only be one small problem with my form, and that is that there is a scale present ranging from 1-5 which notes the severity of damage done to the piece. The issue with the scale comes in the form of subjectivity from person to person; meaning that one person could think a piece that several surface cracks is in worse condition than a piece that a large chip missing. Dr. Decker and I talked about possibly making a short (maybe 1/2 - 1 page) note stating the methodology behind how I rated each piece and how to judge what is harmful to the overall life of the piece.

It turns out that my outline has changed more than I would have liked it with the removal of some of the secondary aspects, and the addition of pieces that I never would have thought about including. Most of those changes are coming in the second half of the thesis, where it focuses on the hands-on aspect of project.

As for the how the writing of the second half of the thesis is going. There seem to be a few hick-ups. The major one is trying to balance or match the tone of the first half. Since the first part is all research there is a more assertive tone to it, but because now I am writing about my work and my experience it seems a little passive and almost like a reflection of what I have done. I'll try my best to fix that issue before the final draft, but right now its all about just getting the information out and onto the page.