Tomorrow, May 14th, 2018, I will be starting my internship, and boy am I nervous, but also very excited. And to commemorate this momentous event of my life, I decided I would keep a kind of diary detailing the work I will be doing.
So, to start this blog series is an introduction on where I will be interning, what I am expected to do during my time here, and the preparation I have done.
My internship is located in Trappe, PA, where I had previously attended two archaeological digs for The Speaker's House. While I will be participating in this year's archaeological dig at The Speaker's House in June, the bulk of my internship is concerned with a different organization and is comprised with different reponsibilities.
The main aspect of my internship is in conjunction with The Historical Trappe Society, and I will be addressing their library and archive collection (which is made up of about 1,000 vintage photos, 500 postcards, 1,000 books, 500 assorted individual file folders, two nearly complete runs of local newspapers, and approximately 15 boxes of unsorted material). I will also be overseeing two other interns, who will be helping me achieve this feat.
To prepare myself for this undertaking, apart from being in a Knowledge Organization course at Pratt Institute, I consulted an archives management professor at my school who then suggested I read Arranging & Describing: Archives & Manuscripts by Kathleen D. Roe. After having read this book in its entirety, I formulated a plan of attack. First, I will need to go through the collection and see if it was previously organized, and if so, how (how it is organized will be notated). If there is not an organization method already implemented, I will have to go through and make a list of each item and include important information about each (such as who/what it's about, any dates, the format, etc.), and, from that list, I will see if there are any patterns in the information to create series. During this time, any preservation concerns (such as bugs/mold or the use of rubber bands/staples/paper clips) will be noted to be addressed at a later time. After this initial familiarization process of the archive, I will research any relevant biographical and/or historical information to be included in the general summary of the archive. Simultaneously, I will be arranging, 'labeling', and describing the collection, starting from the most basic (the overall collection title and summary, which contains bibliographic descriptions and archivist/society information), then moving on to the groupings, or series, of documents, then to any subseries, and then finally to individual documents. Lastly, I hope to at least start transferring this information to Past Perfect (an online database for library, archival, and photo collections). Obviously I would not be doing all of this myself; instead I will delegate to the other two interns as necessary.
I intend to add posts in this blog series after every work week, so each post should include five headings. I hope you enjoy following me as I go through this exciting experience!