Spring Fever and Senioritis

It feels like I could work on the Obrebski collection indefinitely. Time management has become one of the most key learning curves in the SCUA internship experience.  I am glad to have had the experience of working with a collection in a department which strives to have accurate time usage.  The head of SCUA is adamant about making sure our processing is done adequately and thoroughly, but quickly.  It is important for archives to have as many materials as possible available for public viewing and to have as little as possible in the backlog.  I think this is refreshing and a very motivating work environment to be in; I wholeheartedly agree that our to-do lists should be kept to a minimum.

Today is one month from graduation.  Especially with the weather we have been getting (beautiful New England crazy-making weather), it has been an increasing challenge to stay focused on the few assignments I have left.  I try to tell myself the more I work, the faster the time will fly by.  Yesterday I fell asleep in yoga class and decided to take a nap on the campus lawn before my evening seminar.

The correspondence is completed for the Obrebski digital collection; manuscripts are under way.  After the manuscripts are represented I will be filling in the exhibit content with family data and interviews.  The goal is to have 100 items completed over the next two weeks before finals set in.  I need to design an home page for the collection and write a description of the digital exhibit.  I continue to be excited about the project coming to fruition and be accessible by the worldwide public.

The rain on the tin roof is my lullaby.

It seems like an April fools joke that I would be finishing the correspondence for the Obrebski collection today. The last few folders that I thought I needed to process are actually UMass related letters from after Obrebski’s death, mostly dealing with the transfer of materials to archival facilities. The scans are done and the items (1-3?) are in the Oblogski database. I’ll be saving myself and RTF of the data to convert into blog entries with an extended abstract and a link to the image. Over this next weekend I will be able to write an opening page for the collection and a master index for the images. The database will provide, as noted before, a listing of all the items in the collection by subject (geographic location for our purposes), date, and author.

At the Jones so far I have learned how to process non-fiction, poetry, drama, career center, serial records, gifts, discards, juvenile books, put stickers on CDs for circulation and edit the 300 field. Some days the work is slow, moving from one small project to the other. Most days there is an unending list of tasks, shipments of books don’t seem to stop coming in and I keep trucking through the work. Having plenty to do is my favorite kind of day. The ability to make a dent in the pile makes me feel productive. At the end of the day I go to bed spent and sleep well.