Internship proceedings

It’s been a few weeks since an update on my internship project at Keene State. I’m actually just about to wrap up my work here at the Mason Library and it’s been an exciting and extremely informative learning experience.  I’ve navigated library polictics, technological issues, interpersonal hurdles and archival methods questions.

[More later...]

Photo gallery : Excerpts from Keene Normal School Annual Catalogs 1910-1939

Mason Library at KSC :Mason Library Blog : Keene Normal School Archive

I also had my completed DACS and EAD ready finding aid from last semester :  KNS Finding Aid.

For an assignment in my Archives Access and Use class (LIS 440) this semester I marked up said finding aid in EAD.

Undergraduates – a history in photographs

What is the story in the subtitle?

Looking at the State Normal School of Keene annual catalogs and circulars from the early 20th century has me thinking about the lifestyles and traditions of undergraduate college students.  I will try to tell what stories I can find with the pictures found in the annual catalogs.  This will help to paint a picture to go along with the narrative written by the special collections librarian.

On a side note, I started exploring the KSC Mason Library CD collection today.  Wooo! Today’s selection included DiFranco and Marsalis.

Next steps: speak with systems librarian about steps to take the finding aid and image files from where they are now to being live on the web. And…. more scanning!

Let’s make a product

Today is the second day of my second semester at Keene State College doing internship work for the Simmons program in library science. Meeting with the library dean, Irene Herold, went well this morning. We explored the options for creating an actual product for the library web page as a contribution for the college’s centennial celebration.  In reality, this goes back to the original vision Irene had for the student intern. The idea of a digital exhibit, rather than a digital finding aid, resonates with me and how I see people, particularly undergraduate college students, interact with information on the web.

Photograph from plate between pages 64 and 65 of the State Normal School Keene New Hampshire Catalog and Circular for the Twenty-first year, 1929 - 1930.

Storytelling is a way to bring parties in that may not have been interested in the first place. Using a digital exhibit we can do storytelling with images and text; with the web we can add interactivity and exploration.  My vision for the time-line will take more web design then what I know at this point, so I am excited to learn some new skills and experiment with unfamiliar code.

The good news is that we have annual catalogs for the first two academic years, 1909-1910 and 1910-1911 as well as the later years from 1922-1939.  I am hoping we will find the missing ten years, 1911-1922; my plan is to use excerpts and photos from the KNS catalogs to mark every year on the timeline. A menu will give visitors the option to look further into a given year by document type, or narrative by the special collections librarian.  I am especially looking forward to telling my undergrad view of the story with the photos in the catalogs.

I was able to meet with Charles, library tech guy, to get the large scanner (evil Book Eye) all set up for scanning bound documents, so I have all the tools I need to scan the catalogs.  I will contact Kara, the systems librarian, as soon as I have something a little more concrete to see what advice she has for making sure this exhibit fits within the library web page format.

Another internship brings me back.

KSC Yearbook Photo from 1955

My first semester as a GSLIS student! Hooray! The past eight weeks have required more discipline than any other time in my life and  I don’t think it is going to get any easier.  My brain is getting stretched and tenderized.  Soon it will be in a MLIS mold and I will be assimilated!

I’m driving out to the Simmons Boston campus every Tuesday for half of my GSLIS courses.  Thursday night and Saturday morning I fit in the other two at GSLIS West, Mount Holyoke.  I do a few hours of cataloging at the Goodwin Memorial Library in Hadley on Thursday.  My archives internship (requirement for LIS 438) is with the Mason Library at Keene State College in New Hampshire on Fridays.

In order to do all this commuting at the beginning of the semester I bought a 1992 Honda Civic sedan from my roommate, a mechanic and Honda fanatic .  He had customized the car a bit; it has a lighter flywheel and a re-machined head.  I put on a new set of directional tires for the highway miles.  The car is a pleasure to drive.  So far I think I’ve put almost 2K miles on it.  Luckily, all these miles are at 30 mpg; so in many ways the car is treating me quite well.

“Between what one observes and one concludes there is a long and tortuous chain of reasoning, inference and evaluation.”

- A. Rapoport

The real hurdle left is the next ten days

For some reason it was not in my lexicon that the monograph drafts in the collection would be much longer than the other documents or items.  These nine or ten page items may work much better as a PDF rather than viewing page-by-page as a JPEG from a thumbnail link.  On Wednesday Rob had indicated the PDF (“Portable Document Format”) would be a possibility and takes some extra steps in order to put them on the web.  For now I will keep the longer documents in JPEG format and will be able to do the conversion if necessary. Once items #OP0065-OP0069 (18 pages) are scanned I will update the database for items OP0059-OP0069.  I will then be submitting a list to Rob of the first batch to be uploaded to the SCUA server.  When the files are available I can finalize the blog entries for public viewing.

The research of Obrebski’s Jamaican village data will continue over the summer.  I hope to make as much information available as I can to those beyond the physical library.  I have been accepted to the archives management program at Simmons College West for the fall semester.  Looking at the course schedule is exciting.  On Thursday nights I want to be able to take 403-Evaluation of Information Services or 404-Principles of Management and take 488-Technology for Information Professionals on Saturday afternoon.  On Saturday morning a new blended version of 407-Reference and Information Services and 415-Information Organization (formerly titled Cataloging) is being offered.  Each Saturday one of the two courses will hold a lecture and then much of the work is done online during the week.  Although this would be a full load I am looking forward to total immersion.  I believe I am well prepared for the material.  My familiarity with technology has grown over the years through my Communication studies and personal interests (ie. building my own computer); I am already receiving cataloging experience with my job in Technical Services at the Jones Library.

The most challenging obstacle in sight is the next ten days.  My last assignment of my undergraduate career is due on the 19th.  Commencement is on the 24th. Yeee Hawww!

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.