Course: HIST 635 – Internship in Archives
Internship: Art, Culture and Technology Archives and Special Collections at MIT
Week 3 Time: Sat. 7/3, Sun. 7/4, Mon. 7/5 – 12 hours
Total Time: 26 hours
Part 1: Saturday July 3
Today’s work for my internship was fairly simple. The only thing I have assigned to me right now is the finding aid, so I decided to go in and clear up some stuff in the inventory list. I made sure that all of the composers on each tape were listed in the “composer(s)” column. I also tried to make sure the first and last names of the composers were both included (unless the first name wasn’t given and the last name was unfamiliar or something similar). I also went through and looked for potential spelling mistakes. It’s a bit difficult to tell if some of the titles of the tracks are misspelled accidentally, because they could have been misspelled on purpose! I pointed those out for Thera so she can make the final call.
I’ve decided to up my hours per week for this internship, at least for now. If I do twelve hours a week, then I’ll be finished with my required 120 hours by the first week of September, so I can devote the fall semester to the extra projects for the internship, as opposed to worrying about meeting the hourly requirements. It looks like I’ll be working in two positions this fall, as a graduate assistant and archives assistant (if everything goes well), so I think it’s a good idea to get ahead on the internship. Then I’ll be able to continue to do my MIT work more for fun than for a number.
Anyways. Today was a solid day of work making progress on small things that need to be fixed. That coupled with the rain outside made it a relaxing day :).
Part 2: Sunday July 4
Today was a three-hour shift. It’s surprising how quickly it went by! It makes it a lot easier to do the work if I can split it up like that. Of course, I had nothing else to do today. So I was able to take Zora for a walk, go for a bike ride, and watch Candice Renoir with my family (our current favorite past-time).
The work itself was similar to yesterday, just adding information and touching things up. I added a provenance note. Now, provenance is still a little bit confusing to me, because it has a different meaning in archives than it does in permanent collections (although similar). So, after rereading DACS, I decided to describe how the recordings came into being, and then where they have lived, giving readers an idea of the lives of the recordings. How they got to where they are now. I think that might be more similar to a museum provenance? But they ARE objects, not files. And I DID follow DACS. So, hopefully Thera will be able to advise me on that a little bit. I predict that what I wrote will be fine, if not good, but who knows! It’s all a learning experience.
I also added some information to things I already wrote. In the access note I added on piece pertaining to the digitized copies, so it didn’t only discuss the physical reels. I don’t think anyone will actually have access to the physical reels….. Maybe I should think about that a little. Right now it says that viewers can access the collection by appointment (I don’t think they’ll be able to), and that in the future, there will be digitized recordings available to stream online. Later, in the same section, I included a new note about the copyright of the recordings. Thera had a whole “Intellectual Property Rights” note already written out that she put in the grant application. The application has a lot of valuable information. I’ll be using it tomorrow to flesh out the historical note and the scope and content.
One task I started today and will need to finish tomorrow is the creation of the related subjects/names/organizations. In my last finding aid I just did “Related Names” and “Subjects.” I have the option with this new one to do “Related Persons,” “Subject Terms,” “Organizations,” “Form and Genre Types,” and/or “Organizations.” Are we supposed to do all of them? Only the ones we think apply? I definitely don’t think I’m doing “more product less processing” here, but it feels like that’s not necessary! I’ll learn more about MPLP in other positions I’m sure. Towards the end of work today, I was just on the LOC authorities page looking up terms for these lists. I think I’m done with the subjects, and I can easily add more as I work, so that’s fine. Tomorrow I’ll tackle the names, forms, organizations, and occupations lists.
Part 3: Monday July 5
It’s possible that I have finished the EMS finding aid! I added to the provenance to include the creation and care of the digital files. I extended the historical note to include a biography of Barry Vercoe (the donor) that Thera created for the grant application. I abridged Thera’s original EMS Timeline of Events, put it in the finding aid beneath the historical note, and wrote a little blurb saying that the visitor can see the full version of the timeline (as well as an interview with Barry Vercoe) by contacting the archive. I also added the digital files to the scope and content (it’s been surprisingly surreal thinking about the reels and their digital copies, because the digital copies don’t fully exist yet!)
I also did something pretty much totally unnecessary but I thought I’d try it out. If you highlight a line of text and make it a bookmark in Google Docs, you can hyperlink to that section of the text from somewhere else in the doc. So I made all of the items in the table of contents hyperlinked to their respective sections of text. In the table of contents, when I click on “Scope and Content Note,” the doc will move me right to the S+C note on page seven.
The only things left (that I know of) are the dates in the inventory list. They’re still formatted as-written on the reels. I think I already mentioned that I was considering changing them to DACS format.
Thera has been super busy writing a grant proposal this week, so hopefully she’ll have some time to look at the finding aid next week! Also next week, I’ll be getting deep into the ArchivesSpace manual, which’ll be fun. I never realized there was a manual (duh, Kayla!), I’ve just been feeling my way through it and getting advice from experienced ArchivesSpace-ers. And then later in the week I’ll be commuting up to MIT to meet Thera in person for the first time as well as Kari Smith, the Institute Archivist at MIT. It’ll definitely be an interesting week! I’m looking forward to it.
Kayla Allen 