Course: HIST 635 – Internship in Archives
Internship: Art, Culture and Technology Archives and Special Collections at MIT
Week 7 Time: Sun. 8/1, Mon. 8/2, Tues. 8/3 – 14 hours
Total Time: 76 hours
This week I went back to the EMS finding aid to go over the subjects, related names, and other topic headings to connect this collection to others with the same topics. Originally I didn’t check everything on the Library of Congress authorities webpage (which I have used SO many times since I started school), because there were over 100 names on the list, but my graduate school advisor thought it would be good experience to check everything.
Searching for names and topics on the LOC authorities has proved itself to be a relatively complex task. First you type the name you’re looking for into the search bar, but you have to make sure you type it in correctly and in the right order, because it doesn’t search within the topic term, if that makes sense… for example, if you’re looking for Tim Williams (not one of my names, just a random one), you would need to write “Williams, Tim.” Tim will not get you there at all, and neither will “Tim Williams.” If you can’t find “Williams, Tim,” you might want to search other versions of his name. He could be under “Williams, Timothy,” or perhaps Tim is his middle name and he has a first name that starts with “R.”, so he could be under “Williams, R. Tim,” “Williams, Richard Tim,” “Williams, R. Timothy,” or some combination of those names. And then, when you find a “Williams, Tim,” you need to make sure it’s the right one. When you click on his file in the LOC subject database, you can find more information about him and see if the LOC info matches up with yours. Of course, the type of info in Tim’s file could be pretty much anything. It could say his birth year or his occupation, maybe different books that he’s written, or it could say very little.
SO! Working on my list of 100+ names and subjects, I was able to practice my LOC search and research skills a hundredfold. One of my most difficult names to search was Nancy Anderson. I think there were exactly 44 “Anderson, Nancy” files listed, but I’m pretty sure that none of them were the person I was looking for (also, I have a cousin named Nancy Anderson who is unrelated, I guess it’s a very popular name). Most of the names on our list did have LOC authorities, and now I have them all starred and highlighted for Thera and I to go through. The other names are all still on the list but they remain unmarked.
My question now is, how much more time do I spend on these? I think the answer is no more (I’ve spent the better part of twelve hours looking up every name), but I see this list and I worry, what if I got one wrong? What if, after all that work, I was wrong and my “Anderson, Nancy” actually was there but I missed her somehow? I believe the smart thing is to let it rest for now and ask Thera about her expectations so that I’m able to meet them.
This week I also helped Thera with some reference material. We had a request for one of the Otto Piene Sky Art photos, so I tracked it down on our Dropbox (it was well hidden) and made up the use agreement!
Kayla Allen 