Course: HIST 635 – Internship in Archives
Internship: Art, Culture and Technology Archives and Special Collections at MIT
Week 9 Time: Sun. 8/15, Mon. 8/16, Fri. 8/20, Sat. 8/21 – 12 hours
Total Time: 100 hours
I’m having a bit of trouble writing about my work this week, because it’s difficult for me to remember exactly what I did! There were a lot of different things. I’ll look at my journal and gather my thoughts.
I believe Sunday I spent my time working on the CAVS finding aid on ArchivesSpace. If I’m remembering correctly, I was continuing the work of adding every series, subseries, and folder to the resource. Monday I definitely remember as I went in to MIT to help with some physical processing/inventorying. I ended up driving to the Red-Line and then taking it up into Cambridge, which worked pretty well! Then Thera gave me a new VHS/videocassette/cassette tape collection which I started inventorying. It’s mostly documentation of CAVS events with some random corporate training VHSes thrown in (I wonder why CAVS found them important). I’m over halfway finished with the inventory, so hopefully this Monday or next I’ll be able to finish it.
Friday and Saturday I paused the CAVS finding aid and started working on transferring the EMS finding aid to ArchivesSpace. Thera wanted me to switch so that I’d be sure to finish EMS before my hours were up. I’m currently adding in the audio tapes to the FA, item by item. It’s relaxingly repetitive and it’s helping reinforce the learning that I’ve already done working on this program. I feel capable and knowledgeable with this task, which is nice! Of course, there’s always more to learn. Anyways!
With the hurricane (which isn’t so bad so far…. fingers crossed), I’m a little bit worried about going in to MIT tomorrow, but I think I’ll plan to go just in case the storm has settled by then. I have therapy at 4pm, so there’ll be plenty of time for me to work on campus in the morning and then get back home.
While thinking about all that, I also need to think about the rest of my hours. I have 20 hours left in my internship. I know that I NEED to finish the EMS finding aid. I would also like to finish the physical processing/inventorying on campus. I don’t think that I’ll be able to finish the CAVS finding aid, I think it’s going to take a few (or more) full days of work (which is sad!!!). I’m also a little concerned about my exhibit. It’s almost finished, but I do have some edits that I need to do before it can go up on the virtual museum. I wonder if either of these would be a good final project? But would the fact that I already started both of them make them ineligible? If that makes sense? I’ll ask Jessica.
Kayla Allen 