Author: Brianna Eagle

Twelve weeks and 150 hours later here we are.

The end.

It’s been an experience, WWPL, one I’ll definitely cherish (and not in a cheesy way, I promise). Mark’s been an excellent guide this summer and invaluable in getting me the hands on archival experience I’ve so desperately needed since realizing I could graduate this fall.

As I told a coworker the other day, I stupidly thought I could finish up getting a Master’s without any kind of internship; that my archival streets smarts learned solely from textbooks would be enough to coast me into a decent job. Boy, was I wrong and I’m so glad that I was.

Reading and learning about something is one thing: physically doing something and learning is another. But, ultimately, it takes two to make a thing go right and you won’t get very far without one or the other.

It feels kind of surreal to be finished and, perhaps most terrifying of all, I think I might miss having to get up super early to get Staunton on time. It all adds to the big picture though that some day I’ll hopefully actually be working in archive somewhere and can look back to the place where really it all started (not counting a digital classroom).

Sixteen collections later and one giant embarrassingly overly color coded spreadsheet later, this intern is done. And will miss quiet mornings in the library and research center touching old things just because I’m an intern and I’m allowed to.

I’ll be back for visits and maybe even some volunteering since I’m local enough, so beyond my enormous amount of thanks for a summer well spent learning about archives and what I want to do with my life, there’s only just one thing left to say…

I didn’t actually make it in this week and instead worked from home due something that was eerily like food poisoning.

Cook your meats, kids. That’s all I’m going to say.

In lieu of onsite work I instead ended up in an internet click hole learning about ArchivesSpace and EAD. YouTube is truly a gift in terms of free education and learning; it’s pretty much how I entirely learned PhotoShop.

I also found a lot of other archival intern blogs and read through those as well as some more official blog posts from the National Archives, the Smithsonian, and amazingly enough, the American Pigeon Museum & Library (the latter of which I thought was a joke until I clicked it on and, well, joke’s on me now).

I also found that, when searching for “weird archives” videos on YouTube — thinking there’d have to be some with death masks, right? — you instead get a bunch of Archie videos which…makes no sense at all. Or, well…Archie’s one letter away from archive? Close enough? No?

Depending on how into social media WWPL is future interns could very well do some video posts about cool items from the collection or some “a day in the life” videos where they explain what they’re working on and why. I’ve noticed a lot of repositories are starting to do this to get some attention which definitely isn’t a bad thing; it’s a fun thing. I catches the eye and makes people want to physically pay a visit just to touch things.

Me most of all.

 

 

Mark’s returned to us!

And right before Ashley and I were planning that giant archive party, too. Shucks.

Work continues on with finding aids and trying to be as thorough as possible in the details. My biggest fear is that I won’t have them filled out with nearly as much information as they need, but I’m working with what I’m able to find so I feel good about that. I think I might be able to give Sherlock Holmes a run for his money, but probably not.

I’m not quite that good at clue hunting yet.

I’ve also started on the World War I Soldiers collection, one I’ve been secretly eyeing for sometime now and I’m happy to report that I wasn’t disappointed. There’s letters and photographs and even an embroidered postcard from France that should probably be in the museum.

I’m not sure I can exactly describe the feeling of sorting through all these things, the items that tell the stories of men who served overseas driving supply trucks and writing letters from the front. It’s a feeling of curiosity about their lives and a reverence for touching something that’s managed to survive and stay intact since the early 1900’s. It’s an interesting feeling — a good one — to know that these little pieces of their lives still exist somewhere beyond their families in a place where others can access and look at these items to gain a better understanding of a soldier’s life during World War I.

Of the soldiers in this collection I recognized Samuel Lane the most, the photographs he took in Europe being ones that I processed while going through the general WWPL photo collection. I was almost glad to see him again in this collection specifically since he was one soldier that had a lot to his name; pictures, letters, service records and special orders.

Back in the spring I started thinking about what kind of subject area I’d ultimately like to deal with and honestly it’s a toss up between World War I and II. There’s incredible soldier stories from both and any archive that has a collection or two is one I wouldn’t mind interning for (again).

 

Today I delved into something truly…unique.

When I first saw Presidential Day by Day Card collection on the collections list I was intrigued, wondering if it literally meant “day by day” or something quasi-daily.

Well. I finally got it and boy did it not disappoint.

I don’t know any of the specifics: the who, the what, the where, the WHY.

Upon opening the box I found that there what looked to be quite literally a card for each day of each month. My first instinct was to spread those suckers out on the table in the processing room just to see how much space they took up — the table in there’s pretty big, it would have been impressive — but I didn’t. Because I am an adult. Most of the time.

Instead I flipped through the cards only to find in slight horror that every single month was missing some days. I also found that each card wasn’t just for one year, but multiple years, each recording something notable Wilson did before, during, and after he was President.

It was the best kind of weird thing to find, honestly. I’m still not entirely sure how these cards — this collection — came to be. In my head I’m picturing someone sitting down at a desk inserting 365 different cards into a typewriter trying to get the most accurate Woodrow Wilson timeline possible. I wonder how long it took. I wonder what happened to those missing cards.

Most importantly I’m still wondering how much of the processing room table those things would have covered.

Today was mostly a day of general housekeeping not only for us interns but also for the Library and Research Center as well. We said fond farewells to the dust bunnies that have lined the walls since week 1 as WWPL maintenance staff dusted and vacuumed around us before proceeding downstairs to mop the hall.

After they left it was just Ashley and I and no more furry friends left in sight.

Cue Paul McCartney’s classic “Another Day”.

I managed to get through two collections during our day long shift — our only one this week since Mark left on his trip. Normally it’d take me four morning shifts to knock out two collections, but there’s something to be said about working 9-5 or, well, 9:30-5. I’d like think Miss Parton would give me some leeway there.

The press statements collection was fascinating to go through, researching Joseph P. Tumulty even more so. Before interning I really knew nothing about Wilson’s staffing of the White House let alone the fact that Tumulty’s secretarial position paved the way for what we now as a White House Chief of Staff. Delving into the working relationship between Tumulty and Wilson was honestly a click hole I should have known to avoid, but it was an interesting chain of events to follow in terms of Tumulty’s opposition to Wilson’s second marriage and his offer of resignation among other things. It was better than daytime TV, basically.

After that I moved onto the Manning Gift collection which is entirely just letters and envelopes from correspondences exchanged amongst the immediate Wilson family. I didn’t try to actively transcribe any of the letters, but boy did I try. From what little chunks I could make out the typical conversations seemed to include daily life, work and inquires about health. The envelopes were honestly my favorite part; there’s just something cute about them. They’re like little vehicles of communication that show where your letter’s been and where it’s going and boy did these envelopes have some travel diaries. The ones sent from Pondicherry in French India were the best — the stamps on them were still vibrant and came from somewhere I’ve only ever dreamed of visiting. At least I can say I’ve actually touched something from there, right?

Enjoy the little things.

 

A week later and ten finding aids down and I’m feeling pretty good about this summer interning thing!

Mark was gifted this week via a good ole Google share a folder of finding aids I’ve been plucking away at since my early weeks of the summer. I’m proud of what I’ve managed to come up with seeing as I’ve never sat down and actually done one; I feel like the exercises in my various archival classes don’t really count since all the information was given to us and it was just a matter of putting all the round pegs in the round holes and and square pegs in the square holes. Or like a paint by number. Or something equally obvious and intentionally well mapped out for a classroom-like setting.

I know my finding aids are far from perfect and I’m fully prepared to go back and fix/edit more, but Mark seemed okay with what I gave him and I hope they live on to serve him well…or at least until another intern or volunteer comes along and levels them up like an evolving Pokemon. That’s something I might try to remind to check on in a year or so (let’s be real, I’m going to totally forget).

Speaking of forgetfulness, I feel like a bag lady. Or a paper lady. I have stuff everywhere — clipped together, shoved in my purse, in a backpack, in my work cubby, saved in three different emails and Google drives that, for some reason, I feel the need to print physical copies of. I never said I was organized and I’m still a ride-or-die Post-It noter, but I can see the appeal of digital memos typed neatly on my phone; paper gets heavy after a while.

And why all this paper, you ask? Mark’s going on a world tour! Not really, just over to Germany for some archival training, but he’s still leaving Ashley and I here at WWPL to hold down the fort for two weeks so we can keep on burning through hours. This week was mostly Ashley and I getting work lined up to keep us busy both on and offsite which, in turn, resulted in me scribbling a lot of reminders and notes to myself on my various pieces of paper. Thus, paper lady.

So tune in next week to see what shenanigans — if any — Ashley and I get up to while Mark’s away!

 

Ahhh, the halfway point of my twelve week journey into the world of interning!

The first batch of finding aids are coming along nicely, to a point I think they’ll be ready to be shuffled onto Mark next week (fingers crossed). It’s been an adventure stringing together each individual finding aid like beads on a string; some have beads scattered all over the place while others they’re at least all in a box just waiting for you. My favorites are the ones where you have to make the beads (oh look, another stretched analogy to go along with!)

And by making the beads I mean taking to the internet at large in order to help put together the big picture that ultimately a finding aid presents of any given collection. It’s nice to know all the who, what, when, where, and why, and how’s of a collection even if that means sourcing out to find all the supplemental information. Sometimes what you find isn’t even included in the collection — and sometimes you can’t find a place to include that random bit of information, either — but it’s still a fascinating process.

Take for instance the Daisie Dodson collection: it’s morbidly intriguing…in a good way. She was only fourteen when President Wilson died so, like any normal teenager would, she collected all the newspaper articles and clippings she could find about it. Okay, so maybe not that normal, but that’s completely okay because this collection — though small — offers so many different perspectives on the same exact event, the death of Woodrow Wilson, a man who somehow managed to steer an entire country through a very large, very new kind of war halfway around the world. Some of the articles, even if the author didn’t particularly care for Wilson’s politics, penned respect where respect was due and honestly they’re just something to flip through and read.

What especially caught my attention were the mentions of Wilson’s death masks and my immediate need to Google just that: “Woodrow Wilson death mask and where is it”.

While I’m still not entirely sure where Wilson’s mask itself is — Princeton University, Johns Hopkins University, some random, travelling death mask curiosities exhibit — I definitely learned something new and did go Google more about it at work after leaving WWPL (my apologies to all the coworkers who I forced to look through online death mask galleries with me!)

The best part about the Daisie Dodson collection — matters of death aside — is that it isn’t alone in the content it offers in terms of offering archival researchers and visitors insights into the multi-faceted times of Wilson’s life both before, during, and after.

Breaking News: Intern in Search of Sasquatchial Finding Aids Proves Successful!

There’s a lot of things wrong that headline, I’m fully aware, but typing out “sasquatchial” was just too fun to pass up; who knows when — or if — I’ll ever type it again. Fingers crossed that someday I will.

So yes, my hiking and mapping from last week led me to the land of finding aids, a much read bout place that I’m looking forward to getting to know a lot better. This week I’m working with the collections that already have some type of finding aid entered for them in Omeka; lose ones that have data in their Dublin Core fields with some pieces still missing or in need or some TLC.

So I’m kind of starting off simple in terms of learning what info there is and where it goes and learning the formatting Mark wants the finding aids to go by. It’s a good toe dip into the pond…ocean…whatever size body of water sounds the most impressive, let’s go with that.

I now know the locations of both the accession and donor files in case I need any supplemental information and also accidentally took home the plastic clip I was using as a bookmark for when I pulled a file. Which I just now realized…whoops. Sorry, Mark!

So far I think the most interesting part of doing finding aids is filling out the biographical notes section since it gives you the chance to really explain what the collection is beyond the collection description. Some of these smaller collections I’ve been working on were actually donated by the person they’re about or that person’s family so it’s fun playing Nancy Drew and finding all the clues to put together to get a picture of who that person was or how that collection came to be in the WWPL archive. The donor files are unique all on their own since they’re kind of the timeline of how an item– a letter or photograph — started in one place and ended up in another and how the process went of acquiring it; it’s something I didn’t think I would find as fascinating as I would. Some items have a detailed history and some don’t…those are the ones I wonder about the most.

 

To continue on in the vein of Sasquatch hunting, this week was trail hiking and trying to read the map right in order to get where the last sighting was. Is that a sign of a finding aid I see up around the bend???

Mark had me go through the 2017 collections list to see which ones were already in Omeka, which ones had a finding aid somewhere on the computer, and which ones were just missing…everything. Or a part of their everything. It was a really long list. I don’t remember the exact number, but I do know it was over 100 in terms of how many collections the WWPL archive had last year; some I couldn’t find anything about — meaning there wasn’t anything on the 2017 list beyond a collection name and nothing else — so those ended up with question marks typed next to them and highlighted a special color.

Oh, yeah, I made a new spreadsheet as I went along and, quite frankly, it’s kind of headache inducing. I’m not quite sure how it happened, but one second I’m chugging along, then the next I’m just like “I need to color coordinate this with this and that with that and actually, really, everything just needs to be colored!!!”. Uncolored white spaces became the enemy.

So now I have this…Tetris blocked looking spreadsheet with like…8 or 9 different colors — maybe more — and I can say with 70% confidence that I remember what each color stands for; I forgot to make a key. Whoops. I think I tried to write one down at some point, so that could very well be floating around somewhere, but probably not. I did at least copy and paste an uncolored version of my spreadsheet so in case any poor unsuspecting soul goes to open it they won’t be blinded by the…everything it has to offer in terms of Roy G. Biv and all the color variations in between.

Week three ended in a success for team WWPL interns: Ashley and I finished processing the photo collection!

After presenting our various findings from week two to Mark we came up with the plan to just start fresh and leave the collection some padding in the form of numbering the remainder of it from 2800. When we hit our snag we were just past 2700 when we realized there were some duplicates (and triplicates) of some numbers, each folder with a different item.

From that point it was just a matter of finding out which item was already scanned in and leaving it as that number rather than going through the explorer file on the computer trying to renumber everything. What duplicates we had we just scanned in if they weren’t already or marked as a duplicate to then manually renumber from 2800.

It made the most sense to do it like this rather than going back through the entire collection trying to start from zero; some folders were missing in the earlier numbers we had done during week one meaning they could be misnumbered or misplaced or even part of the institutional photo collection. Speaking of which…Ashley will continue the good work of processing those while I move on to…drum roll, please…finding aids!

And archivist’s bread and butter, or so I’ve read and heard. At this point in time I’ve seen them, read them, used them, but have yet to actually experience creating one. I guess you could say they’re the Sasquatch of my archival studies concentration; the clues and sightings are all there, but the actual thing remains cleverly elusive.

I feel quasi-confident going into this week since I just finished my spring semester coming out of a purely metadata based course, but EAD (Encoded Archival Description) was just something we touched on; a brief wave to as we drove past. I’m not too worried since I know Mark will be there for my more than likely numerous questions (apologies in advance!) and I’ve got a bunch of online resources bookmarked I’d like to get printed at some point, so I don’t foresee this going too disastrously.

This week Mark also had Ashley and I slip downstairs for the June “Coffee with the Curator” program which featured the stories of Oscar Dabney and Margarent Cline from the museum’s Soldiers’ Stories: World War I Through American Eyes exhibit. Both were Staunton locals who went to France to serve in the war only to return home and get married; it was a good story, one fortunately with a happy ending, and it was nice to see how the museum utilized local history. We met with the museum curator afterwards to introduce ourselves and ask some questions mostly about how he handled preservation and if he ever pulled from the archives upstairs.

The program’s actually really neat and happens once a month (July will be about Woodrow Wilson and golf) so hopefully we can make the next two before our gigs as interns are up and we have to peace out at the end of the summer.

Bring on week four; I’ll let you know how the hunt for Sasquatch goes!