Narrative Statement and Field Experience

Field Experience

This spring, I have chosen to complete the spring 2026 Capstone/Practicum by working with the Barrington Stage Company as a Theater Archives Intern. During this experience I am expected to help develop and populate a fully accessible show database, with the opportunity to also participate in the digital arrangement and description of related archival theater materials. I am thrilled to work in a theater environment, this kind of space is new to me and I have been learning the lingo, the routines, and BSC values (what is most important). I am also meeting and becoming familiar with members of the community that this archive primarily serves. This opportunity reflects many of the program learning outcomes including PLOs 1,6,and 7

In looking for field experience, I was inspired to reach out to many library professionals via cold email. It was a bit of a struggle at first, finding a capstone experience opportunity that fit into my ‘currently shaky’ life circumstances. I was looking for local, or preferably remote opportunities in special libraries based in the arts. I wanted to gain experience working in an environment similar to what I hope to work in after I graduate this spring. This one in particular, I found on the job site Handshake, I applied to this position using a resume that was revised in LIS 650. I also learned the importance of community and collaboration in LIS 657 The Special Library, my notes from this course have really been useful in working for this special library. 

After meeting with my site supervisor, we decided that it would be alright for me to work on multiple projects at once, or try out a few of them and then schedule a meeting to talk about which one sticks the most. With consideration to the possibility that there would be some crossover between the projects available to all of the interns, we are also expected to mingle and collaborate with our peers with the goal of getting the work completed. The main goal of this opportunity is to help support this special library in their information organization needs. Although the opportunity is remote, I am able to gain experience working in an archival setting, having the chance to work with multiple, familiar and unfamiliar, online resources and digital objects. Most of my library experience is community facing, and this internship requires more behind the scenes work than the latter. This work will require me to be confident in my decisions when cataloging, ask questions about areas I am unfamiliar with, and be able to reach out to my peers in the 2026 cohort to contribute to the ‘ecosystem’ of the Barrington Stage Company Theater Archives.

Goals

The first goal is to help BSC to organize its digital collection. The first of the projects that I selected to work on this spring is helping Barrington Stage Company organize its digital collection of show programs and season posters. Keeping in mind who would be accessing these records and files, it’s important for us to interpret and transfer the most accurate data from the digitized show programs. Many of these digitized show programs and season posters are filled with information on cast members, show details, staff, and musicians. This information can be cross referenced with data on the main website, other drive folders with documentation of shows and first hand accounts by full time staff. Inserting this data into an Airtable database has felt like a scavenger hunt, thankfully this is what excites me the most about information organization. Transferring files and digitized objects to databases like Airtable and Access to Memory from a large number of unorganized (in the process of being organized) Google Drive folders, addressing PLO1-1.4 and PLO6-6.1.

The second goal outlined in the goals and timeline document is to learn about user experience for this specific archives, and work to help the institution improve its accessibility for digitized objects. We have also been tasked with cataloging these materials and digitized objects into the platform Access to Memory (AtoM). This would be a project overlap between the ‘population of the fully accessible show database’ and the ‘digital arrangement and description of theater materials’ projects. I personally have never used AtoM to organize information, but I have seen it in use by other institutions. This goal also applies to the opportunity to possibly participate in transcribing Barrington Stage Company's oral history files. Reflecting PLO6-6.6

The last goal is to work and communicate with members of the 2026 Cohort and others within the institution to complete projects and support institution needs. As professional development is super important to this institution, the Theater Archives Internship also includes access to various workshops, resources, and ‘Coffee-Hours’. This is really awesome because this allows all of the interns in the 2026 cohort to meet each other and interact. Most of us are remote and can only interact over messages in Slack. My site supervisor has also added me and my peers to multiple groups based on the projects where we expressed interest. This addresses PLO7-7.3 and PLO6-6.6

Many of the projects we have been tasked with are new projects on new platforms that are pretty much new to the Barrington Stage Company Archival team. I currently do not have any artifacts to present for this field experience opportunity, but they are certainly in the works. 

PLO 1 

1.3 Description

1.4 Organization

1.5 Human Information Needs and Behaviors

     So far in this field experience I have been working with different systems that support physical and intellectual access to materials. Tasked with organizing and inputting data from digitized objects, videos, photographs, and audio files into an accessible database. The fields are tailored to the institution and a schema was created to support the BSC's archival materials (PLO 1.3). As I mentioned in the field experience description above, we are using Airtable and Access to Memory to describe and arrange digitized materials for users of the archives. Before these two databases and organizational methods were selected, the digital collection lived primarily on Google Drive. Making the collection less accessible by the public, and by BSC staff, as many of the materials were unlabeled, and not categorized (PLO 1.4). It is important for BSC to have these materials organized for reference, donor recognition, and for historical purposes (PLO 1.5). Their season posters and programs go back as far as 1995 and feature notable cast members, associate artists, musicians and crew members whose hard work in making these shows happen deserve to be cataloged, preserved, and accessed. Especially for community engagement, donor relationships, and for artist reference. In Airtable, the show programs are organized by year, in accordance with being organized with the season posters.  The season posters are yearly and contain between 3-10 dated shows each. When accessing the digitized show programs, users will be able to access the programs according to the year on the season poster, names (cast & crew), donors, run time, and etc. (PLO1.5). The Access to Memory uses the International Council on Archives (ICA) standards for archival description, the schema also reflects the theater and how metadata should be added to each object uploaded. The BSC Theater Archives team controls the metadata standards and schema for Accession and Authority records, as well as for Archival Descriptions. 

PLO 6

PLO 6.1 Engages in systems thinking 

PLO 6.6 Emotional Intelligence

When I first started working on the population of the full text database project, I requested to be connected with the intern who was working on this project previously. My reasoning for this was to try and align my work-flows and process for adding show programs and season posters to the database with theirs, to prevent inconsistencies in the data (PLO 6.1). My site supervisor added me to a chat where the previous interns were able to 'show us the ropes', so to speak. Due to the fact that this is my first time doing non-hypothetical archival work, I am aware that I will hit many speed bumps throughout this experience. I must also consider that learning how to use and access the platforms used for organization has been a little difficult. I have been conversing with my site supervisor on areas that I am confused about or need further guidance on, while also asking for clarification. The process I have been using is that I first try to do something that is unfamiliar to me, I attempt to complete the task myself, and then I ask for help if I can't figure it out. We have not had a formal critique on my performance yet, but I am clear on not beating myself up if I have been doing something completely wrong, I will just edit and continue on (PLO 6.6). I have been writing my questions and struggles down each week that I plan on bringing up during our meetings. Usually this is the best way to learn and become a master at something new in my experience. There was also an orientation packet that was sent out, giving us an idea of each project, acting as a guide book of sorts, this is very helpful in answering some of my questions before I ask. So far, I do enjoy working on the tasks delegated to us by the Barrington Stage Company, and I am eager to continue learning more about these practices alongside my peers, where some are not studying Library and Information Science at all. 

PLO 7

PLO 7.3 Collaboration within a Library or Information Organization

For this field experience we are expected to collaborate and communicate with the rest of the 2026 Cohort, as I mentioned before. We are also encouraged to reach out to Barrington Stage Company connections to complete projects. These connections include our site supervisor Cassie, the artistic director Julianne, and other company members. We were briefed on initiatives that require crossovers with other departments such as the Oral History project and Photo Inventory and Description project where we have to identify and confirm participants within the digitized objects. Those of us who are remote are in our own category in terms of reaching out to other BSC departments. A way for us to do this is to reach out over chat, we have access to a community on Slack. We were added all added to groups where we can socialize as if we are all working together in an office, as well as groups that are more specific to the projects we are working on. For Example, I was added to a group for the Population of a full text database, this group had people who previously worked on this project in 2025, and a few current Cohort members that would be taking over this project, me included.

Many of us are spread across the country, this means that we barely interact. Our site supervisor has set up guest talks with other archivists and organizations, and has created 'Coffee Hours' as a way for all of us to get to know each-other. During Coffee Hours, we do ice breakers and talk about archival practices, this is awesome because the exposure to different areas of Barrington Stage Company helps me understand the mission and values of this institution. Thus increasing my quality of work during this internship. Also, it's awesome having the opportunity to collaborate with graduate students who are not in school for an MLIS, making these meetings even more valuable as they share a different perspective.