Archival Experience

Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, 2019-Present

I began working at the Briscoe Center for the Clendenin Endowed Graduate Internship in Military History, specifically working with the 376th Heavy Bombardment Group Records, and later processing collections related to military history. I was then hired as an intern for the Congressman Jack Brooks Digitization Project, which I continue to do, today. Throughout my final semester at the iSchool, I worked on a capstone project with the metadata coordinator to map the Briscoe's legacy metadata from Dublin Core and MODS to RDF.

Jack Brooks Digitization Project

Congressman Jack Brooks (D-TX) served for 42 years in the United States Congress from 1953 to 1995. His mentors included Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn and President Lyndon B. Johnson. Brooks was present at the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, and served an integral role in the impeachment of President Richard Nixon, who referred to Brooks as "the executioner."

Throughout his career, Brooks worked to make government more efficient and eliminate waste, especially through his push for the use of computers and automatic data processing. He ultimately saved taxpayers hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars, and earned the title of "meanest man in Congress."

As an intern for this project, I have reviewed fifty linear feet of the Jack Brooks collection and selected over 400 items of significance for digitization. For every item I selected, I created titles and descriptions and recorded metadata. The ultimate goal of the project is to create a digital exhibit about Brooks's career and provide Congressional insight into major events in U.S. history.

H.J. Lutcher Stark Center for Physical Culture & Sports, 2019

As part of my Introduction to Archival Enterprise I coursework, I completed a practicum with my classmates, Madeline Fillip and Katy Tuck, processing the Peary and Mabel Rader collection at the H.J. Lutcher Stark Center for Physical Culture & Sports.

Peary and Mabel Rader created and published Iron Man Magazine from the 1930s through the 1980s, and their magazine was regularly lauded by its readers for producing quality weightlifting content.

Over the course of the semester, we collaboratively wrote an Appraisal Report and Processing Plan, processed the collection materials and wrote a finding aid according to DACS, then wrote an EAD in XML to be uploaded into Texas Archival Resources Online (TARO). The collection was ultimately 13.5 linear feet and processed in a way to incorporate future accessions.

The finding aid is published on the Stark Center's website, in addition to TARO.

U.S. Army War College/Army Heritage and Education Center, 2019

I interned at the U.S. Army War College and the Army Heritage and Education Center in Carlisle, PA during summer 2019. The major component of my internship was revising and expanding the U.S. Army Nurses reference bibliography, which is a frequently researched subject at the AHEC. After revising and updating the bibliography, I created and published a LibGuide of all its sources. I enjoyed this project because of my personal interest in the history of women in the U.S. military. As a senior in high school, I had conducted archival research at the AHEC for my National History Day research paper. I wrote about Dr. Margaret Craighill, the first female officer commissioned in the Army Medical Corps; my paper advanced to the state competition and I have had an interest in women's military history ever since.

The Institute on World War II and the Human Experience at Florida State University, 2016-2019

I began my involvement at the Institute as a student and worked my way up from archival assistant to senior assistant during my final year at FSU. I credit the Institute's Director, Dr. Kurt Piehler, and its archivist, Mike Kasper, for the incredible program they ran to give undergraduate students professional experience working in an archive. I am becoming an archivist because of the opportunities they gave me and many others.

Processing and Writing Finding Aids

A major component of my work at the Institute was processing and writing finding aids for collections. I chose to focus on women's collections and collections related to the internment of American civilians in the Philippines.

Published Finding Aids

Projects, Exhibits, Events, and more

In addition to processing collections and writing finding aids, I was involved in many Institute projects, exhibits, events, and conferences. Because of my work on women's collections at the Institute, I was interviewed for the documentary, "Charlotte Mansfield: A Woman Photographer Goes to War" by Dr. Brian Graves, which is now streaming on PBS. I participated in many outreach events to promote the Institute and its research opportunities, including at FSU Day at the Capitol, and during our biannual collaborations with the Student Life Cinema to show World War II films. In 2017, the Institute hosted the annual Society for Military History conference in Jacksonville, FL, and I assisted in the behind-the-scenes running of the conference. I also assisted in setting up and taking down exhibits, including the 2019 exhibit, "Artistic Expression Through Conflict, 1939-1945," which was displayed at the Holocaust Memorial Resource and Education Center of Florida. In terms of collections care and disaster planning, I was involved in hurricane preparation for hurricanes Irma and Michael, a process in which we covered the stacks in tarps and moved valuable artifacts to safer locations out of an abundance of caution. As senior assistant in 2018, I led the hurricane preparation ahead of Hurricane Michael.

Honors Thesis

Under the direction of the Institute's Director, Dr. Kurt Piehler, I wrote a 100-page honors thesis inspired by a collection I had processed as an archival assistant. My thesis, "Surviving and Striving for Normalcy: The Endurance of the Americans of Baguio Interned by the Japanese in the Philippines during World War II" made use of many Institute collections, in addition to collections at Stanford and the U.S. Army Heritage and Education Center. Writing a thesis put me back on the other side of archival work: researching. As an archivist, it is important to understand and consider the needs of researchers and patrons, and performing archival research for my thesis provided me with that valuable insight.