Internship Reflection

I grew up with hymns, while we did not sing them in my church, I grew up hearing my mom sing them as she walked around the house and at family events. As I grew up more, especially in recent years I have heard more people and churches sing hymns and psalms. This year the church I attend, Harvest Christian Fellowship, just up the road from the University turned fifty years old, as a part of the calibration we went through the decades and sang popular worship songs. The first songs we sang were hymns, and while I intended to document and include what hymns they were I forgot to write it down. In addition to the experience at my church I also found them being mentioned as I went back and read older biographies and autobiographies.

So when I came to start this internship I was excited, It presented a new experience, a chance to work not just with old books but history, It has been especially interesting to learn about the history of hymns and those who made them as it had just a influence on culture during that time though few discuss it today. I really do enjoy and value new experiences so it has indeed been fun to learn how to handle old books, scan them, and as I mentioned before I really enjoyed the history. The learning curve is relatively easy but as you continue you also learn a lot of small but helpful tricks for image treatment and how you can continue to do things in a high quality but more efficiently.

The first book I got to work on was the "Anthem Book" it was relatively easy excluding the handful of mistakes I made that became learning experiences. It was interesting to be able to read the hymns as I worked and recognize the ones that I did know, which was something that was less common with the other two books.

The second book was the "Whole Booke of Psalmse" and while I did not scan it, credit to Elizabeth, I did perform the Image Treatment and spent about three hours on it. For being the oldest book in the collection it is in great condition, but it was mostly straightening the pages and trying to unfold some of the pages to rescan that made. But it was rather interesting to read as it was older English as you can see in the "Booke" and "Psalme." This was also intriguing as it overlapped with my seventeenth century lit. class and my language structure and acquisition class.

The third book is "Psalms, Hymns, and Spiritual Songs" by Issacs Watts. I did not get the chance to finish scanning this book do to the length and odd difficulties with the scanner. But it was still intriguing to handle and learn more about the book as well as reading the psalms Watt's translated.

Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed my time in the internship and would suggest it to most English major even those who like me do not wish to work in a library. I hope you find the this website and my scans helpful to you and bid you a blessed day.