Internship Reflection
My experience working in the hymnology archive this semester ended up being highly beneficial. I initially didn't think it would be a great fit for me as an English major because I thought it would be more aimed toward digital studies majors. That soon changed when I saw the value of these works. Even though I don't know much about music, I was able to appreciate the poetic nature of each hymn. Dr.Alspach assigned readings that helped expand our understanding of hymns and their extensive history. Among the many bits of information I learned, I discovered that hymnbooks did not always contain music which was not added until the late 1800s. I also found out that many of the hymns that were popular around that time were translated from other languages like German. It's astonishing that hymnists could take a hymn written in a different language and convert it to English while still maintaining the same rhyme scheme.
Perhaps my favorite piece of information is why the letter f was used in place of s throughout many of these hymnals. According to Dr.Alspach, printing presses only had a select number of each character, and many times there wouldn't be enough s characters for an entire page, so the worker would substitute the f in its place. This was not intended to change the pronunciation of the words. In addition to learning about hymns, I also became well acquainted with the Bookeye 5 scanner. Through trial and error, I scanned various works in the collection, including the oldest piece The Whole Booke of Psalmes by Thomas Sternhold from 1606, The Life of Isaac Watts by Thomas Wright from 1914, and Mitchison's Selection of Sacred Music by William Mitchison from 1850. Seeing how great these texts looked in their digital format made me realize how much the tediousness paid off.
Before this internship, I never considered becoming a librarian and wasn't even aware of archivist positions. However, after having completed the internship, I would now consider becoming an archivist. I found my time spent in the collection to be some of the most relaxing this entire semester. The room is quiet, random students can't come in, and the work is peaceful. I enjoy solitary work and have the capacity to keep myself on track with deadlines. This was my first job that didn't feel like work. I am grateful to have had the opportunity to participate in this meaningful project and look forward to seeing the progress it continues to make.
I have since added this internship to my LinkedIn profile under my work experience, as well as knowledge of how to operate the Bookeye scanner, and am now receiving relevant job listings for library archivists. With this information, I have developed a better understanding of where to go from here if I wish to continue pursuing this career path.
-Elizabeth Robertson