Hello again! I hope you guys had a good week. This week was my second week as a SCUA Intern, and it was a pretty busy one. Every Tuesday, the first day I am there in the week, my supervisor, Arielle, and I go over the readings that I have for the week. This week, it was about finding aids and what causes deterioration in the archives. Basically, we went over what is in a finding aid and how people use it, and why it’s a standardized process for archivists to use it, along with what the main causes of deterioration in archives are and what to do against them.

After that, we talked about my processing plan and my biohistory, both of which I finished last week. With my biohistory worksheet, I needed to add one more paragraph about the collection, which I used the interview and a graduate seminar project to do. (Thank you, Dr. French, for the interview and public history stuff! It was really helpful!) Once we talked about the comments she left on my stuff, it was approved, and I was able to start physically moving the collection into boxes.  On Thursday, I was shown how to properly file the materials and what to name the folders! It’s really cool, and not very complicated, and to explain and have examples we went over the processing manual again. I remember, when Arielle and I were going over the processing checklist, which is the list of all the steps that need to be completed when an archivist processes a collection, she told me some along the lines of once I got to physically processing the collection, I would most likely slow down to read everything to have the best title for the files. When I heard that, I decided I would try not to slow down in this section, but I completely understand what she meant by it. It’s all so interesting, the perspectives of people from only 50 years ago. In my last blog, I said that one of the objects in the collection was a glass bottle for maple syrup. It’s from Log Cabin, the same brand of syrup that I have in my own pantry!

I also had to figure out how to convert a VOD media file into an MP4 file, so I could watch an old TV program that was about American History to the Bicentennial year. That entire process took me about an hour to do, but I managed it, and the video was pretty cool!

Thank you for taking the time to read my blog post! I can't wait to see you guys again next week!