Posts

November 20-November 21

I cannot believe it, but my internship has ended today. I have fulfilled the hour requirement and I have finished the coding for the finding aid. A few folders needed to reorganize, and some edits needed to be made, but these were minor tasks that were completed easily. It still needs to be proofread, and my supervisor informed me that it will most likely be uploaded later in next year’s spring semester. Also, the publications that were part of the collection still need to be added onto the finding aid before it is ready to be uploaded. I am very proud of myself and during my internship I have learned a lot about the inner workings of an archival institution. During my previous internship I learned about the digital aspect of archiving, but I was not working in a true archival environment. With this internship it was an entirely different case. I worked alongside professional archivists, learned the coding that went in behind finding aids, learned about series and subseries, and proce...
Post a Comment
Read more

November 13-November 15

It is very hard for me to believe but I am almost done with my internship. I’ve been working long shifts on Mondays and Wednesdays, so this has allowed me to acquire plenty of hours. It looks as if next Wednesday will be my last day. However, whether or not I have enough hours, I want to continue until my processing of the collection is complete. The completion of my processing is very close. All the folders have been given proper titles and alphabetization. The alphabetization was a little difficult because I misunderstood my supervisor’s instructions and assumed they only had to be alphabetized per box. Actually, the alphabetization’s relationship with the different boxes didn’t matter, with my supervisor’s help everything was sorted out. Now all I have left to do is the coding and typing up the historical context of the collection, this context will be uploaded to the internet where it will describe the collection to those looking at the Special Collection’s website. The coding is ...
Post a Comment
Read more

November 6-November 8

I spent this week dedicated to giving the official titles to the folders in Dr. Lawther’s collection. I have completed excel spreadsheet and condensing all the different folders. I am proud to say that the processing of the collection is nearing completion. Alphabetizing and renaming the folders has been surprisingly easy. When giving them their unofficial titles I wrote them down on the right-hand side of the folder’s top. This allows me to write down the folder’s official name starting on the right, incorporating the left hand original title and date, then erasing the old title when I don’t need it anymore. The old title usually consists of the name and date, while the new title includes the collection’s name, Dr. Lawther’s surname and what series to folder belongs to if it is in one. The two series are the ‘CoHPA’ or ‘College of Health and Public Administration’ series and the ‘FDI’ series which stands for ‘Florida Disaster Intervention.’ All the official folder titles are already ...
Post a Comment
Read more

October 30-November 1

This week saw a great amount of change in my usual schedule. Seeing all the folders on the spreadsheet made me realize how many of the dates overlapped. Also, while they possessed slightly different titles, many folders had similar names, the only difference being whether they were plural or not. That is why I went to work condensing the folders whose dates overlapped and who shared similar titles. Also, I finished the excel spreadsheet by entering which box number the respective folders belonged to and arranging the folder names alphabetically. Chronological was the original plan but after seeing the large number of undated folders the internship supervisor and I decided that alphabetical order would be more appropriate. Whenever folders were condensed this excel spreadsheet was updated to reflect the change. To further show this change, a new row was added to reflect the new dates I made so that they could be compared with the original ones. Once all this is done the folders can be ...
Post a Comment
Read more

October 23-October 25

This week has been one of the most productive ones I have had so far. Despite the difficulties I have previously mentioned I have managed to finish processing the second box along with the two binders I had to remove from the second box in order to make room. Upon the completion of all this I consulted my internship supervisor and we both decided that it would be most efficient to make an excel spreadsheet listing the names of all the folders, that way I can see what I have and better organize the finding aid. On the topic of the finding aid, after some discussion we decided that organizing all the folders in chronological folders would be best. Especially since the titles of the folders are pretty repetitive. Listing all the folder titles I realized for the first time how many new folders I created. While I do not have the exact number, yet it must be over one hundred. The most remarkable thing is that there will be more new folders because I was actually given two un-processed folde...
Post a Comment
Read more

October 23rd-October 27th

           This week has been another productive one. At the pace I am currently going the second box will be completely processed soon. However, organizing everything has gotten more difficult. Usually the documents were placed in old, used folders and are loosely connected by dates, these last documents are all shoved together with no semblance of organization. This isn’t too large a set-back, but it does mean my pace will slow down. I’ve learned a lot more in the meantime about Dr. Lawther. He was not only head of the PHD program, but he worked closely together with the deans of his college and he also played a large role in employing new members to the faculty. That is the reason why I’ve seen so many resumes among his collection. When it comes to creating the finding aid I voiced my concerns to my internship supervisor. We discussed whether to organize it based on alphabetical order or chronological order with me recommending a mixture of both. Mrs. R...
Post a Comment
Read more

October 9-October 11

Progress with processing the collection continues to go at a steady place. One problem is the abundance of loose documents without titles or dates, so I have decided to just put those in their own folder. Besides that, I haven’t had any problems sorting through all the different documents. One important thing I noticed is that my folders are not in alphabetical order. When it comes to creating a finding aid this will create a problem. Once I am done processing everything, or even before that, I will have to alphabetize them all. Also, I will need to sort them by date to since the years are all over the place. This may prove to be difficult because the dates on most folders have a wide date range. After the remaining folders will come the binders and after processing those I will be all done with the second box. Looking through all the documents I managed to learn some more about Dr. Lawther, he was a professor at UCF for a long time, teaching since the 1980’s until the 2000’s. He was ...
Post a Comment
Read more