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 given proper and final titles which will be recorded on the finding aid. However, before the creation of this aid there is much more that needs to be done. That is why I am very thankful Microsoft Excel exists as a tool. Without the program it would have been quite a lengthy process alphabetizing all the folders, since Excel is able to do that automatically. Knowing this allows me to better appreciate the archivists who processed collections without the aid of twenty first century technology.


Other matters I attended to were the creation of a biography of Dr. Wendell Lawther and a historical note for the overall collection. While I first thought this to be a mundane activity, writing about these two topics allowed me to learn much about Dr. Wendell Lawther and the School of Public Administration. I was surprised to learn that Dr. Lawther retired very recently, towards the end of the summer of 2017. He taught at UCF for a long time, arriving in 1984 when, according to him, Union Boulevard was still a ‘two lane country road.’ In 1998, Dr. Lawther played a key role in building up the College of Public Administration’s Doctoral Program in Public Affairs, serving as the committee chair that created the program. Dr. Lawther was also the chair of the entire Department of Public Administration from 1994 to 1997. Dr. Lawther’s history also ties in strongly with the history of the now present School of Public Administration. Originally, the School of Public Administration was known as the Department of Public Administration. However, it was given the title of ‘School’ recently in 2011, which reflects how much larger the study of Public Administration has grown in UCF. This incredible growth was witnessed by Dr. Lawther and it is clearly evidenced in the collection of documents that he left behind. Lengthy folders of correspondence detail his communications with other professors while he was chair of the committee creating the Doctoral Program along with many Memorandums. This makes the collection very historically significant for charting the School of Public Administration’s growth.  

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

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...
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 ...
Read more