Bryan McDonough-John C. Hitt Library Internship

This week has been very satisfying. Continuing my work from last week I continued to make plenty of progress. With the arrival of my internship supervisor I filed away the one and only binder in the first box. After that was completed the entire first box was processed. However, I feel that I still need to go over that box. There is a file in it titled ‘miscellaneous’ and I would like to get rid of that folder and have everything in it placed in more organized specifically titled folders. Also, some of the folders in the first box are not too specific on dates and I want to try and fix that. The more specific the dates, the better I feel the quality of the finding aid will be. Processing the second box I’ve been applying the lessons I learned processing the first box. Sorting through the second box I’ve learned to better separate the different documents into similar groups and two place those groups of documents in more specifically titled folders. Another thing I’ve done is to put un...

I have made very good progress with my processing this week. I have finished all of the first box except for a binder and I have gotten a start on the second box. Unfortunately, I was unable to process the binder because I did not know how. However, with the arrival of my internship supervisor next week I will be able to learn how to do that type of processing. Another I still need to do is reorganize the publications back into the three groups I have discussed in an earlier posting. While retrieving my collection from the archive after Hurricane Irma the publications were disordered. Another thing I would like to reorder is my work in the first box. Now that I have finished that one, I believe it would be beneficial to review my work and see if I can make it more organized. I believe that there are some folders that can be merged with others and certain folders that can be divided into more numerous folders, more specifically titled, folders.   Speaking of archives, my readi...

It felt strange returning to the Special Collections Department after a week-long absence due to Hurricane Irma. Fortunately, only a few items were damaged and the collection I was processing was still safely stored in the archives room on the first floor. All I needed to do was transport my collection back to the Special Collections room on the fifth. While processing the many materials I have come to wonder how certain collections fell into Lawther’s possession in the first place. Many documents are letters that were sent to other professors in the College of Health and Public Affairs. One letter was even sent to a professor in the Department of Criminal Justice. Another document that seemed unrelated to Dr. Lawther and the College of Public Administration was a printed receipt that recorded the prices of various computer equipment. Unfortunately, Dr. Lawther has left behind no notes in his collection explaining his reasoning for including certain types of documents. Overall, this r...

This proved to be a very interesting week for my internship, it was a short one but in that short amount of time I learned a lot. Due to Special Collections being closed on Labor Day I arrived on Wednesday and was planning to show up on Thursday to make up for my earlier absence. I finished diving Dr. Lawther’s publications into their three separate groups and got to work on further processing his collection. One of the difficulties that have arisen from processing such a larch group of documents was the fact that some documents seemed to be completely unique. This made them hard to group together into a new or older folder. As a temporary solution, I have created a folder titled ‘Miscellaneous’ and have put the documents that defy categorization there. It is my hope that when I have finished processing the first out of two boxes I will have noticed similar documents to the ‘Miscellaneous’ ones which will allow me to begin making more specific categories. Besides that, the processing ...

            On Monday, August 28 th , I began the second week of my internship. Processing the collection went on as it had last week. With me organizing the documents and being sure to remove the staples and to put the documents with personal information aside for deletion. It was during this day that I noticed the many differences between this collection and the collections I had worked with during my internship in the spring semester. The collection I had worked with previously were processed and the difference between processed and unprocessed collections are huge. A processed collection is easily accessible and the documents were uniform. The collection with the sermons contained documents clearly recording sermons and the collection containing the OMA meeting minutes possessed all of those organized by date. In Dr. Wendell Lawther’s collection, there is a semblance of organization. Folders are labeled but there are a few who are blank and sometimes t...

            On Monday, August 21 st , I first began my internship for the John C. Hitt Library’s Special Collections Department. I met my internship supervisor Mary Rubin and gave me information on how to navigate the archives room, use archival equipment and about the collection I would be processing.  The collection, composed of two boxes and a stack of booklets, belonged to Professor Wendell Lawther of the Public Affairs Department of the College of Health and Public Affairs who is now retired. Not only was he a professor but he was a director of the PHD program of the Public Affairs department and many of his documents explored the inner workings of this program through statistics and correspondence. These documents consisting of emails, letters, reports, and many other things are poorly organized and it is up to me to process everything. I was excited to do this because I have never processed a collection before. The previous collection I had exa...