Bryan McDonough-John C. Hitt Library Internship

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...

           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...

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 ...

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 ...