Learning is the name of the game

This morning I finished up the first draft of my finding aid for the Arts Administration Collection. My advisor looked it over and made some notes for me to correct. We also went over it and discussed some of the issues that she pointed out that needed to be addressed in the finding aid. I was able to go back and clean up most of the problems today, normalizing some dates and cleaning up folder list. I still have a bit more work on cleaning up the folder list and then resubmit it to Dina for approval, which she will then send to the head of the archives Phil Bantin for his approval and that will officially end my work on the collection. I did have a bit of an oversight when I did some processing. There were folders that I should have looked at and luckily Dina had me check because there were SSNs and student grades in some a number of the files. Because of a large portion of this collection are student files we chose to restrict the student files but left them part of the collection. The internship is a learning experience and this oversight is something I have learned from. I will be sure to check files that potentially have personal information in them in the future.

Inching toward finishing my first collection

I started off today with a reference question. It was a fairly easy question and I was able to find the answer with in about ten minuets. For about half of my day after this I worked on finding more information for the podcast series that I will be working on. I was able to find some good stuff dealing with Wylie and Owen Halls. Something that Dina had mentioned to me to look for and was able to find was how during the construction of Wylie and Owen Halls they construction company used bricks from the Seminary Square buildings that had burnt down. I also started looking at pictures for the podcast of the different buildings of the Old Crescent. For the second half of my day today I worked my Arts Administration Program Collection. For the most part it was pretty uneventful, I reorganized some folders in to the proper order and went through and put the last third of the collection into chronological order. I've got eight and a half boxes that needed to be put into series and chronological order, which I now have done. Tomorrow looks like the day that I will be able to finish the collection off. I need to reintegrate some files that I had printed of floppy disks and create an A/V box that will contain a CD-Rom, VHS cassette, and some floppy discs. Then all that will be left is to finish up the EAD outline which needs scope and content, restrictions, biographical note. Looking forward to have processed my first collection!

Internship and technology

My internship keeps adding new technology experiences that I did not figure that I would experience during it. Blogging experience is something I had never done up till this point and am finding it quite interesting. Now, I will be experiencing another technology that is new to me, podcasting. The plan is for Dina (my intern advisor) and myself to create a series of podcasts that will continue on with the IU archives series that was started by Phil Bantin this past year. Our podcasts will consist of looking at the Old Crescent buildings of IU and their history. Today Dina and I met with Eric Bartheld, Director of Communications IUB Libraries, to discuss ideas for our podcasts and got more information from him on how to compose them. I also started some research on looking at early history of IU from the Seminary Square days to the purchase of Dunn's Woods and the construction the buildings that make up the Old Crescent. I am really looking forward to this project now as well as the other experiences during my internship. I think this will be valuable to myself for future reference and also be beneficial to the University with providing some interesting facts and "tour" with these podcasts that will be available over the internet for anybody to download.

The first week Complete

Finished up my hours for the week today in regards to my internship. After taking a couple of days of creating new series in a word document and putting the folders in the chronological order in that document, today I finally got the chance to start physically moving folders around into the proper order. Luckily about half of the collection, which deals with graduating students, was in chronological order already and needs very minimal processing. This saving of time was cancelled out a little about by the examination of some floppy disks, which needed to be evaluated. This evaluation produced some problems that may not be remedied. Many of the files had format issues, meaning I could not access the files. In my time in SLIS one of my classes dealing with Electronic Records Management we talked about this type of problem. These files should have been migrated to a format that is more accessible over time. Luckily some of the other files were accessible and could be included in the collection. I also got to work on another reference question for a graduate student that was doing research. With the help of my intern advisor I was able to locate as much of the information that was available at IU. My first week of my internship went pretty well. I got the chance to start some new things that I had not done with my work in the archives so far and am looking forward to finish up the processing of the collection I'm working on, which I think I can accomplish next week!