Meet the Intern
During the fall of 2012 I had the pleasure and privilege of working as an archival intern at UC Irvine Libraries Special Collections and Archives (SC&A). For a graduate MLIS student interested in being exposed to archival best practices in a professionally run environment, UCI's SC&A easily fits the bill.
I am an Information Technology professional by trade and I volunteer for a California desert historical society in my free time. After thirty years of making a living in business information around Orange County, I decided to pursue a second career in history information -- an occupation otherwise known as archivist.
Archivists preserve and make accessible the documentary evidence of our American heritage. It is a somewhat obscure profession (there are only 6,000 practicing, and 1,100 certified archivists in the U.S.), yet it is the only one dedicated to maintaining the existence of our historical record. Archival practice is rooted in librarianship and students are typically educated through a master's program in library and information science (MLIS) or history.
As part of the MLIS educational experience students are encouraged to obtain practical experience by means of internship programs in working archives. I work and live in south Orange County in southern California. The UCI campus has been a recurring theme in my life although my higher education has been obtained primarily from Cal State institutions. Through my coursework I was familiar with Michelle Light’s
publications and learned she was the Head of Special Collections, Archives, and Digital Scholarship at UCI. From her presentation at the 2011 Society of American Archivists conference I learned that the department she managed was at the forefront of archival practice. I introduced myself and she encouraged me to apply for an internship at SC&A.
The learning outcomes I intended to satisfy through my internship revolved around the gaps in my practical knowledge of how to process archival collections. My MLIS coursework and supplemental reading of archival science literature have
provided me with the principles and knowledge required, but the practical
skills that come from hands on processing were missing. Life experiences have taught me that there is no substitute for understanding the particulars of a process other than to roll up one’s sleeves and personally perform the work. UCI SC&A offered me the opportunity to test theories and to practice skills by engaging in a field-based learning experience. Secondary considerations that contributed to my site choice were the desire to be guided by professional archivists, work in an environment utilizing best practices and technology-based solutions, and to process regional (Orange County) collections.
The Internship Site
The UCI Libraries, Special Collections and Archives houses the UC Irvine Libraries' collections of rare books, manuscripts, archives, photographs, and other rare and special materials. The department is home to the scholarly archives of some of the campus's most noteworthy present and former faculty members, including philosopher Jacques Derrida, Nobel Prize-winning scientists F. Sherwood Rowland and Frederick Reines, and choreographers Eugene Loring and Donald McKayle. Students, researchers, and community members are encouraged to visit and use the collections and services available within the department’s reading room.
The Special Collections and Archives department, stacks, and reading room are situated on the top floor of the main or Langson library. The reading room is a large, neat and pleasant environment of large tables with large windows overlooking the campus. The reading room also shares space with a limited number of stacks and map files.
Staff offices, cubicles, student assistant work areas, and additional stacks are located off the reading room. Additionally, there is separate secure space on the fifth floor with work and storage space and where bulk archival supplies are kept. In the basement of the Langson, SC&A has several compact stacks behind two locked cages within the academic library space. Lastly, there is a work area in the newer Ayala Science Library where a project archivist is stationed processing regional collections.
Outreach activities conducted by SC&A include both traditional exhibits and use of social media. During the fall Special Collections displayed “LGBT Communities in Orange County: Highlights from the Archival Collections” in the Special Collections and Archives lobby exhibit cases. Publicity for SC&A public programs is disseminated through its New & Noteworthy Collections blog and the UC Irvine SC&A Twitter feed. There are efforts currently underway to digitize early University materials for presentation in a web-based content management system. This is being done in anticipation of UCI's 50th anniversary in 2015.
Back in the staff area of the Langson, one of two cubicle spaces is set aside for sharing by transient resources such as interns. It’s a nice space with a networked computer, a decent amount of flat work area, and a window view of the San Gabriel Mountains. Archivists’ Toolkit is the archival data management technology used along with a home-grown Stacks Locator for logging the locations of shelved collections. Other utilities such as JEdit and NetDrive used to upload EAD to OAC are covered in my Day 8.0 blog post.
In addition to putting in a full day of interning once per week at UCI Special Collections and Archives, I maintained a weekly blog called Archivist Apprentice. To generate additional interest in the blog postings, a companion Archivist Apprentice Twitter account was used to tweet the presence of new postings to followers.
Internship Reflections
Overall, my internship at the UCI SC&A was a personal success because I was able to accomplish the goals I set out for myself. Most of my MLIS coursework has revolved around archival theory. This internship was my opportunity to apply that theory in a practical setting in highly organized archives under professional guidance. At its core, my plan was to process manuscript collections from “soup to nuts,” and the wonderful archivists at UCI helped me do just that over the course of 138 hours of hands-on work on seven collections comprising 7.6 linear feet of processed material.
To make the best use of my short time “on station” at my internship, I would spend the first half hour or so of my day determining what I needed to do to complete a module of work before I went home. I did not want to leave in the middle of any one task and lose my train of thought before I came back a week later. This required me to plan what tasks I could get done in a day, sometimes employing unfamiliar procedures. I learned to manage my time carefully which allowed me walk out the door on my last day with seven completed collections ready to be uploaded to OAC.
Sometimes, I think it was the small decisions, the ones that were neither intuitive nor spelled out in procedure manuals that were the most difficult aspects of the work experience. There are some things that are learned only by asking someone in the know and the archivists at UCI, especially my site supervisor, were generous with their time and knowledge.
From my internship I gained confidence with and practical knowledge of accessioning, rehousing, arranging, describing, preserving, shelving, creating finding aids, and generating and uploading EAD code to the Online Archive of California (OAC) for paper-based collections. In terms of more advanced archival techniques I was able to apply minimal processing concepts, DACS standards, and Library of Congress subject headings. At UCI, I had the privilege of working with archivists who are serious about adhering to professional and internal standards. As my supervisor said to me, “our finding aids and the presentation of source materials are how our patrons judge the quality of our work. Let’s be consistent, accurate, and neat!”
UC Irvine will be celebrating the 50th anniversary of the campus in 2015. The Special Collections staff has been tasked with developing retrospective exhibits to honor that major milestone. One of the issues of concern to the SC&A staff is how they are going to digitize the massive amount of photographic materials from the earliest years of the school and make them available in a content management system with limited resources and no funding. I like to think that my processing of a handful of less time critical paper collections may have in a small way freed up some resources for the archivists to apply to the University’s half-centennial project.
If the success of my internship were to be quickly summed up in terms of processing output then the answer would be the finding aids of the following seven small collections posted at the Online Archive of California:
MS-R160, Committee of 4000 Records, 0.2 linear feet
http://www.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/c8kp82qz
MS-R161, Orange County Commission on the Status of Women Records, 0.4 linear feet
http://www.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/c8fx7b0n
MS-R162, Orange County Human Relations Commission Records, 1.2 linear feet
http://www.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/c8qz2bjr
MS-R163, Collection of Clippings on the Development of Irvine, California and Orange County Local Agency Formation Commission, 0.6 linear feet
http://www.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/c8m61kvs
MS-R164, Environmental Coalition of Orange County Records, 2.0 linear feet
http://www.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/c82806xg
MS-R165, Fair Housing Council of Orange County Records, 1.4 linear feet
http://oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/c8b56k9p
MS-F037, Jerome Tobis papers, 1.8 linear feet
http://www.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/c89g5nfq
Saturday, December 22, 2012
Wednesday, December 5, 2012
Wednesday, November 28, 2012
Wednesday, November 21, 2012
Wednesday, November 14, 2012
Internship - Day 13.0
Quality Control
The task today was to begin executing on my quality control (QC) recommendations for unfinished collections started by student assistants. The student assistants are not expected to have a foundation of archival theory or experience. Mostly, they are instructed on how to perform repetitive tasks such as refoldering, labeling, and rehousing materials. So that's where I pick up on the first two of five such collections.
I'm pleased to find mostly tidy and neatly labeled materials, although I'm not sure if the students were instructed to maintain original order or how they made their refoldering choices. I'm guessing they maintained original order -- if only by default.
The first thing I did was compare the folders and their labels with what was input into Archivists' Toolkit (AT). Right off the bat I found the collection number was missing from all of the folder labels. Also, there was a date range mismatch between what was on the folder labels and what was input into AT. Some materials genres were misidentified, such as calling a pamphlet or report a booklet. There were no names or subjects selected for the collection nor were there any notes other than a Content and Scope note, and that probably migrated from the accession record. In one case, a too-large sized box was used for a thin stack of folders.
This all may sound a bit nit-picky, but the procedures and expectations for the quality of arrangement and description at UCI Special Collections and Archives is high. And the things I'm catching and fixing are really the realm of an archivist. It was heads down, intensive work, but this exercise was good practice and reinforcement for me.
The task today was to begin executing on my quality control (QC) recommendations for unfinished collections started by student assistants. The student assistants are not expected to have a foundation of archival theory or experience. Mostly, they are instructed on how to perform repetitive tasks such as refoldering, labeling, and rehousing materials. So that's where I pick up on the first two of five such collections.
I'm pleased to find mostly tidy and neatly labeled materials, although I'm not sure if the students were instructed to maintain original order or how they made their refoldering choices. I'm guessing they maintained original order -- if only by default.
The first thing I did was compare the folders and their labels with what was input into Archivists' Toolkit (AT). Right off the bat I found the collection number was missing from all of the folder labels. Also, there was a date range mismatch between what was on the folder labels and what was input into AT. Some materials genres were misidentified, such as calling a pamphlet or report a booklet. There were no names or subjects selected for the collection nor were there any notes other than a Content and Scope note, and that probably migrated from the accession record. In one case, a too-large sized box was used for a thin stack of folders.
This all may sound a bit nit-picky, but the procedures and expectations for the quality of arrangement and description at UCI Special Collections and Archives is high. And the things I'm catching and fixing are really the realm of an archivist. It was heads down, intensive work, but this exercise was good practice and reinforcement for me.
Wednesday, November 7, 2012
Internship - Day 12.0
Refinement
Much of today was spent heads down reviewing my first collections and applying corrections. The exercise of upgrading the processing level on the ECOC and FHCOC collections from minimal to moderate involved the application of new work by student assistants and by an intern (me). This of course had the effect of introducing new errors in the form of typos and unmet requirements.
As I compared physical file folder labels with the data input into Archivists' Toolkit, I found discrepancies that needed to be fixed between the two. Through a combination of the backspace, an eraser, and a pencil I brought the two sides back in alignment. As usual, my supervisor had some great feedback that only improved the quality of the finding aids for these two collections.
New Challenge
The rest of my day was spent working on a new challenge presented to me by my supervisor . Special Collections has a backlog of five collections previously processed by student assistants. They needed to have some quality control (QC) applied before they could be considered complete. My supervisor explained that as a future archivist who will be supervising non-archivists, I could benefit from checking the work of our student assistants. This will give me a chance to apply the learning I've gained over the previous three months.
The collection I picked to QC first was MS-R160 - Committee of 4000 records, a group of Irvine area homeowners who lived on land leased to them by the Irvine Ranch/Company and argued that their original lease terms were unrealistic in the 1970s climate of soaring Orange County real estate prices. By the end of the day I delivered my QC recommendations to my supervisor for review. Next week I'll tackle the other four collections.
Much of today was spent heads down reviewing my first collections and applying corrections. The exercise of upgrading the processing level on the ECOC and FHCOC collections from minimal to moderate involved the application of new work by student assistants and by an intern (me). This of course had the effect of introducing new errors in the form of typos and unmet requirements.
As I compared physical file folder labels with the data input into Archivists' Toolkit, I found discrepancies that needed to be fixed between the two. Through a combination of the backspace, an eraser, and a pencil I brought the two sides back in alignment. As usual, my supervisor had some great feedback that only improved the quality of the finding aids for these two collections.
New Challenge
The rest of my day was spent working on a new challenge presented to me by my supervisor . Special Collections has a backlog of five collections previously processed by student assistants. They needed to have some quality control (QC) applied before they could be considered complete. My supervisor explained that as a future archivist who will be supervising non-archivists, I could benefit from checking the work of our student assistants. This will give me a chance to apply the learning I've gained over the previous three months.
We agreed that I would pick one of the five student-processed collections and develop a list of recommendations for improvement. My supervisor would then QC my QC, provide feedback, and then have me apply the agreed upon changes.
 |
| Old days on the Irvine Ranch. |
Wednesday, October 31, 2012
Internship - Day 11.0
AT and MP
Today was a repeat of last week with regards to processing. As was done for the Environmental Coalition of Orange County (ECOC) collection, I made another pass on the Fair Housing Council of Orange County (FHCOC) records to bring them up to a moderate level of processing. Good reinforcement of technique, but nothing new to report to you, my dear readers.
Instead, I'd like to take the opportunity today to sing the praises of Archivists' Toolkit (AT) and how it supports the efficient character of Minimal Processing (MP). Perhaps you'll consider these observations a bit mundane, but while processing the FHCOC collection I was struck by how seamlessly original order is maintained, even as the archivist intellectually creates order from chaos. Let me explain:
Here are boxes 2 through 4 (right to left) of the processed FHCOC collection. The contents are filed in approximately the same jumbled order in which I found them in the original bankers box when they arrived in Special Collections and Archives -- their original order. For the most part, there was little in the way of organization, except there was a thin set of about four folders which had been previously processed by a prior caretaker. This gave me pause and I had to consider that there was some method to the madness confronting me. I decided to keep everything in the box in the sequence in which it came to maintain its original order. If there was an order, it was well hidden, but perhaps it would reveal itself after working with it a bit.
In retrospect, there wasn't any order, or value to maintaining the physical order of the contents, other than to save me the step of reordering similar papers together. Being somewhat obsessive, I had to resist more than once the temptation to reorder the papers. After refoldering the documents and labeling the folders it became more difficult to justify the rework of putting the papers into an artificial order. So the urge diminished.
The aspect that did reveal itself, though, was that after inputting the series, subseries, and folder labels into AT, the reordering I had resisted doing physically could be accomplished electronically. By dragging the entries into a semblance of order my want for physical reordering was satisfied -- and while maintaining the physical original order of the papers.
Here's the finished AT Resource view of the entire collection:
Note the highlighted filing unit for the year 1975 under the series/subseries Legal documents | Court documents (click on the image to enlarge). This is not one folder of court documents from 1975, but one entry that represents three folders. Check out the Instances on the right side of the frame. You can see there are three instances (folders) of 1975 court document spread across three boxes. The locations of the three folders is indicated by the salmon-colored flags in the first image above. So even though the three folders are physically split up, they have been brought together intellectually in AT under one child entry.
The beauty of this is that the archivist is freed from having to physically reorder the contents of collections, even when the material may cry out for artificial organization. The sorting, ordering and consolidating of like documents can be done electronically as a final step after inputting each of the folder labels into AT. Minimal processing is supported because any temptation to reshuffle papers into order is unnecessary, unjustified, and thus eliminated. Original order is maintained as a matter of course (even if it has no obvious value) while simultaneously saving the archival processor time, effort, and work space that physical reordering of documents would require. This is a beautiful thing.
Today was a repeat of last week with regards to processing. As was done for the Environmental Coalition of Orange County (ECOC) collection, I made another pass on the Fair Housing Council of Orange County (FHCOC) records to bring them up to a moderate level of processing. Good reinforcement of technique, but nothing new to report to you, my dear readers.
Instead, I'd like to take the opportunity today to sing the praises of Archivists' Toolkit (AT) and how it supports the efficient character of Minimal Processing (MP). Perhaps you'll consider these observations a bit mundane, but while processing the FHCOC collection I was struck by how seamlessly original order is maintained, even as the archivist intellectually creates order from chaos. Let me explain:
Here are boxes 2 through 4 (right to left) of the processed FHCOC collection. The contents are filed in approximately the same jumbled order in which I found them in the original bankers box when they arrived in Special Collections and Archives -- their original order. For the most part, there was little in the way of organization, except there was a thin set of about four folders which had been previously processed by a prior caretaker. This gave me pause and I had to consider that there was some method to the madness confronting me. I decided to keep everything in the box in the sequence in which it came to maintain its original order. If there was an order, it was well hidden, but perhaps it would reveal itself after working with it a bit.
In retrospect, there wasn't any order, or value to maintaining the physical order of the contents, other than to save me the step of reordering similar papers together. Being somewhat obsessive, I had to resist more than once the temptation to reorder the papers. After refoldering the documents and labeling the folders it became more difficult to justify the rework of putting the papers into an artificial order. So the urge diminished.
The aspect that did reveal itself, though, was that after inputting the series, subseries, and folder labels into AT, the reordering I had resisted doing physically could be accomplished electronically. By dragging the entries into a semblance of order my want for physical reordering was satisfied -- and while maintaining the physical original order of the papers.
Here's the finished AT Resource view of the entire collection:
Note the highlighted filing unit for the year 1975 under the series/subseries Legal documents | Court documents (click on the image to enlarge). This is not one folder of court documents from 1975, but one entry that represents three folders. Check out the Instances on the right side of the frame. You can see there are three instances (folders) of 1975 court document spread across three boxes. The locations of the three folders is indicated by the salmon-colored flags in the first image above. So even though the three folders are physically split up, they have been brought together intellectually in AT under one child entry.
The beauty of this is that the archivist is freed from having to physically reorder the contents of collections, even when the material may cry out for artificial organization. The sorting, ordering and consolidating of like documents can be done electronically as a final step after inputting each of the folder labels into AT. Minimal processing is supported because any temptation to reshuffle papers into order is unnecessary, unjustified, and thus eliminated. Original order is maintained as a matter of course (even if it has no obvious value) while simultaneously saving the archival processor time, effort, and work space that physical reordering of documents would require. This is a beautiful thing.
Wednesday, October 24, 2012
Internship - Day 10.0
Minimal to Moderate Level Processing
Always keeping me on my toes, my mentor my supervisor presented me with a new challenge; try my hand at processing a collection at the moderate-intensive level. She suggested that, given I have organized the first collection of materials (ECOC MS-R164) at the folder level it would be appropriate to describe them (even if briefly) in the finding aid. My supervisor directed my attention to the sections of the processing manuals that instruct on the requirements for Moderate levels of control.
So I paged the boxes from the stacks in the basement cage and did a deeper dive into the ECOC materials. Whereas I had previously had only described the scope and contents of the records at the collection level, I now developed Scope and Content notes for the series and subseries levels, and Arrangement notes at the series level. I'll also make use of the student staff to add the existing folder listings into AT under the corresponding series and subseries.
It took me all day to process at the moderate level, but in the end these additional efforts will have the effect of increasing the richness of the finding aid providing more detailed and varied keywords a researcher can analyze in their search results. And your humble Archivist Apprentice will have added another brick in the foundation of his experience.
Always keeping me on my toes, my mentor my supervisor presented me with a new challenge; try my hand at processing a collection at the moderate-intensive level. She suggested that, given I have organized the first collection of materials (ECOC MS-R164) at the folder level it would be appropriate to describe them (even if briefly) in the finding aid. My supervisor directed my attention to the sections of the processing manuals that instruct on the requirements for Moderate levels of control.
 |
| ECOC boxes retrieved for moderate level processing. |
It took me all day to process at the moderate level, but in the end these additional efforts will have the effect of increasing the richness of the finding aid providing more detailed and varied keywords a researcher can analyze in their search results. And your humble Archivist Apprentice will have added another brick in the foundation of his experience.
Wednesday, October 17, 2012
Internship - Day 9.0
FHCOC Reconsidered
At the end of the day last week, I asked my supervisor to review my AT resource record for the Fair Housing Council of Orange County (FHCOC) collection. As mentioned earlier, the collection does not have much variety in types of documents it contains, but is challenging in that the original order resembled the aftermath of 52-card pickup. But not to worry, the beauty of electronic finding aids is that original order can be maintained, yet the materials can be arranged intellectually for easy reference and easy retrieval.
First thing this morning, my supervisor shared her thoughts on the next steps for the FHCOC records. She made some excellent suggestions. This is the exact situation that makes an internship so valuable. I made my best effort at applying the archival theory I've learned from coursework and professional publications and then get to have it reviewed by an experienced archivist who gently makes excellent suggestions for improving the usefulness of the finding aid for research. Based on our discussion, I modified my series arrangement from:
...to the following series and subseries...
I concluded the day's tasks by labeling the document boxes, shelving them, updating the Stacks Locator, and updating the Accessioning Checklist and Processing Work Plan.
 |
| FHCOC in the stacks. |
First thing this morning, my supervisor shared her thoughts on the next steps for the FHCOC records. She made some excellent suggestions. This is the exact situation that makes an internship so valuable. I made my best effort at applying the archival theory I've learned from coursework and professional publications and then get to have it reviewed by an experienced archivist who gently makes excellent suggestions for improving the usefulness of the finding aid for research. Based on our discussion, I modified my series arrangement from:
- Court documents
- Regulatory documents
- Planning documents
- Newsletters
...to the following series and subseries...
- Legal documents
- Court documents
- Settlements
- Publications
- Regulatory documents
- Planning documents
- Newsletters
I concluded the day's tasks by labeling the document boxes, shelving them, updating the Stacks Locator, and updating the Accessioning Checklist and Processing Work Plan.
Wednesday, October 10, 2012
Internship - Day 8.0
Published on OAC
A major milestone has been achieved by your humble intern. The finding aid for my first processed collection has been posted to the Online Archive of California (OAC). I'll describe the steps taken to make this happen, but first, here's the permanent link to the finding aid of the Environmental Coalition of Orange County records: http://www.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/c82806xg/
Very cool.
Electronic finding aids must be presented to OAC in Encoded Archival Description (EAD). Uploading EAD code to OAC is fairly straightforward, although it does require that your institution has made prior arrangements to contribute. UCI Special Collections and Archives (SC&A) is already an official OAC contributor so we were able to jump right into uploading the code.
Under the guidance of Library Assistant Alix Norton, I input the final data elements into Archivists' Toolkit (AT) needed to submit the ECOC collection to the OAC. With the EAD exported into a text file we made one minor adjustment to the code using a text editor called JEdit. Then, a tool called NetDrive was used to upload (or FTP) the EAD file to the OAC test site. Using the OAC Contributor Dashboard, I ran a verification script to confirm there were no errors in the EAD.
After the verification step was run, a copy of the EAD file was uploaded to the production FTP site using NetDrive. At that point the Contributor Dashboard was used to submit the EAD to OAC for posting to the production site. Alix got an email verifying the submission of the EAD finding aid.
OAC does not actually post anything immediately. The EAD was staged to a queue to await overnight processing. That night, the EAD was posted on OAC and a permanent URL was generated. I had to wait until the next day to actually see my handiwork on the Internet. Next Wednesday when I'm back at UCI I'll update the AT resource record with the OAC permanent URL so it can be included in the MARC record and UCI's OPAC.
Into the Stacks
Back in the material world there was still work to do. The physical boxes holding the ECOC collection needed to be shelved and the stacks locator updated. Interestingly, the finding aid tells a researcher what box a particular folder is located in but not where the box is located. When a researcher requests a particular box, the reference archivist will look up the physical location in the stacks locator. This decoupling between the finding aid and the stacks location allows the archivist to avoid rebuilding and uploading finding aids when collection locations are adjusted.
My supervisor and I trucked the five boxes of the collection down into the Langson Library basement where SC&A has two locked cages containing high density shelving. We selected an open spot and placed the boxes on a shelf. I noted the aisle, stack, and shelf and wrote the combination on the side of each box. That is how the reference archivist will know where to re-shelve the boxes should they be paged by a researcher.
The final task was to add entries to the online Stacks Locator for each of the five boxes as displayed here to the right. The location is read as (basement) aisle "BB10", the "C" (third) stack of shelves from the left, and the "3" (third) shelf down from the top.
Next week, my goal is to perform all of the above operations for the second collection, the Fair Housing Council of Orange County records.
A major milestone has been achieved by your humble intern. The finding aid for my first processed collection has been posted to the Online Archive of California (OAC). I'll describe the steps taken to make this happen, but first, here's the permanent link to the finding aid of the Environmental Coalition of Orange County records: http://www.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/c82806xg/Very cool.
Electronic finding aids must be presented to OAC in Encoded Archival Description (EAD). Uploading EAD code to OAC is fairly straightforward, although it does require that your institution has made prior arrangements to contribute. UCI Special Collections and Archives (SC&A) is already an official OAC contributor so we were able to jump right into uploading the code.
Under the guidance of Library Assistant Alix Norton, I input the final data elements into Archivists' Toolkit (AT) needed to submit the ECOC collection to the OAC. With the EAD exported into a text file we made one minor adjustment to the code using a text editor called JEdit. Then, a tool called NetDrive was used to upload (or FTP) the EAD file to the OAC test site. Using the OAC Contributor Dashboard, I ran a verification script to confirm there were no errors in the EAD.After the verification step was run, a copy of the EAD file was uploaded to the production FTP site using NetDrive. At that point the Contributor Dashboard was used to submit the EAD to OAC for posting to the production site. Alix got an email verifying the submission of the EAD finding aid.
OAC does not actually post anything immediately. The EAD was staged to a queue to await overnight processing. That night, the EAD was posted on OAC and a permanent URL was generated. I had to wait until the next day to actually see my handiwork on the Internet. Next Wednesday when I'm back at UCI I'll update the AT resource record with the OAC permanent URL so it can be included in the MARC record and UCI's OPAC.
Into the Stacks
Back in the material world there was still work to do. The physical boxes holding the ECOC collection needed to be shelved and the stacks locator updated. Interestingly, the finding aid tells a researcher what box a particular folder is located in but not where the box is located. When a researcher requests a particular box, the reference archivist will look up the physical location in the stacks locator. This decoupling between the finding aid and the stacks location allows the archivist to avoid rebuilding and uploading finding aids when collection locations are adjusted.
My supervisor and I trucked the five boxes of the collection down into the Langson Library basement where SC&A has two locked cages containing high density shelving. We selected an open spot and placed the boxes on a shelf. I noted the aisle, stack, and shelf and wrote the combination on the side of each box. That is how the reference archivist will know where to re-shelve the boxes should they be paged by a researcher.
Next week, my goal is to perform all of the above operations for the second collection, the Fair Housing Council of Orange County records.
Wednesday, October 3, 2012
Internship - Day 7.0
Finishing Touches
The collection I processed at the start of the internship, Environmental Coalition of Orange County records (ECOC), came back from the student assistant. She had been assigned the task of refoldering and labeling the 85 or so folders spread across five Hollinger boxes.
As pictured above, there are three elements in labeling each of the new acid-free folders. On the left side is the collection number. For example, MS-R164 indicates this is the 164th Regional history ManuScript collection in the UCI Special Collections and Archives. The center portion of the folder tab is reserved for labeling the contents of the folder. The right side of the tab indicates this folder sequence in the box. This is folder number 4 in box number 1.
After checking the student's work, I had the pleasure of formatting, printing, and applying the box labels to the ends of the document boxes. My supervisor had mentioned that she finds this one of the most satisfying steps in collection processing. I have to say there is a certain amount of pride one takes in seeing how a rag tag archives box of loose papers can come together into an organized and cohesive arrangement.
For finishing touches, I filled out the rest of the Archivists' Toolkit (AT) resource record for the collection, added the series and subseries hierarchy, added their corresponding box and folder range instances, refined the collection level finding aid data and notes, updated the work plan, and sent it off to my supervisor for review. This is exciting because we're getting close to generating the EAD and uploading it to the Online Archive of California (OAC) where the world will be able to find it!
And now, back to our other collection already in progress...
With the ECOC packed off to the archivist for review, I re-engaged with processing the Fair Housing Council of Orange County (FHCOC) records. In some ways this collection was more challenging intellectually. There were really only three categories, or series of documents, but almost none of them came organized. I started with an archives box containing a bunch of paper heaped in different directions.
Last week, when I pulled out the papers out of the bankers box, I did my best to maintain the original order. To make the papers easier to handle I placed them in acid-free folders while transferring them into Hollinger boxes. Since each folder can only hold about an inch thick of paper, the challenge was making decisions where to divide them into natural breaking points.
Handing off the folders to a student for labeling was out of the question. The papers are in no discernible order. So I took on the labeling task. I quickly reviewed the contents of each folder and labeled each with one of the three previously identified series titles; court documents, newsletters, or planning documents. I whipped through all folders in all four document boxes before the end of the day.
Next week, my goal will be to pull together the FHCOC collection into the same state of readiness that I got the ECOC into earlier today. Whew!
The collection I processed at the start of the internship, Environmental Coalition of Orange County records (ECOC), came back from the student assistant. She had been assigned the task of refoldering and labeling the 85 or so folders spread across five Hollinger boxes.
As pictured above, there are three elements in labeling each of the new acid-free folders. On the left side is the collection number. For example, MS-R164 indicates this is the 164th Regional history ManuScript collection in the UCI Special Collections and Archives. The center portion of the folder tab is reserved for labeling the contents of the folder. The right side of the tab indicates this folder sequence in the box. This is folder number 4 in box number 1.
After checking the student's work, I had the pleasure of formatting, printing, and applying the box labels to the ends of the document boxes. My supervisor had mentioned that she finds this one of the most satisfying steps in collection processing. I have to say there is a certain amount of pride one takes in seeing how a rag tag archives box of loose papers can come together into an organized and cohesive arrangement.For finishing touches, I filled out the rest of the Archivists' Toolkit (AT) resource record for the collection, added the series and subseries hierarchy, added their corresponding box and folder range instances, refined the collection level finding aid data and notes, updated the work plan, and sent it off to my supervisor for review. This is exciting because we're getting close to generating the EAD and uploading it to the Online Archive of California (OAC) where the world will be able to find it!
And now, back to our other collection already in progress...
With the ECOC packed off to the archivist for review, I re-engaged with processing the Fair Housing Council of Orange County (FHCOC) records. In some ways this collection was more challenging intellectually. There were really only three categories, or series of documents, but almost none of them came organized. I started with an archives box containing a bunch of paper heaped in different directions.
Last week, when I pulled out the papers out of the bankers box, I did my best to maintain the original order. To make the papers easier to handle I placed them in acid-free folders while transferring them into Hollinger boxes. Since each folder can only hold about an inch thick of paper, the challenge was making decisions where to divide them into natural breaking points.
Handing off the folders to a student for labeling was out of the question. The papers are in no discernible order. So I took on the labeling task. I quickly reviewed the contents of each folder and labeled each with one of the three previously identified series titles; court documents, newsletters, or planning documents. I whipped through all folders in all four document boxes before the end of the day.
Next week, my goal will be to pull together the FHCOC collection into the same state of readiness that I got the ECOC into earlier today. Whew!
Wednesday, September 26, 2012
Internship - Day 6.0
A different kind of day...
Today, I was not heads-down in collection processing as I have been in previous weeks. But it was an interesting day nonetheless.
UCI has four libraries; the Medical, Science, Law, and Main (now Langson) Libraries. Special Collections and Archives (SC&A) is in the Langson, one of the oldest buildings on campus at the ripe old age of 47. Today, I had the pleasure of walking over to the Ayala Science Library and visiting with two of our catalogers. Sarah Wallbank does the cataloging of items (rare books) for Special Collections and Carole McEwan edits the EAD and MARC catalog entries for collections entered into Archivists' Toolkit. Both ladies were very welcoming and generous with their time providing me with an overview of how they support SC&A.
Back at SC&A, my supervisor and I interacted with the student assistant who has been assigned the work tickets for the Environmental Coalition of Orange County (ECOC) collection I processed. We realized that the re-foldering process was causing the collection to outgrow the four document storage boxes, so I incorporated a fifth. Unfortunately this caused a little extra work for the student as it messed up the <box : folder > numbering work she had done. I saw how my inexperience in extrapolating how re-foldering would add a bit of length to the linear footage, and therefore the number of document boxes. I immediately applied this lesson-learned to the current Fair Housing Council of Orange County (FHCOC) collection I'm currently processing.
As far as deliverables today, I handed in three to my supervisor:
Today, I was not heads-down in collection processing as I have been in previous weeks. But it was an interesting day nonetheless.
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| Ayala Science Library at UCI |
Back at SC&A, my supervisor and I interacted with the student assistant who has been assigned the work tickets for the Environmental Coalition of Orange County (ECOC) collection I processed. We realized that the re-foldering process was causing the collection to outgrow the four document storage boxes, so I incorporated a fifth. Unfortunately this caused a little extra work for the student as it messed up the <box : folder > numbering work she had done. I saw how my inexperience in extrapolating how re-foldering would add a bit of length to the linear footage, and therefore the number of document boxes. I immediately applied this lesson-learned to the current Fair Housing Council of Orange County (FHCOC) collection I'm currently processing.
As far as deliverables today, I handed in three to my supervisor:
- An updated Accession Checklist for the FHCOC collection which corrected the extent's linear footage.
- An updated Processing Work Plan for FHCOC to eliminate the sub-series level I had proposed for the filing unit organization.
- A revised Accessioning Manual containing several suggestions for improving this useful document for a newby like me. (My supervisor has encouraged any suggestions to improve SC&A procedural manuals.)
Wednesday, September 19, 2012
Internship - Day 5.0
Second Collection Accessioned
The Environmental Coalition of Orange County (ECOC) records have now been delegated to the student assistant force here at SP&A for labeling. So I began work on the second collection assigned to me.
The Fair Housing Council of Orange County (FHCOC) is a similarly sized collection as the first; one archives box full of paper. I was determined to leverage the knowledge gained from working on the ECOC records to process this new collection more efficiently and in much less time.
Fair Housing Council of Orange County
The Fair Housing Council of Orange County is a private non-profit organization formed in 1965 in the wake of the civil rights movement that resulted in the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The Council incorporated in 1968, the same year that Congress extended civil rights protections to cover housing with the adoption of the Fair Housing Act. The FHCOC is apparently still going strong at 44.
The contents of the archives box were a bit of a mess. Unlike the ECOC records which were already sorted into 87 labeled folders, the FHCOC papers were loose with nearly no folders at all. The papers were stacked in two piles within the box which made determining the original order a bit of a challenge. I pulled all of the papers out of the box and placed them on my desk maintaining the original order as best I could.
I quickly reviewed each of the piles of paper on my desk taking quick notes about the types of documents found. This general inventory is a good way to begin to organize the documents intellectually for a proposed arrangement. The good news is that the contents pretty much fell into only three major categories; court documents, city planning documents, and FHCOC newsletters.
To save time I simultaneously filled in both accession documents I needed to generate; a new record in the Archivists' Toolkit accession module and an accession checklist in Word. Since the FHCOC is still in business I was able to cut and paste administrative history data directly from their Web site, wordsmith it in one place and copy and paste the new blurb into the other. There were no preservation issues, no non-paper items, nor content needing to be restricted. I made good time and moved right into spawning the AT resource record from the accession record and began filling out the processing work plan.
At the end of the day I was able to submit both the accession checklist and processing work plan to my supervisor for review. A very productive day in which I easily halved the amount of time it took me to do a similar amount of work on the first collection.
Wednesday, September 12, 2012
Internship - Day 4.0
Today's Output
Work Plan Approved!
Day 4 started off great with my supervisor approving my archival processing work plan from Day 3. I was so excited I had to take a picture to commemorate it. This hard copy document gets filed with other related documents in the departmental lateral file. Michelle Light, the director, smiled when she saw me filing the paper. (I know she's a digital proponent.) She said she inherited the system and it seems to work. The implication was, "why mess with success?"
AT Resource record notes
On Day 3 I had generated the resource record for the collection in Archivists' Toolkit from the accession record, but it was towards the end of the day. Today I used the Archival Processing Manual (APM) to guide me through updating the various mandatory collection level note records such as; conditions governing access and use, abstract, preferred citation, etc. I especially enjoyed entering the related archival materials note. Using the Online Archive of California (OAC), I quickly found five closely related collections, mostly in UCI's own Special Collections and Archives.
Delegating Preservation Tasks
As a student myself it feels like cheating that I'm assigning processing tasks to other students. My supervisor has encouraged me to do this even though my inclination has been to DIY. I wrote up and sent the six tasks off to my supervisor . She'll input them into the SC&A Workticket application used to assign and track work done by the student assistants.
ECOC folders reboxed
The pictures say it all.
- ECOC Work Plan approved by Archivist
- AT Resource record notes for ECOC completed
- ECOC Preservation tasks delegated to student assistants
- ECOC folders reboxed
Work Plan Approved!
Day 4 started off great with my supervisor approving my archival processing work plan from Day 3. I was so excited I had to take a picture to commemorate it. This hard copy document gets filed with other related documents in the departmental lateral file. Michelle Light, the director, smiled when she saw me filing the paper. (I know she's a digital proponent.) She said she inherited the system and it seems to work. The implication was, "why mess with success?"AT Resource record notes
On Day 3 I had generated the resource record for the collection in Archivists' Toolkit from the accession record, but it was towards the end of the day. Today I used the Archival Processing Manual (APM) to guide me through updating the various mandatory collection level note records such as; conditions governing access and use, abstract, preferred citation, etc. I especially enjoyed entering the related archival materials note. Using the Online Archive of California (OAC), I quickly found five closely related collections, mostly in UCI's own Special Collections and Archives.
Delegating Preservation Tasks
As a student myself it feels like cheating that I'm assigning processing tasks to other students. My supervisor has encouraged me to do this even though my inclination has been to DIY. I wrote up and sent the six tasks off to my supervisor . She'll input them into the SC&A Workticket application used to assign and track work done by the student assistants.
ECOC folders reboxed
The pictures say it all.
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| FROM THIS.... |
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| ....TO THIS |
Wednesday, September 5, 2012
Internship - Day 3.0
Two Deliveries
Today my efforts resulted in the delivery of two documents, an accession checklist and a collection work plan. Both of these forms cover my first assigned collection; the records of the Environmental Coalition of Orange County (ECOC).
ECOC Accession Checklist
Here is the header portion of the ECOC accession record. The Accession and Collection Numbers are determined by checking Archivists' Toolkit (AT) for the next available numbers. The purpose of the checklist is to make sure that a new collection that has come into the Special Collections & Archives (SC&A) is properly received and accounted for even if it is not immediately processed.
I started filling out the checklist and inputting the accession record in AT back on Day 2, but I had not quite finished. I realized that my initial cursory review of the folders in the ECOC box was not thorough enough to provide the necessary detail on condition, disposition, and restrictions. So I took the time to review the contents of each folder at a very high level. I made notes on candidate materials for the following four areas;
As I made my high level review of the box contents I noted the label text and original order of each of the eighty-five (85) folders. The contents of each folder seem to agree with its label. This indicated to me that, overall, the collection came fairly well-organized. The condition of the folders is another matter. They exhibit some past, light water damage and would benefit from refoldering.
One set of questions on the work plan is; "How will you organize the collection? Is there any existing meaningful order? What series will you use?" Although this was not a difficult question, I found that answering it was the same amount of work as just reorganizing the folder labels I had already captured electronically. Using the suggested series groupings in the Processing Manual I was able to quickly organize the 85 folders intellectually in the following proposed series and sub-series filing units:
All this fun work was topped off with generating the AT resource record from the accession record.
Towards the end of the day I presented the above two forms to my supervisor for approval and consulted with her about next steps. She suggested that I write up work tickets for the preservation activities, refoldering, labeling, and reboxing so that the work can be assigned to a student assistant.
Another next step will be to review and complete the resource record. My supervisor advised that she has the student assistants perform the data entry of the filing unit information in AT resource record. That would be the series, sub-series, and folder children. All of the data entry is the realm of the archivist processor.
We also discussed that I would update the estimated time frame for processing based on guidance provided in either the Processing Manual and/or the UC Minimal Processing Guide. Also, I'll look at clarifying the series/sub-series filing unit, and determine if I'll do folder level descriptions.
Today my efforts resulted in the delivery of two documents, an accession checklist and a collection work plan. Both of these forms cover my first assigned collection; the records of the Environmental Coalition of Orange County (ECOC).
ECOC Accession Checklist
Here is the header portion of the ECOC accession record. The Accession and Collection Numbers are determined by checking Archivists' Toolkit (AT) for the next available numbers. The purpose of the checklist is to make sure that a new collection that has come into the Special Collections & Archives (SC&A) is properly received and accounted for even if it is not immediately processed.
I started filling out the checklist and inputting the accession record in AT back on Day 2, but I had not quite finished. I realized that my initial cursory review of the folders in the ECOC box was not thorough enough to provide the necessary detail on condition, disposition, and restrictions. So I took the time to review the contents of each folder at a very high level. I made notes on candidate materials for the following four areas;
- Separation
- Disposition
- Restriction
- Preservation
I'm glad I did the more thorough review as I found more mailing labels than I found the first time. My supervisor advised that these should just be discarded / shredded. I also found correspondence between elected California officials and the ECOC containing original signatures. I asked if they should be restricted to avoid potential theft. (It's not like I found Abraham Lincoln's signature, but I did note that a page with Senator Alan Cranston's signature was already missing.) My supervisor advised that SC&A tends to not restrict correspondence to that level. Additionally, I found a small box of 35mm color film transparencies that constituted the visual portion of an educational slide show. These will receive special sleeving attention but will otherwise not be separated from the paper script found in the same folder.
ECOC Work Plan
Here is the header portion of the work plan developed for the ECOC collection. Some header data overlaps that of the accession checklist. The main purpose of this document is to communicate the significance of the collection to the archivist. This is accomplished by the accessioning processor answering a series of questions designed to assist the archivist with determining how to prioritize the processing of the collection and the level to which it should be processed.ECOC Work Plan
As I made my high level review of the box contents I noted the label text and original order of each of the eighty-five (85) folders. The contents of each folder seem to agree with its label. This indicated to me that, overall, the collection came fairly well-organized. The condition of the folders is another matter. They exhibit some past, light water damage and would benefit from refoldering.
One set of questions on the work plan is; "How will you organize the collection? Is there any existing meaningful order? What series will you use?" Although this was not a difficult question, I found that answering it was the same amount of work as just reorganizing the folder labels I had already captured electronically. Using the suggested series groupings in the Processing Manual I was able to quickly organize the 85 folders intellectually in the following proposed series and sub-series filing units:
- Correspondence [4 folders]
- Operational records [3 folders]
- Program records
- Air Quality [12 folders]
- Conservation (Energy, Water) [12 folders]
- Educational [6 folders]
- Transportation [5 folders]
- Water Quality [1 folder]
- Project records [26 folders]
- Public relational records [16 folders]
All this fun work was topped off with generating the AT resource record from the accession record.
Towards the end of the day I presented the above two forms to my supervisor for approval and consulted with her about next steps. She suggested that I write up work tickets for the preservation activities, refoldering, labeling, and reboxing so that the work can be assigned to a student assistant.
Another next step will be to review and complete the resource record. My supervisor advised that she has the student assistants perform the data entry of the filing unit information in AT resource record. That would be the series, sub-series, and folder children. All of the data entry is the realm of the archivist processor.
We also discussed that I would update the estimated time frame for processing based on guidance provided in either the Processing Manual and/or the UC Minimal Processing Guide. Also, I'll look at clarifying the series/sub-series filing unit, and determine if I'll do folder level descriptions.
Wednesday, August 29, 2012
Internship - Day 2.0
First Accession - ECOC
It's appropriate that my first UCI Special Collections and Archives (SC&A) accession on the records of the Environmental Coalition of Orange County (ECOC) coincides with the 50th anniversary of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, a foundational document in modern environmentalism. In 1972, ten years after the publication of Silent Spring, the ECOC was formed by environmental activists to bring visibility to issues, concerns, and threats to the region's ecology. The ECOC communicated to its membership and the public by way of its newsletter, Environmental News.
A sister division within the UCI Libraries recently found a box of ECOC materials while cleaning out a long term storage area and passed it along to Special Collections. Because I expressed an interest in regional history (as opposed to University records), the collection was set aside by my supervisor as one of the collections for me to work on.
Documentation
One of the advantages of interning at UCI SC&A is the excellent documentation available on internal archival procedures. The document I'm using today is the Accessioning Manual for Archival and Manuscript Collections (AM). The Accessioning Manual is a 17-page accompaniment to the larger Archival Processing Manual (APM) and provides guidance for the initial handling of materials that come into the custody of SC&A.
Accession Checklist
My work day started with filling out an online Archival Collection Accession Checklist that captures the output of work guided by the AM. Since I'm already comfortable with Archivists's Toolkit (AT), and my supervisor granted me access, I began inputting data into a new AT accession record while using the checklist to as a road map. As I made a quick pass through the unprocessed folders in the ECOC box, I made processing notes on the following areas to help me gather my thoughts about a processing plan and to ask questions of my supervisor :
Paging from the Stacks
I knew I needed to develop a succinct description of the collection's provenance, which is why I asked my supervisor last week about paging copies of the ECOC's newsletter from a processed collection in the stacks. Even though it would have been easier to have one of the student assistants page the specific container, I asked to be shown how to do it myself. My supervisor cheerfully guided me through the steps of finding the container location in the online stacks database, and then walking me into the stacks to find the row, cabinet, shelf, and box. I filled out a paging flag to take the place of the paged box and hefted the box back to my desk. First retrieval accomplished! Later in the day when I had finished using the paged material, I returned the box to the stacks and put the paging flag in the tray to be tallied for reporting purposes.
Accession Record Review
Towards the end of the day, my supervisor and I got together to review my progress. My previously stated goal of having a processing plan ready for her review was not so much overly aggressive as it was inexperienced. I didn't have a processing plan yet, but I had accomplished inputting the accession record in AT. My supervisor made a suggestion on improving the accession description to make it conform to repository standards. She also provided guidance on filling out the access restrictions note. Other than that, I'm ready to move on to developing the processing plan next week.
It's appropriate that my first UCI Special Collections and Archives (SC&A) accession on the records of the Environmental Coalition of Orange County (ECOC) coincides with the 50th anniversary of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, a foundational document in modern environmentalism. In 1972, ten years after the publication of Silent Spring, the ECOC was formed by environmental activists to bring visibility to issues, concerns, and threats to the region's ecology. The ECOC communicated to its membership and the public by way of its newsletter, Environmental News.
A sister division within the UCI Libraries recently found a box of ECOC materials while cleaning out a long term storage area and passed it along to Special Collections. Because I expressed an interest in regional history (as opposed to University records), the collection was set aside by my supervisor as one of the collections for me to work on.
Documentation
One of the advantages of interning at UCI SC&A is the excellent documentation available on internal archival procedures. The document I'm using today is the Accessioning Manual for Archival and Manuscript Collections (AM). The Accessioning Manual is a 17-page accompaniment to the larger Archival Processing Manual (APM) and provides guidance for the initial handling of materials that come into the custody of SC&A.
Accession Checklist
My work day started with filling out an online Archival Collection Accession Checklist that captures the output of work guided by the AM. Since I'm already comfortable with Archivists's Toolkit (AT), and my supervisor granted me access, I began inputting data into a new AT accession record while using the checklist to as a road map. As I made a quick pass through the unprocessed folders in the ECOC box, I made processing notes on the following areas to help me gather my thoughts about a processing plan and to ask questions of my supervisor :
- Principal names
- Separation candidates
- Restriction/destruction candidates
- Preservation/handling candidates
Paging from the Stacks
I knew I needed to develop a succinct description of the collection's provenance, which is why I asked my supervisor last week about paging copies of the ECOC's newsletter from a processed collection in the stacks. Even though it would have been easier to have one of the student assistants page the specific container, I asked to be shown how to do it myself. My supervisor cheerfully guided me through the steps of finding the container location in the online stacks database, and then walking me into the stacks to find the row, cabinet, shelf, and box. I filled out a paging flag to take the place of the paged box and hefted the box back to my desk. First retrieval accomplished! Later in the day when I had finished using the paged material, I returned the box to the stacks and put the paging flag in the tray to be tallied for reporting purposes.
Accession Record Review
Towards the end of the day, my supervisor and I got together to review my progress. My previously stated goal of having a processing plan ready for her review was not so much overly aggressive as it was inexperienced. I didn't have a processing plan yet, but I had accomplished inputting the accession record in AT. My supervisor made a suggestion on improving the accession description to make it conform to repository standards. She also provided guidance on filling out the access restrictions note. Other than that, I'm ready to move on to developing the processing plan next week.
Monday, August 27, 2012
Internship - Day 1.6
Notes to self in between Days 1 and 2:
1) Obtain access from IT to log into Special Collections computers and department programs. (My supervisor has initiated this.) Done.
2) The proper title for the first collection I'll be processing is;
3) Review the following documents;
4) Look for original accession ID for ECOC in Archivists' Toolkit. None.
1) Obtain access from IT to log into Special Collections computers and department programs. (My supervisor has initiated this.) Done.
2) The proper title for the first collection I'll be processing is;
- Environmental Coalition of Orange County, Inc. (California) records Done.
3) Review the following documents;
- Archival Processing Manual In progress.
- Accessioning Manual Finished.
- Guidelines for Efficient Archival Processing in the UC Libraries In progress.
- Archivists' Toolkit user manual (Chapters 9, 11, 12)
4) Look for original accession ID for ECOC in Archivists' Toolkit. None.
Sunday, August 26, 2012
Internship - Day 1.5
Finished How to Manage Processing in Archives and Special Collections by Pam Hackbart-Dean and Elizageth Slomba (Society of American Archivists, 2012). Be sure to refer to my flagged areas throughout the internship for pointers on what to do and when to do it.
There are several forms/templates in the book that should be helpful to use to reinforce the processing experience.
There are several forms/templates in the book that should be helpful to use to reinforce the processing experience.
Friday, August 24, 2012
Internship - Day 1.4
Procedural Question and Answer
I began conducting background research on my first collection processing task on the Environmental Coalition of Orange County, Inc. (ECOC). My initial searches returned a few hits in existing UCI Special Collections guides listed on OAC. Most significant to my current need are copies of the ECOC newsletter, Environmental News (1972-1977) located in the “Guide to the The Laguna Greenbelt, Inc. records.” From the newsletters, I figure I'll get a handle on who the principals were in the organization and perhaps find enough info to develop an organizational description.
My question to my internship site supervisor, is one of procedure. Do I need to formally request
access to the Laguna Greenbelt records by filling out a call ticket or am I
authorized to pull the records directly from the stacks? I can see value in the
formal approach because research in our own materials could then be tracked on usage reports.
My supervisor's answer is as follows:
There are a few options. The locations for all of our archival/manuscript collections are listed in our stacks database, at http://staffbeta.lib.uci.edu/apps/locator/index.php. You can log in with your UCInetID and there you can see the location for each box in a specific collection. You can feel free to review material at your desk, either by asking a student to page the boxes for you, or by paging the boxes yourself. We have salmon-colored staff paging flags to mark the space on the shelf when a box is taken from the shelf. I am happy to review this procedure with you in person on Wednesday.
I began conducting background research on my first collection processing task on the Environmental Coalition of Orange County, Inc. (ECOC). My initial searches returned a few hits in existing UCI Special Collections guides listed on OAC. Most significant to my current need are copies of the ECOC newsletter, Environmental News (1972-1977) located in the “Guide to the The Laguna Greenbelt, Inc. records.” From the newsletters, I figure I'll get a handle on who the principals were in the organization and perhaps find enough info to develop an organizational description.
My supervisor's answer is as follows:
There are a few options. The locations for all of our archival/manuscript collections are listed in our stacks database, at http://staffbeta.lib.uci.edu/apps/locator/index.php. You can log in with your UCInetID and there you can see the location for each box in a specific collection. You can feel free to review material at your desk, either by asking a student to page the boxes for you, or by paging the boxes yourself. We have salmon-colored staff paging flags to mark the space on the shelf when a box is taken from the shelf. I am happy to review this procedure with you in person on Wednesday.
Wednesday, August 22, 2012
Internship - Day 1.0
My first day at my first internship flew by! It was a great day and I'm fortunate to have an excellent site supervisor. She tweeted my impending arrival here. I spent the morning getting inducted and reviewing various training and policy and procedure manuals. Here's my pleasant work space. Behind me are windows facing northeast with the San Gabriel Mountains in the distance.
Here are more details about my first day:
9:00 AM - Showed up at the Library HR to register as an intern. I signed an oath to uphold the U.S. Constitution and to relinquish all claims to new patents. No problem on number 1. Number 2 seems highly unlikely it'll be an issue.
9:15 AM - My internship supervisor, showed me my nice workspace, where to find archival supplies, and introduced me to staff members Steve and Alix. Michelle Light stuck her head in to welcome me aboard. There are other folks to still meet, like Andrew and Patricia who works in the Science Library.
My supervisor went over my reading duties for the morning including the online "Student Assistant Handbook," "Archival Processing Manual, Accessioning Manual," and online "Documents for Interns." The also a "Guidelines for Efficient Archival Processing in the UC Libraries" document that my supervisor would like me to test drive while I'm processing the collections assigned to me. She will also involve me in any learning opportunities that come along including attending meetings! I asked about the possibility of getting exposed to acquisition policies and reference room activities.
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| UCI Special Collections and Archives intern work space. |
9:00 AM - Showed up at the Library HR to register as an intern. I signed an oath to uphold the U.S. Constitution and to relinquish all claims to new patents. No problem on number 1. Number 2 seems highly unlikely it'll be an issue.
9:15 AM - My internship supervisor, showed me my nice workspace, where to find archival supplies, and introduced me to staff members Steve and Alix. Michelle Light stuck her head in to welcome me aboard. There are other folks to still meet, like Andrew and Patricia who works in the Science Library.
My supervisor went over my reading duties for the morning including the online "Student Assistant Handbook," "Archival Processing Manual, Accessioning Manual," and online "Documents for Interns." The also a "Guidelines for Efficient Archival Processing in the UC Libraries" document that my supervisor would like me to test drive while I'm processing the collections assigned to me. She will also involve me in any learning opportunities that come along including attending meetings! I asked about the possibility of getting exposed to acquisition policies and reference room activities.
For lunch, my supervisor introduced me to the various fare at the Student Center. We both settled on Rubio's. She also explained "bobas" to me. Apparently I missed a day of pop culture training as my wife knew all about this drink of milky tea and gummy bears.
After lunch I poked around the UCI installation of Archivists' Toolkit which is currently at Version 2, build 13. At 2:00 PM, my supervisor and I joined four other UCI Library colleagues for a California Digital Library (CDL) webinar. The subject was updates to CDL's digital objects repository, Merritt. It's interesting to see that in addition to the Online Archive of California (OAC), CDL also offers a place for member organizations to store digital objects in a dark archives.
From about 3:00 PM to my departure at 5:30 PM, I began reviewing the first of the three collections set aside for me to process as the primary goal of my internship. The first thing a processor is supposed to develop is a preliminary work plan. This preliminary work plan is then reviewed and approved by the archivist before any real work begins.
The preliminary work plan is not typically the time when a processor does the background research on the source of the collection (that's more during development of the Processing Work Plan or Work Sheet), but I wanted to get a quick understanding of the nature of the Environmental Coalition of Orange County (ECOC). Neither a review of the box contents nor a Google search turned up an organization description. So I turned to the OAC and found a decent hit in UCI's own Special Collections -- copies of Environmental News, the ECOC's newsletter.
Thus ended the first day on the job at the internship.
After lunch I poked around the UCI installation of Archivists' Toolkit which is currently at Version 2, build 13. At 2:00 PM, my supervisor and I joined four other UCI Library colleagues for a California Digital Library (CDL) webinar. The subject was updates to CDL's digital objects repository, Merritt. It's interesting to see that in addition to the Online Archive of California (OAC), CDL also offers a place for member organizations to store digital objects in a dark archives.
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| Opening up the box of unprocessed ECOC records for the first time. |
The preliminary work plan is not typically the time when a processor does the background research on the source of the collection (that's more during development of the Processing Work Plan or Work Sheet), but I wanted to get a quick understanding of the nature of the Environmental Coalition of Orange County (ECOC). Neither a review of the box contents nor a Google search turned up an organization description. So I turned to the OAC and found a decent hit in UCI's own Special Collections -- copies of Environmental News, the ECOC's newsletter.
Thus ended the first day on the job at the internship.
Tuesday, August 21, 2012
7 Things To Do Before Your Internship Ends
This was tweeted by JobLIST Library Jobs @ALA_JobLIST this morning...
7 Things To Do Before Your Internship Ends
Summer internships are wrapping up and you’re probably either heading back to school or preparing to enter the “real world” and start a full-time career. For new grads with little work experience in their field, internships can be a huge advantage to helping land your first entry-level job. But just because you completed your internship doesn’t mean you should just say your goodbyes and write the company off. Here are seven things you need to do before exiting your internship.
1. Say thank you. As soon as you can, send personalized emails or notes to everyone you had the chance to work with over the course of your internship to emphasize your gratitude for the opportunity and experience gained. Failing to properly say your thank you’s before exiting your internship will make you seem ungrateful.
2. Get feedback. Ask those you worked closely with for constructive criticism on your internship performance. This will help know what skills you need to improve upon for future jobs.
3. Update your resume and portfolio. Add your internships to your resume and include what your responsibilities were. Also, if you have any projects you worked on that you can include in your portfolio, ask for some copies of those documents before exiting your internship.
4. Stay in touch. Connect with people you worked with on LinkedIn and keep in touch with them! Having strong connections within your field can help you land a job. Also, you can ask if they would be willing to serve as references during your job search and/or provide you a recommendation. Don’t wait too long after exiting your internship to get back in touch.
5. Leave the door open for future work. If the company doesn’t have full-time openings right now or if you are heading back to school and aren’t available to work, still express your interest in having a future with the company. You never know when they’ll have an opening, and if you’re still in school, you’ll be on the job market before you know it.
6. Don’t burn bridges. Even if you don’t have any interest in working for the company in the future, still be courteous and professional when making your exit. You never know when your paths may cross with your internship co-workers again, so don’t leave a bad impression. Whether you want to work for the company or not, take advantage of all the new contacts you’ve made within your field.
7. Reflect on the experience. Internships teach you a lot about what you like and what you don’t like when it comes to your career. If you didn’t like the internship, was it the company culture that turned you off or the job tasks? What have you learned about your field and what would you still like to learn? Has this internship changed your ultimate career goals? Keep in mind that some internships are not always a true reflection of what you would actually be doing in your career. If you spent most of your time fetching coffee and making copies, look for another internship opportunity that will give you a better idea of what a job in your field really looks like.
7 Things To Do Before Your Internship Ends
Summer internships are wrapping up and you’re probably either heading back to school or preparing to enter the “real world” and start a full-time career. For new grads with little work experience in their field, internships can be a huge advantage to helping land your first entry-level job. But just because you completed your internship doesn’t mean you should just say your goodbyes and write the company off. Here are seven things you need to do before exiting your internship.
1. Say thank you. As soon as you can, send personalized emails or notes to everyone you had the chance to work with over the course of your internship to emphasize your gratitude for the opportunity and experience gained. Failing to properly say your thank you’s before exiting your internship will make you seem ungrateful.
2. Get feedback. Ask those you worked closely with for constructive criticism on your internship performance. This will help know what skills you need to improve upon for future jobs.
3. Update your resume and portfolio. Add your internships to your resume and include what your responsibilities were. Also, if you have any projects you worked on that you can include in your portfolio, ask for some copies of those documents before exiting your internship.
4. Stay in touch. Connect with people you worked with on LinkedIn and keep in touch with them! Having strong connections within your field can help you land a job. Also, you can ask if they would be willing to serve as references during your job search and/or provide you a recommendation. Don’t wait too long after exiting your internship to get back in touch.
5. Leave the door open for future work. If the company doesn’t have full-time openings right now or if you are heading back to school and aren’t available to work, still express your interest in having a future with the company. You never know when they’ll have an opening, and if you’re still in school, you’ll be on the job market before you know it.
6. Don’t burn bridges. Even if you don’t have any interest in working for the company in the future, still be courteous and professional when making your exit. You never know when your paths may cross with your internship co-workers again, so don’t leave a bad impression. Whether you want to work for the company or not, take advantage of all the new contacts you’ve made within your field.
7. Reflect on the experience. Internships teach you a lot about what you like and what you don’t like when it comes to your career. If you didn’t like the internship, was it the company culture that turned you off or the job tasks? What have you learned about your field and what would you still like to learn? Has this internship changed your ultimate career goals? Keep in mind that some internships are not always a true reflection of what you would actually be doing in your career. If you spent most of your time fetching coffee and making copies, look for another internship opportunity that will give you a better idea of what a job in your field really looks like.
Monday, August 20, 2012
An Archivist Apprentice Begins
In Chapter 6, "Training and Managing Processing Staff," the authors discuss how students, interns, and volunteers can form a large portion of the processing staff in university and college special collections. As it turns out, I fit all three descriptions! I'm an MLIS student volunteering my services as an intern at UCI.
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| Audra Eagle Yun |
This coming Wednesday I begin interning for UC Irvine's Special Collections and Archives. I'll have the pleasure of working under the guidance of archivists Audra Eagle Yun and Michelle Light.
The internship course I'm taking is LIBR 294 in the MLIS program at San Jose State University. My faculty supervisor is the inexhaustible Lori Lindberg. Lori was also my instructor last year for an EAD course.
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| Lori Lindberg |
Everything is lined up. I'm to show up at the UCI Library Human Resources at 9:00 AM. Following my induction I'll be reporting to Audra in Special Collections. I've also had my planned learning outcomes approved by Lori.
My internship learning outcomes are:
- At the end of my internship I will be able to develop archival processing plans.
- At the end of my internship I will be able to recommend archival appraisal actions.
- At the end of my internship I will be able to organize and house archival materials in multiple formats.
- At the end of my internship I will be able to describe archival collections using Describing Archives: A Content Standard (DACS).
- At the end of my internship I will be able to implement some aspects of Greene and Meissner's, "More Product, Less Process."
- At the end of my internship I will be able to input accessions and resources using Archivists' Toolkit.
- At the end of my internship I will be able to create EAD-encoded finding aids for the Online Archive of California (OAC).
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