An Archivist Apprentice Begins

Halfway through How to Manage Processing in Archives and Special Collections by Pam Hackbart-Dean and Elizageth Slomba (Society of American Archivists, 2012).

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. 

Audra Eagle Yun

Interns are encouraged to keep a blog of their archival experience. I'm to post at least once a week to describe what I've accomplished and how I feel about the work. Right now I'm experiencing high anticipation, not unlike starting a new job where there are a lot of unknowns.

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.

Lori Lindberg

I must put in 135 hours over the course of the semester. I've made arrangements with my employer, Smile Brands, to take the next sixteen Wednesdays as paid time off (PTO) so I can spend the day at UCI.

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).