The Red Cross Archives

So what is in the archives of the American Red Cross? Before I begin, just a quick heads up, the American Red Cross has been a disaster relief with the United States since 1882. Therefore, many of what is in the archives comes from some of the less cheerful times in the nation’s history. For example, there is a large section in the archives from the Red Cross’s involvement in World War I and II. Of these include sample kits that the Red Cross gave to American Prisoners of War in camps. Many POWs have thanked the Red Cross, and many have thanked the Red Cross for saving their lives. The Red Cross also has items from other wars such as the Vietnam War, including an RPG that came in through a Red Cross field hospital.  Miraculously, no one was injured in the hospital. In the archives is also items from times when the nation was not at war, by people were still suffering. One such is a sample seed kit that the Red Cross handed out during the dust bowl, where many were struggling to put food in the ground and on their table. Also, the Red Cross has items from natural disasters from the 1881 Michigan Forest fires to the 1905 Galveston, Texas floods that devastated the town. The Red Cross also has items from more recent disasters, such as Hurricane Katrina and 9/11. The Red Cross also has uniforms from a nurse’s outfit in WW I to what a Red Cross volunteer would wear in Operation Desert Storm. The Red Cross also has something that is also telling, space to put items from where the humanitarian efforts of the Red Cross are needed again. Overall, this post was not propaganda for the Red Cross, (that’s in the archives too). It was that history has a lot of ups and downs. However, in those downs are people and organizations helping people wherever they may be.

Collections Internship with Save Our Seminary - Part 3: Material Culture

Possibly my favorite part of my collections internship with historic preservation nonprofit Save Our Seminary (SOS) was taking inventory of new acquisitions to the organization’s archives. One of SOS’s board members monitors sites like eBay for paraphernalia related to the school. I was surprised that there would be things sold online related to the school, but that speaks to the wide spread of the girls that attended the school. One yearbook I looked at listed girls from a huge variety of states, some even from overseas. It was rare for a student to actually be from the DC area. And like any college, the attendees had a lot of pride in their alma mater; National Park Seminary had an active alumni network even after the school closed in the 1940s.

A 1920s school yearbook. The girls all sport stylish 1920s bobs and each girl
has a fun, congenial description of her personality written by the yearbook staff. 
Another interesting note: The Yearbook was called "The Acorn" and you may be
able to see the squirrels drawn in on the blocks behind the women’s pictures.

Unfortunately, many of these alumna are passing away and their estates are being sold. The majority of the acquisitions I went through were from the collection of one particular woman who attended NPS in the early 1920s. Interestingly enough, my supervisor and I discovered through some archival detective work that this woman and her sister both went to National Park Seminary…and must have married two men who were brothers!

A note from one student to another asking to meet at one of the sorority buildings.

It was amazing how much stuff these women kept: playbills, ticket stubs, notes from friends and faculty, postcards, letters. One thing I found particularly amusing were these short notes that I dubbed “early twentieth-century text messages.” Sometimes these were warning notes from school faculty regarding money owed or dorm rooms that needed to be cleaned. Other times they were notes from sorority sisters asking the girl to meet them at a certain place later that day. It was interesting to see how people communicated before email and text.

A scrapbook featuring playbills and other paper ephemera.

A whimsical name plate pasted into a scrapbook. These name plates with characters
were common and some of the paper decorations in the scrapbooks are quite elaborate.

I also had a chance to look at yearbooks, school catalogs sent out to advertise the college to potential students, and scrapbooks made by students of their time at the school. It was fascinating to see fashions and hairstyles change over the years but also to get a sense of what it was like to be a student at NPS. Since I scrapbooked my own college experience, it was interesting to see the change and continuity between scrapbooks (and college life) in the early twentieth century and today. In fact, I decided to use the scrapbook collection as the source base for my senior thesis. All in all, after spending so much of my internship focusing on the buildings of the school, it was enlightening to get a glimpse on the lives that were lived within those buildings. 

Giving life to buildings: The field hockey team sat in front of the stone arches below

 for this picture. I found this photo interesting because school sports teams still take photos like this one.

 

• Read the first and second posts on this internship.
• For more information on National Park Seminary historic district, visit www.saveourseminary.org.
• Find public history internship opportunities.

The last few weeks of the internship, I continued working on Neatline ( interactive map) that the library has worked on as it pertains to the history of the library. I was able to organize each exhibit and or event that the library has worked on since their inception. Their inception was in 1992, but their first exhibits were made during the 2000s. Camilla had completed all the information, what I needed to do was to organize each singular event into three categories, exhibits, community outreach, and partnership with other organizations.

We also have each one of these categories in different colors, green, blue, and red. Once I completed that, there was one last thing for me to do, and that was post 2 exhibits, one was a photography one and the other was a Holocaust one in the library. The first one I put up was the photography one, which was somewhat challenging due to carefulness that went in it. Each photograph was placed in frame and there were about 26 photographs that needed to be placed on wall in the library. Again I had to be very careful about not dropping it and also not putting my fingertips on the glass frame. The last exhibit, I helped Nickolas put up, I had already finished the internship and I decided to go Nick's office and see what he was doing and I ended up helping him get the Holocaust exhibit ready.


I had not known that once I had completed the 120 hours, that the internship was over, I had hoped to continue for a couple of days in January, since I am taking a Winter course. But it could not be, but I am very grateful to have been able to intern at the library this semester, it was very beneficial. It helped me understand what goes on in a library setting, and the people that I worked with were very helpful and welcoming, finally I would like to thank Dr. Blair who was the one who recommended me, without her none of this would have been possible.

Lessons from Heritage Montgomery and Maryland State Archives

My summer interning for Heritage Montgomery and working with the Maryland State Archives provided valuable insight and experience for me, as I look forward into my career post-graduation. My time at the Maryland State Archives was filled with beneficial networking opportunities and information on navigating careers with a history degree. The MSA’s summer internship program is incredibly helpful because the staff provide departmental presentations every week that address each department’s background and duties. This is helpful when considering which part of a public history institution can most fit a student’s abilities. For example, those inclined with customer service and advanced degrees are apt to become reference librarians or work in the acquisitions department. The staff was also helpful in understanding how specific employees came to their position and what steps in their career led them there. This summer was also incredibly helpful when determining the next steps in my career as well.

Through the endless hours of cataloging and scanning collection material into the MSA database, I came to the conclusion that a career of archiving was not the professional choice for me. The amount of research that can come out of archival work is hugely beneficial and extremely appealing to a history undergraduate, but my experience has shown that I am not an archivist. This was the most enlightening moment that my internship provided because it taught me how to figure out my personal strengths and weaknesses in a professional environment. In addition, the knowledge I gathered from observing other professionals in their career inspired me to take steps toward graduate school.

At the conclusion of my summer with Heritage Montgomery and the Maryland State Archives, I reflected that my internship was one of the most rewarding experiences of my life. I learned more about myself than I had known previously and I was able to produce a valuable asset to Pleasant View Historic Site’s success as a small community museum. Being a part of this experience has taught me intrinsic life lessons that I will be able to take with me into other careers. Finally, Pleasant View Historic Site holds a special place in the history of Gaithersburg, Montgomery County, Maryland, and my heart.

The 1970s Project

While conducting preliminary research for my Masters thesis, Freedom and Total Loss: Hippies, Migration and the Back-to-the-Land Movement in 1970s Vermont, I came across a project that was currently underway at the Vermont Historical Society (VHS) titled, Freaks, Radicals & Hippies: Counterculture in 1970s Vermont. VHS had been awarded a sizable ($117,500) two-year federal grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services to conduct a project that would incorporate a large-scale oral history endeavor, survey and cumulative physical and online exhibit. The project aimed to record what the counterculture experience looked like in Vermont in the late 1960s and 1970s, and the lasting influence that it had on the community and culture of the state. I think most Vermonters would agree, whether they are for, against or indifferent to the event, that the surge of progressive urban migrants had substantial impact. The discovery of the VHS project for me felt serendipitous, even validating. Prior to this I had held fears that my thesis topic was too obscure, especially to study outside of the state. I thought, “Even the federal government is doling out funds on a topic that they feel is worthy of research.” The history of this migration, and the way it played out in the social, economic and political atmosphere of the state felt unusual and meaningful, even pointedly current as democratic socialist, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders was concurrently gathering popularity in his run for democratic presidential nomination against establishment candidate Hillary Clinton.

            

             When I started my internship with VHS the entirety of research for the project had been conducted. The team was in the process of developing the exhibit (to open September 2016). As a result, I was tasked with a few projects that would contribute towards the online content. The majority of work involved creating audio logs for oral histories. This consisted of consolidating dialog topics from the interview into small paragraphs that represented ten-minute segments. I also created associated keywords that would be plugged into the online catalog search engine. Although creation of these audio logs was a tedious process, hearing these interviews introduced me to names, locations and events that have become tremendously informative to my research. In fact, my internship with VHS became a direct lesson in reciprocity, the ultimate objective of any institutional-intern relationship: A month ago all fifty interviews became available to the public on the VHS website. My work with the audio logs helped to speed that process, which in turn gave me access to an integral source that I plan to draw substantial material from. In fact, as far as I know I am the only researcher to have used the interviews thus far.

            

              As my thesis focuses in part on the tensions between native Vermonters and the counterculture newcomers, I was keen to observe how contemporary Vermonters would digest an exhibit that highlighted hippie history, albeit scars and all. As it turned out the VHS project was not absent from public criticism. The seeds of this criticism may stem from the sharp differences between the two groups. The migrant hippies were a homogenous bunch that did not conform to the socio-economic conditions of residents in the state at the time. While young, they were largely from middle to upper-class families, urban or suburban, and college educated. A survey conducted by VHS found 75 percent of them to have college degrees (Rathke, 2016). They also arrived en masse. For a century, population in Vermont had remained almost stagnant. In the 1960s the population increased by 14 percent and in the 1970s, 15 percent. The VHS team was acutely aware of the tensions that came from this cultural divide and they sought to objectively balance public memory within their research. An article in the newsletter on the upcoming exhibit exemplified their understanding of this, “‘Many people believe that the ’ 70s were a deeply controversial time, and that the influx of new people ruined the state forever.’ Our research has found a deep-seated undercurrent.” (Nelson, 2016) However, the attendees of their story collecting “town hall-style” forums, oral history interviewees and survey respondents were overwhelmingly counter culture identifiers. With a project that sought to tell the story of change, they struggled to reach the state’s constant.          

The conservative news network Watchdog.org published an article soon after the endowment of their 2014 grant that shammed the historical society and federal government for wasting tax dollars. Watchdog, a 501(c)(3), is known for policing federal spending and receives it’s own funds from unnamed sources, though suspects points to right-wing special interest groups. (Peters, 2012) The article essentially truncated the project into a familiar voyeuristic, surface-level discourse of the counter-culture, void of any deeper meaning than nudity or drug-use. Yet, the web article stirred a lively discussion in the comments section. Perhaps most telling was an exchange between contributors “Jones” and “Richard Williams”:

Another, amoung many ,examples of the Liberal/Left nakedly stealing citizens money through taxation, and spending it/wasting it on their favorite causes and agendas..
- Jones

In case you were asleep, Vermont has long been a state that supports all the things you hate. You are welcome to stay away. 

- Richard Williams

References:

Amanda Gustin quoted in Julie Nelson. “Listen to the Voices of Those Who Were There.” History Connections 10, no. 2-3 (2016): 6.

Freaks, Radicals & Hippies: Counterculture in 1970s Vermont, Vermont Historical Society, http://vermonthistory.org/research/vermont-1970s.

Bruce Parker. “Taxpayers stripped of $117,521 for naked hippie commune research.” Vermont Watchdog, October 24, 2014, http://watchdog.org/178853/naked-hippie-research/.  

Justin Peters. “‘Serious Point-of-view Journalism’?.” Columbia Journalism Review, September 13, 2012, http://www.cjr.org/united_states_project/serious_point-of-view_journalism.php.

Lisa Rathke. “Project details impact of 1970s counterculture on Vermont.” Barre-Montpelier Times Argus, September 19, 2016.

Giving the tours at the Red Cross Headquarters

One major aspect of interning in the history department at the Red Cross is to give the tours to anyone who schedules an appointment, or those who walk in Wednesday or Friday at 10 and 2. The other intern and I had to learn the whole tour in a matter of weeks. The tour is a half hour long that ranges from the building itself (constructed before World War I by the architects Trowbridge and Livingston, cornerstone laid by Woodrow Wilson, who was president at the time) to a marble bust of Henry Dunant, the Swiss businessman, who during his travels, encountered a battle at Solferino, Italy in 1849, where he gathered the residents of the town to help the wounded, who were just left where they were. Dunant later wrote a book, called a Memory of Solferino. In that book, he called for a reformation on the care for the wounded on the battle field. Thus, the 1869 Geneva Convention, which was where the International Red Cross and the symbol, the inverted Swiss Flag, was established, as well as rules regulating the care for the wounded and prisoners of War. During the tour, we also talk about Clara Barton, where we have several items of hers on display as a part of the tour. These items include the field desk that Barton used during the Civil War (she was an avid writer, even for the time) as well as the sewing kit where she would sew bandages for the wounded. There is also an invitation for the first meeting of the American Red Cross in 1882, to her own personal diary. The items go on, from paintings donated to the American Red Cross by prominent painters such as James Montgomery Flagg, to a set of stained glass windows that are nothing less than breathtaking, to quilts that were signed by elites. 

The Headquarters of the American Red Cross

The Guitars at the Mansion on O Street

The Mansion on O Street is renowned for its strong connection to the music industry.  It’s founder, H. H. Leonards, sits on the Board of Directors for both the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Songwriter Hall of Fame, and the hotel is patronized from celebrities from Kenny Loggins to Jackson Browne to Emmylou Harris.  One of the crown jewels of the Mansion is its extensive collection of valuable, historic, autographed, and otherwise notable guitars, which I spent my time at the Mansion researching and cataloguing.  The collection boasts donations from notable figures such as the legendary Les Paul, whose name has become synonymous with rock and roll music, and Bob Dylan, whose signature is adorned on 3 different guitars in the Mansion.  Some notable selections from the collection include: a Fender Stratocaster valued at $75,000, hand painted by artist Ralph Steadman, who is known for his work with Rolling Stone magazine and Hunter S. Thompson; an Alvarez guitar signed by Janis Joplin, which is in a display case that also bears her death certificate and will; a custom, hand-painted Les Paul donated by the man himself; a Fender Telecaster signed by Bruce Springsteen on his induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame; a Gibson J-45 donated by the then-president of Gibson and signed by Yusuf (formerly Cat Stevens); and a miniature guitar signed by all 5 of the Eagles in 1994 (which is exceptionally rare).  As I began to collect the stories behind these instruments and the people that signed them, I began to realize the extent of the history and reach of the Mansion.  Suddenly I realized that I was working in a location that is beloved by all kinds, from musicians and actors, to senators and U.S. presidents (all of whom have visited since Ronald Reagan), to leaders like Rosa Parks, and to regular tourists visiting the nation’s capital for the very first time.  My time there was a glimpse into a world far beyond my own, and one which I hope to be a part of someday.

The Mansion on O Street: A Wonderland in the Heart of DuPont Circle

My time at the Mansion was a fascinating, albeit fairly confusing experience. I had no idea what to expect when I walked in the doors, and what I found was a veritable Wonderland of memorabilia, knick knacks, and art pieces of incredible beauty and worth. The hardest part, (aside from being on my feet all day) was finding my way around the place. The labyrinth created by the interconnected rooms, passageways, and secret doors provides enough to disorientation to keep a person wandering for hours. Not to mention the near infinite amount of unique objects that line the walls, which together with the house itself, should keep a person distracted until the next millennium. It was nice to know that as lost as I was, there were 3 other interns and a large group of children who were equally confused.  I took my time to explore the museum, learning all of the various rooms, hallways, and secret doors.  I also spent a lot of time familiarizing myself with the myriad of historic and valuable guitars that have found their way to the Mansion over the last 30 years.

The Mansion itself is actually an unassuming series of 5 townhouses just off of DuPont Circle.  The original structure, so the story goes, was built in the early 1890s by Edward Clark, the architect of the U.S. Capital, for use by him and his two brothers, Champ Clark and "the artist."  The building consisted of three townhouses that shared a common ground floor, with separate living spaces on the upper floors.  According to the narrative resented by the Mansion (which should be noted does not present acceptable sources for this information) the Mansion was then inhabited by J. Edgar Hoover's G-men in the 1930s, who then proceeded to trash the place.  On Valentine's Day, 1980, the Mansion's current owner, H., purchased the original building and began the process of converting it into its unique Hotel-Museum hybrid.  She bought the townhouse next door and built another, bringing the total count to five.  In addition, she installed over 70 secret doors that connect rooms, hallways, staircases, cabinets, and other wonders.

H. has also tried to make the Mansion into a haven for artists and creatives, who, through the Mansion's Artist-in-Residency program, can stay for free while they work on their art.  Many have come through on their visits to the nation's capital, but the pride of the program would have to be the decade-long stay of civil rights leader Rosa Parks, who's room of choice now bears her name.  

A Brief History on Pleasant View Historic Site

The central aspect of my internship involved archiving the paper material and records related to Pleasant View Historic Site. This process ensures the longevity of Pleasant View’s historical records and its significance in African American history in Montgomery County, MD. Through this process, I was able to delve into Pleasant View’s history and unravel the story of this significant church. Pleasant View Historic Site is located on Rt. 28 towards Darnestown in Gaithersburg, MD.

In 1868, Thomas Neverson, George W. Johnson and Charles Beander originally purchased the three-acre property that Pleasant View resides on for $54. The original deed specifies that this land be used for the sole purpose of establishing an African American Methodist Episcopal Church. During the aftermath of the Civil War and the emancipation of slaves, African American churches, like Pleasant View, quickly emerged to create self-sufficient communities and advance the quality of life for African Americans. In 1868, Pleasant View built a one-room schoolhouse to serve as the congregation’s place of worship, community gatherings, and educational facility. This schoolhouse remained the center of Pleasant View’s community until 1888, when the first original church structure was erected.  By the turn of the century, Pleasant View’s community consisted of a new church, schoolhouse and cemetery.

 In 1902, the Montgomery County Board of Commissions commissioned the building of a new white school directly across the road from Pleasant View. The old white school was then given to Pleasant View to replace their old schoolhouse. This schoolhouse still stands and is known as the Quince Orchard Schoolhouse. In 1914, a new church was built and during the 1950s extensive improvements were made to the church structure. In 1968, dwindling membership forced Pleasant View Methodist Church to merge with two other white Methodist Churches in the area, Hunting Hill and McDonald Chapel to form Fairhaven Methodist Church. This congregation still worships about a mile down the road from Pleasant View’s original site. Finally, in 1985, the Historic Preservation Commission added Pleasant View Historic Site to the Master Plan for historic preservation.

Pleasant View's history represents the story of African Americans communities in Maryland and provides insight into the African American experience during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. 

The Bridgwater Collection & the Responsibility to Construct a Plural American Story

Samuel Bridgwater was born in Smith County, Tennessee in 1861 to enslaved parents. By 1880, he was a Buffalo Soldier, having enlisted in the 24^th Infantry Regiment. He was stationed at various forts in the west for the better part of a decade, and married Mamie Anderson in 1892 at Fort Huachuca, located in Arizona Territory. Private Bridgwater also fought in the Spanish-American War; he was injured on San Juan Hill, and suffered from yellow fever in the Philippines.

After the war, Samuel and Mamie settled in Helena, Montana—where they raised their family of seven and became involved in the small but active local African American community. Their family home is on the National Register of Historic Places. Octavia, one of Samuel and Mamie’s daughters, followed in her father’s footsteps and served in an all-Black unit of the Army Nurse Corps during World War II. She returned to Helena after the war, and worked as a community nurse midwife.

In the last few weeks of my internship at the National Museum of American History (NMAH), I was tasked with beginning the accessioning and cataloging work of a portion of the Bridgwater Collection. The papers of the collection remained in the purview of the Archives Center; in the Division of Home and Community Life (HCL), I had the task of researching and cataloging personal effects and home furnishings. I happily spent hours in the division’s secured storage areas with the Bridgwater family Bible, Octavia’s purses, multiple sets of family china, tablecloths, napkins, silverware. One of the objects I was most interested in was Octavia’s nurse’s cap. I saw it in the Objects Processing Facility, and assisted with transporting it to collections storage. However, I did not get to catalog it, as it was moved from HCL to the Division of Medicine and Science.

To be clear, collections work is time intensive and is for the detail-oriented. As I mentioned in my first blog post, I was (and am) interested in both collections (the physical objects) and the work of collections management, so I appreciated this opportunity. The storage areas are large and they were quiet (except for the music from my various Pandora stations). Outfitted with archival pens, tags, gloves, and a digital camera, I truly enjoyed interacting with the objects, looking at the various patterns on the tablecloths and napkins, and researching specific china patterns to ensure correct classification in the collections management database.

In addition to being a beneficial learning experience, working with the Bridgwater Collection helped me to begin answering a question that had been lingering in the back of my mind throughout my internship. Walking through the Object Project exhibit, there is a window through which I could see the new National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) taking shape as its grand opening approached. I wondered how NMAAHC’s opening would impact (if at all) NMAH’s collecting and its collections. I was concerned that NMAH would defer to NMAAHC in collecting African American objects and stories, which would negatively impact NMAH’s ability to tell a plural narrative. Working with this newly acquired collection, and learning of other possible future acquisitions gave me some reassurance that there are curators who are committed to telling an inclusive American story. I hope this commitment continues.

Collections Internship with Save Our Seminary: Post 2

The newly renovated Greek Revival gymnasium, which now houses 

condominium units, greets visitors when they enter the National 

Park Seminary historic district. Not too long ago, the 

magnificent building was decaying from neglect. (Rebecca Gale)

As I relayed in my last post, I have been completing an internship with the historic preservation nonprofit Save Our Seminary (SOS), based in Forest Glen, which is responsible for the rescue and restoration of the historic National Park Seminary campus. SOS maintains an archive of objects important to the seminary’s history, and I’ve had the chance to aid with organizing parts of the collection to make it more accessible. 

While my first task was filing slides in archivally safe sleeves, my second project was sorting and filing an extensive set of photos depicting the gradual decay and long-awaited restoration of the historic buildings over the course of two decades. The bulk of the photos were taken by my internship supervisor, a historic preservationist and the executive director of SOS, who has been documenting the state of the campus since before most of us undergraduates were even in existence.

The end result of my project: Two and a half feet of binders
filled with hundreds of photos! Each binder houses photos of
a specific building or sculpture, placed in chronological
order to show change over time.

This collection has amounted to hundreds of photos and dates back to 1990. My job has been to sort photos into categories based on what building or object is pictured and place them into archival sleeves in chronological order so that it will be easy to trace the development of each building over time. Going through the photos has been fascinating, and their existence is a testament to the dedication of people who care about the stories that historic spaces tell, even when they no longer showcase their beauty as originally intended. I remember driving past the seminary campus when it was a tangle of weeds; it’s easy to forget the horrific state of the place looking at its pristine, glowing stucco today.

Some of the photos from the collection, depicting one building (a dorm during
the school era) before and during restoration. You can see the historic fireplace
that was preserved throughout the process. (Photos by Bonnie Rosenthal,
courtesy of Save Our Seminary)

This photo collection is a reminder of the victory that has been won in saving one American treasure and restoring it to life. Whenever I set foot on the seminary campus now, I think back to the mind-boggling images of decay – floors falling down, entire walls sagging, stones buckling, roofs caving in, fires being put out – and my heart warms to see a dream realized in front of me, the dream of a group of people committed to a place that spoke to them. The seminary is a reminder to keep fighting for the preservation of historic places because their story deserves to be told and they are meant to be a site of life once again.

• Read my first post on interning with Save Our Seminary.
• Visit Save Our Seminary's website to learn more about the site's history as well as upcoming events, tours, and lectures.

Internship Post #2

So far the internship in the library has been going very well, I have been working on a variety of different things that involve exhibits and presentations. Never before had I known what it was like putting the actual exhibit posters up, I did that this past month and editing the exhibits is quite time consuming because of constant mistakes that are made, such as grammatical errors and rewrites. One of the main problems that I have personally had with the exhibits, and this all started with the Pleasant View exhibit that our 400 level public history class made, was the fact that there is so much great content that us as students were able to find, but the majority of it had to be removed because all of that cannot fit in a poster. What goes on the poster has to be the most important and it has to be precise. At times that is very frustrating because as an intern I want to do the best possible job I can but also impress my superiors by provinding stellar information, but that information unfortunately gets left behind. Another thing that one most be very careful when physically putting the actual exhibit posters up, is the fact that they have to lined up symmetrically. Since I am very short I have to grab a stool and work my way around the posters without damaging them and using a ruler in order to make them align. It does feel rewarding seeing an exhibit one has worked on, be displayed for everyone to see. These past two weeks, my fellow intern, Camilla and I have been working on this thing called Neatline through this website that deals with exhibits, called Omeka. She did a fantastic job of listing and summarizing the exhibits and partnerships Priddy Library has had and made since the early 1990s. This Neatline allows us to make a map of the school and make a timeline of the events that have transpired throughout the years at the Library.

Internship in the American Red Cross

Over this past summer I had the honor and pleasure to be an Intern for the American Red Cross in the Historic Programs and Collections Department. So what exactly did I have to do for the organization? Firstly, I was involved with the re-housing of the materials in the archives. Archives and the items inside the archives are more active than one might think, especially with the Red Cross Headquarters undergoing renovations and other factors such as a water pipe bursting across the hall. This meant a lot of boxes being piled up on top of each other, giving the potential for serious damage to the artifacts. So my first job was spent in the small archives moving boxes around so some of the weight would not be on the back wall, which is where some of the older items that the Red Cross has were housed, such as Clara Barton’s letters and diaries. Secondly, I would give tours to visitors to the Red Cross headquarters. The tours would be about a half hour long and incorporated paintings, quilts, and a trowel. If you are interested in a tour they are completely free, Wednesday s and Fridays at 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. During my summer at the Red Cross I gave tours to over 50 people from all over the world. Finally, I would help with some public inquiries. For example, someone would email my supervisor, Susan asking about someone in their family. One that sticks out in my mind is someone asking about their father who was a doctor with the Red Cross during World War I. I went into out files and found that that doctor went to Belgium, France, Germany, and England during the War. The doctor only told his family that he went to France, so they were surprised to hear about the other countries that he went to. Overall, it was an extremely rewarding summer for me in more ways than one.

Above is the largest of three object rooms of the American Red Cross Archives.

Preserving African American Church Collections

This summer, I interned with Heritage Montgomery, a non-profit organization that serves to promote tourism and heritage culture in Montgomery County, Maryland. This past spring, Heritage Montgomery undertook a project designed to preserve and archive the records, documents, and photographs of African American communities located in Montgomery County. Two communities were chosen for this grant, Pleasant View Historic Site and St. Paul Community Church. These communities were identified and chosen based on their immediate need to stabilize their records, documents, and photographs that were damaged or close to being lost from age and deterioration. Heritage Montgomery collaborated with these two communities and the Maryland State Archives (MSA) to complete this project.

My internship played out in two different stages. The first stage consisted of working with Heritage Montgomery in Germantown, MD to develop a collections intake form and conduct a collections intake session for Pleasant View Historic Site. At this intake session, my duties involved maintaining the organization and documentation of the extensive collection so that it would be well prepared for its transportation to MSA in Annapolis, MD. Once MSA staff assessed Pleasant View’s collection, it was transported to Annapolis ready to be archived and digitized into the MSA database.

The second stage of my internship included the responsibility to archive and digitize Pleasant View’s collection with the help of MSA staff. Because of Pleasant View’s large and extensive collection, it took June, July and August at the Maryland State Archives under the supervision of the Special Collections, Imaging, and Legacy of Slavery Departments to successfully complete this project. My duties included cataloging each individual item into the Archives internal database using basic HTML and then scanning each individual item into the imaging database. This allows for public access to view each cataloged entry alongside each digitized item.

Once Pleasant View’s collection was completely archived and digitized, the materials were transported back to Fairhaven Methodist Church that is serving as an intermittent storage facility. Ongoing measures are being taken to begin St. Paul Community Church’s collection this fall.

Pleasant View’s collection is accessible on the Maryland State Archives website in their Special Collections database under collection number 6158. Please check out my archival work from this summer!

First Blog Post about the Priddy Library

Hello, my name is Saul Espinal-Acosta and I am interning at the Universities at Shady Grove Priddy Library. I have been interning there since late August. My supervisors/bosses are Nickolas Faulk and Irene Munster. My duties and responsibilities there are to work on and help design exhibits. At first it felt overwhelming due to the exhibits being made online and having to condense it and being unbiased when writing information.  But since being there for over a month I've grown accustom to that fairly quickly. So far I've worked on editing past exhibits, and I've only really worked on one brand new exhibit so far and that was the Civil Rights timeline exhibit that went up on Wednesday. One of the most challenging things that I had to do for this particular exhibit was to look for photos online that were in the public domain. That may sound easy and all but in reality it's more challenging than it sounds and very time consuming. The other duty that I have which perhaps may be the most important in terms of skills for the future is that of learning how a library functions, the ins and outs. In this very competitive world, a skill in the functions of a library could be very influential when submitting a resume because that show the employer that the employee has a diverse set of skills under their belt.  Next week I will probably know what my next assignment will be. So far, interning at the library has been very helpful and advantageous for me. I have class everyday and doing the internship allows me to be in school for a longer period of time as oppose to just coming to class and leaving an hour and half later. I also get a lot of my work done in the library now, something that before this internship I did not do.