Preserve the Baltimore Uprising Internship Blog #2

After attending the Preserve the Baltimore Uprising Gala with Dr. Meringolo and all parties involved in making this event possible, I was astonished to see our work come to fruition. The event boasted so many amazing first-hand accounts of the Baltimore Uprising, all from the perspectives of students, teachers, community members, etc. Each student displayed their work in either the form of a video production, art piece, poem, or speech account of their experience, and I must say that I was completely blown away.

My biggest take-away from the event came from a group of young women who attended Poly-Technic High School in Baltimore. These young women recalled their efforts to shed light on the death of a classmate and close friend who had fallen victim to gun violence. In doing so, these ladies exemplified the importance of this work in preserving the lives and memories of those who regularly are made too aware of violence in the Baltimore area. 

Furthermore, a video production shown at this gala provided an excellent view of a discussion circle, all centered around the ideas of local community members on how to promote a better, more cooperative community between African Americans and their law enforcement. People young and old shed light on their personal beliefs regarding how Baltimore could be made into a better place, as well as potential solutions to the epidemics of drugs and gun violence in the community.

Currently, George and I are tackling the rest of our five-part unit on oral history. We plan to utilize some of the sources from the Baltimore Uprising gala and frame the entirety of the lessons around the history exhibited in the project. By the end of this unit, students will be able to understand what oral history is, why it's important to the historical record, and conduct a full oral history interview in order to reflect on their practices afterward with a completed transcript.By the end of this semester, George and I will have created a unit plan that can be implemented in any high school classroom.

Lastly, George and I made great contacts at the Preserve the Baltimore Uprising gala, such as David Armenti from the Maryland Historical Society (MDHS). David seemed very happy to help us in our pursuit of partnering with local institutions to make these lessons more accessible to local communities. 

UMBC Special Collections Internship #2

I have made a lot of progress on my tutorial projects in the UMBC Special Collections. I have completed the draft for my video on searching in the collection. Initially the video was intended to be only a search for photographs but we have decided to make it a broader search of collections using photography, for which the collection has millions of photos, as an example. As I finished my script, some of the adjustments my supervisor wanted for the video, including have textual examples pop up with our screen cast, was not feasible. So I transitioned from using the software Panopto and creatively using a mix of Windows Movie Maker and screen cast recording program form Xbox I filmed and edited a video to meet the needs of Special Collections. I am adjusting the original video script to meet the newly edited video. Once the script has been finalized I plan on recording a voice-over for the project and pending final edits will have created the first search tutorial for Special Collections. I also have lined up a project to make a video on understanding finding aids for the various collections in the archives. This will involve the same video making and editing used for the previous tutorial. Initially we had planned to create an interactive document to launch on the libraries website, but some coding restrictions changed the direction of the tutorial. I look forward to seeing my completed projects be used to teach the many classes that come into Special Collections each semester.

Hey Mom, I Struggle with Not Working In a Team!

Hey there! My name is Morgan Miller and for my graduate internship, I was able to work at the Maryland State Archives (MSA) in the Special Collections Department. For my blog posts, I have been going through different parts of my internship experience starting with the beginning, then the middle, and the end. My focus has been: what is the best way to make a collection accessible to the public? We have come to my last blog post and thus, we have arrived at the end of my internship experience.

For this section of my internship experience I was able to work on various smaller projects like cataloging paper records, cataloging glass plate negatives, moving Civil War era Maryland flags, and trying to read eighteenth century letters. It was a whirlwind of an ending because I worked on many different cataloging projects! However, one thing that I did notice was how working alone is not always the best thing for me.

Don’t get me wrong, I love working alone. When I work alone I am able to power through a collection and get it processed in a very quick turnaround. When I was able to start and finish processing a collection quickly it gave me so much joy. I was so ecstatic to be able to get great work done quickly.

I did notice that the more consecutive days that I went not talking to anyone during my day of collections processing, the more isolated I felt in general. Processing became tiring and I started working slower because I didn’t have the same zeal that I had at the beginning of the summer. However, if I was able to have lunch with someone or collaborate on an idea with someone during the day, I felt much more equipped to do my work and do it well.

This internship taught me how to think about my needs and the needs of others. If I am able to work here again I think I would try to make more friends to have lunch with and ask for more team projects alongside my processing work. I want to apply the lessons I learned from this internship to my life and other jobs in my future. All in all, I thoroughly enjoyed my MSA internship experience and would recommend it to anyone. The staff at the Maryland State Archives is amazing and everyone wants to see you grow professionally and in general. I am so lucky to be able to learn this information about myself so I can apply it to other experiences in the future.  

Hey Mom, I Went Through a Collection from the Bottom Up!

Hello again! My name is Morgan Miller and for my graduate internship, I was able to work at the Maryland State Archives (MSA) in the Special Collections Department. For my blog posts, I have been going through different parts of my internship experience starting with the beginning, then the middle, and the end. My focus has been: what is the best way to make a collection accessible to the public? This blog post features the middle of my MSA internship where I had gained enough skills to be able to process a collection from the donation phase to the shelving phase.

This collection is the Robert Tennenbaum Collection (MSA SC 6202). This collection was donated by Tennenbaum before I came for my internship. Tennenbaum was an integral part of the New Columbia Town Project in the 1960s and also has developed new towns, new communities, and memorial projects around the world.

At first, I was overwhelmed by the volume of his collection and the range of items within it. Tennenbaum had donated what I ended up cataloging into seven different series: memorial projects/competitions, architecture work, new cities/towns/communities, Baltimore and Columbia books, miscellaneous, portfolios, and oversized. The reason behind seven different series was organizing his work into an accessible format. What method of cataloging made this collection the most accessible to researchers? One that detailed the different topics of his work and collection so that if anyone needed to research the various memorial projects and competitions that Tennenbaum was a part of, they would only have to go to one series and oversized to see the information they needed.

This was one of my favorite collections to work on because this is where I found that synthesizing information into an organized and accessible catalog was a knack that I had. I loved being able to go through this collection and make a rough outline of what he had donated so that later, I could go back through and process it according to the most accessible standards.

This collection also taught me that event though I value time alone processing and cataloging, I also value time talking with people to bounce ideas around. However, being more isolated was a particular struggle for me more at the end of my internship experience. The Robert Tennenbaum Collection helped me realize that the best way to go through processing a large collection is to have a team around you that you can talk to and gain reassurance from. For this I have to thank my superiors Maria Day and Megan Craynon. They truly guided and taught me the best practices for the processor’s job.