I am not bragging, but this was truly luck! #1

Blog Post #1

Hello everyone! My name is Abigail Gomez, and I am very thrilled to share my summer internship experience in this blog post. This past summer, I had the wonderful opportunity of being a Junior Fellow at the Library of Congress. You may be wondering what led me to this federal cultural institution. Well the answer is, my very first trip to the Library of Congress in Dr. Nolan’s History 201 class. During this trip, we visited the Prints and Photographs Division. I was fascinated by the architecture and research accessibility of the library. While I was there, I asked a staff member about internship opportunities there. The first thing they said is that the opportunities were usually unpaid. However, I did not allow that to discourage me. The following year I decided to apply to the Junior Fellows internship program. It was highly competitive as only 50 out of 1,000 individuals would get a position. Luckily, I was selected to be an intern at the United States Copyright Office which is located in the Madison Building of the Library of Congress. Initially, I knew very little of the importance of Copyright in the United States. Overtime, this changed as I began to learn more and more about it. As an individual interested in law, this was an invaluable experience as I was exposed to the field of intellectual property. 

Figure 1.1 A group picture of the Junior Fellows (I am on the left side) 

After interning at the Library of Congress, there is so much I could say about how wonderful it is, but I will stick to writing about my actual duties and experiences. The purpose of being selected for this internship at the Copyright Office was to aid them in their project of digitizing copyright bibliographic files from the early 1950s through the 1980s. The objective was to recommend a metadata scheme for the materials. During my first week, I spent hours looking at search reports that were mainly on carbon paper and obituaries. Later, I had to do research on them to figure out whether or not they were digitized.  While doing this, I also had to keep inventory of these items. It was very stressful as many of the items were fragile and lengthy. As time progressed, I started to enjoy my internship as I got to do oral briefs and presentations. The most exciting part of my experience was all of the adventures I went on, the things I discovered, the people I associated with, and Display Day which I will be talking about in my next post! 

             

Figure 1.2 An example of a 

Search Report                                 Figure 1.3 An Italian letter regarding Copyright Status of a work 

Lastly, I want to tell you a little bit about the adventures I went on. My supervisor at the Copyright Office is one of the most encouraging people I have ever met. During my time there, he allowed me to roam the different buildings of the Library of Congress. One of the most incredible things I saw in the preservation division when I went to visit was a hand drawn map. The map was an original hand drawn map the Japanese created during World War II which illustrates how they planned to attack Pearl Harbor. In conclusion, I would like to share two images of my trip to the Library of Congress Culpeper, Virginia facility. At this location, there are sound recordings and films stored. I was able to visit the vaults where nitrate oxide films are kept, and I was able to see how a music disc is preserved. As you can tell, it was an amazing experience. I will be sharing more about it in my next post!

Figure 1.4 Japanese hand drawn map of the attack on Pearl Harbor 

Figure 1.5 Image of the preservation of a broken record 

Figure 1.6 Rotting Nitrate Oxide Film (Gross)

Historical Society of Harford County Post# 2

My second month of interning at the Historical Society has been full of ups and downs (usually back to back.) I shall start with the good news! I have completed going through 553 different letters, I have organized them by date as they range from 1838 to 1999. I am currently entering them and their information (or metadata,) into a spreadsheet that will become a finding aid. I am breaking it down into: Box|Folder|Recipient| Author|Address|Keywords. The most difficult part of the process has been keeping the list of keywords under 10. Otherwise the completion of this is a milestone, I am very proud of it, this means that I am a quarter through the collection. My next step of action is to order some more supplies so that I may start on the diary section. I am more familiar with how to handle these books because of my training at UMBC’s Special Collections. But what I wasn’t familiar with was ordering supplies in bulk. As I had mentioned in my last post, Special Collections has a stockpiled communal closet of materials. So I have not had to order my own supplies. It was a learning experience and I’m sure they will appreciate the 10 extra envelopes of archival grade photo sheets.
Bad news came in two varieties, first is that these diaries at some point and time had gotten wet and now have molding. I am allergic to mold. One of two things will happen, I will be having very itchy sneezy wednesdays, or I will have to forfeit taking on the diaries and ultimately leave them to someone else. The secondary bad news is because of how busy the Fall semester is turning out to be I am having to cut down on some of my hours in order to work, (books and classes don’t buy themselves.) Instead of 10 hours a week I will be available only 1 day a week. I fear their reaction to this news, especially considering their history of halfway finished intern work.
And to wrap up this post and end on a more pleasant note, here are some interesting finds of the month: A newspaper article about flying cars dated 1926, a love letter with a dandelion flower inside, and experimental X-ray treatment of cancer.