Bye Junior Fellows Program! :( #3

Hello everyone! In this blog post, I will be concluding my experience as an intern at the Library of Congress this summer. The main objective of my internship was to aid the Copyright Office in their digitization project of bibliographic files from the early 1950s to the late 1980s. These are files the Copyright staff has been using for years in their research. The ultimate goal was to work with a partner to create a metadata scheme and a database for another project which will involve the actual digitization of the materials. After spending ten weeks full-time as an intern at the Copyright Office, I realized that it will take them about six years to get all of the bibliographic files digitized. There are drawers filled with folders that contain up to 200 hundred documents. The amount of reading I did this summer was extensive, however, I learned new things every day. It was a wonderful opportunity for personal, professional, and academic growth. 

 Figure 1.1 Book stands in Preservation Division 

During my internship, I not only learned about the Copyright Office and intellectual property laws, but I also learned about preservation and rehousing techniques. As a result of the display day, I was required to work with the preservation division. They taught me how to preserve books, loose papers, maps, and vinyl discs. For example, many collections are rehoused in acid-free folders, adhesives are removed, and staples are removed. If materials are oversized, they are housed separately. If a book has a broken spine, then a book stand is required to open it up. The preservation division also educated me about testing the pH of the paper. It was just amazing! One of the most interesting things I learned about preservation is the way audio recording is saved. During my trip to the LOC’s facility in Culpepper, Virginia, I learned about IRENE/3-D. This is a system that utilizes digital imaging to recover historical recording on discs and cylinders that are unplayable. The sophisticated system removes sonic debris, skips, and distortions in a recording to prepare it for digitization. One of the most fascinating aspects of this system is that it allowed a team of scientists and curators to extrapolate the sound from Alexander Graham Bell’s discs that had not been heard since they were produced. We are talking about material from over a century ago! I absolutely loved this field trip. 

 

Figure 1.2 IRENE 

While interning at the Library of Congress, I “wandered” into Senate buildings, I had a meeting with Senator Benjamin Cardin, and I got to check out most of the reading rooms. However, there were some cons. The first one was that my commute was about an hour and 20 minutes as a result of rush hours and transferring metro lines. The second one being the amount of time I had to read certain materials. At some points, it was mental exhausting, but I managed my time well. The beauty of working at the library is that there is always a chance to take a mini break. The final one is that my project was never fully explained to me. The first day I was taken to a cubicle, and then I was told to start brainstorming. My supervisor was amazing and always willing to help, but this taught me how to be a self-starter. I recommend this internship to anyone, no matter your field. Throughout my time there, I worked with some of the most brilliant and accomplished people. 

Figure 1.3 Picture with Senator Benjamin Cardin in a Senate Chamber 

 

https://stream-media.loc.gov/webcasts/2019/190724ifp0000/data/190724ifp0000_1280x720_2000.mp4 (I short interview I participated in)

Montgomery County Public Schools Leading the Way #3

A few weeks after I submitted my research, I saw that Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) had announced that they would be offering advanced-level English for the entire 9^th grade. My research found that there were various types of accelerated programs offered in public schools throughout the county and MCPS had several that they could consider as samples although they were not similar in structure. It was also important to look into how students performed after the program was implemented and any challenges or unintended consequences. I was really glad to see that I may have contributed to their final decision (although I doubt it was in a big way!). It is a cliché to say “it was a great learning experience” but alas, it really was a great way to study the subject because I was relying on my own best judgment on how to find more information. When it came to data on specific schools, I had to e-mail, call and even tweet at one point to find out more or a go-to person who could help me further. At the end of the day, it was detective work and it was fun. The difficult part was to determine if it was reliable and if so, how it should be cited. The school re-naming project was more direct with a clear structure of what I was expected to do, but it was also less flexible. I was surprised to find out what a lot I did not know! Names like Abraham Lincoln and Harriet Tubman are so familiar, they’re the “celebrities” of their times. But there are so many other historical figures that have not been studied as well as they should be. This is especially true when it comes to important and influential Marylanders who are not as well-known, but their stories are inspirational and uplifting. For example, Joseph Daniel Speller was an activist who worked with improvised youth and was the founder of the Benjamin Banneker Mathematics and Science Honor Society in Montgomery County. There are so many people and subjects to explore and learn about, and maybe even write a book about someday! That was what I recognized throughout my internship with MCPS - as long as I’m interested, there’s always more to learn! 

An Internship at Heritage Montgomery Part 3

Blog Post #3

            This experience at Heritage Montgomery has been both enlightening and reassuring. The work of this organization is invaluable to the community of Montgomery County and this county is very fortunate to have an organization that is fully invested in its history, as well as its cultural traditions. Before offering my final takeaway from my time at Heritage Montgomery; I do want to offer a very quick overview of my project and the research that I completed during my internship. My project ultimately, required that I follow the trail of a mysterious African American Marylander by the name of Nathan Nailor. Nailor was responsible for founding a historic black community in Montgomery County, known as Martinsburg. The community was founded by Nailor in 1866. The research surrounding Nathan Nailor is important because of its connection to the Warren Historic site, which today resides in modern day Poolesville.

The Warren Historic site is now a designated historic district. The site compromises the three essential structures. The Warren United Methodist Church (Built in 1903), the Martinsburg Negro School (Built in 1886), and the Loving Charity Lodge Hall (Built in 1914). These three buildings, the church, school, and hall are often described as the nucleus for the many Maryland African American communities that were founded in the wake of the Civil War. The Warren site is identified as the last remaining in the state to possess all three structures. This Nathan Nailor Project was important because of his involvement in the founding of the church. Nailor remains a prominent link to the genesis of this community. The narrative regarding Nathan Nailor may prove to play a substantial role in spreading awareness of the history relating to this historic site.

“My research required that I transcribe old land documents, such as this. This document is from the mid nineteenth century.” Photo by Ryan Johns/ Documents from the Montgomery County District Court

It would be very unfortunate, if Montgomery County were to lose such an important historical site. That is why I view the work being done at Heritage Montgomery as being so vital. Despite having to deal with various obstacles, difficulties, and differing political entities; the people at Heritage Montgomery persevere and advocate on the behalf of Montgomery County’s history and culture. It is clear to me that Heritage Montgomery and other heritage related organizations don’t often get the recognition they deserve for their work. Thankfully, they are not in it for recognition but rather to further their mission of promoting the local history, culture, and natural areas of Montgomery County. I am proud to have had the opportunity to work with them and help further this mission. They have done a lot of great work but there is still much to do. Hopefully, the people of Montgomery County will support them because their work is not just valuable to history students; it is valuable to all those whom consider themselves a resident of Montgomery County. That is my final takeaway.

An Internship at Heritage Montgomery Part 2

Blog Post #2

            My time at Heritage Montgomery has been both instructive and insightful. Heritage Montgomery’s perceptive and experienced director, Sarah Rogers, has been incredibly helpful in educating me on what it means to manage heritage areas. Prior experience in the classroom had informed me of what work in the field of public history can be like and what kind of stakes are often at play. However, hearing about it was different from actually experiencing it for myself. This past month I have mainly focused on individual research and assisting Sarah at various Heritage Montgomery events. At these events, I realized politics are always a factor and something you must always consider. The organization's image is important and how you treat other people is just as important. These factors can affect everything from how the organization issues grant money, acquires funding from the local government, or manages its Heritage Area events. During these events I received a crash course in how to interact with local government officials, community stakeholders, as well as other interest groups. After interacting with them, I quickly came to know just how wide-ranging opinions in the county are and how problematic different interest groups in the county can be when their desires or interests aren’t met.

            

           

 “The Waters House, the headquarters of Heritage Montgomery” Photo by Ryan Johns

            It can often be a very difficult balancing act. You interact with people whom are at times strangers, persons whom may rub you the wrong way, individuals that don’t understand or perceive how you’re trying to help them and not hurt them. It is not uncommon to encounter interest groups that are willing to attempt to intimidate you or the organization, in the hopes that they might have their way. These revelations have altered how I view Montgomery County, but I know it’s better to be aware of these realities than to be ignorant to them. Mrs. Rogers has taught me that how an organization like Heritage Montgomery responds to these selective pressures, can have a truly profound effect on the community. Heritage Montgomery is not an organization that caves into intimidation and I am grateful that I have had the opportunity to work with such a fair organization.

Directory of the Baltimore Legal Museum, Post #3

Domonique Flowers

During this month I was able to get the lion’s share of the work accomplished. At the beginning of the month I returned to the museum where I had to learn how to operate the state of the art features that had been added since the restoration occurred back in October. These new additions included three digital screens that provided more of an interactive experience for patrons. I took my time in going through every selection offered and documenting exactly what I wanted to include in the Museum Directory. I decided to include only the highlights as the entire visual display selection menu contained too much information for one directory. I also realized that the restoration project had included digitizing all the information that had once been featured on several large platforms that were once scattered around the museum. The new digital media now told the stories of the legal giants as well as the history of the Bar Association and Courthouse which also meant more room in the museum for the patrons to walk around.

Robe Worn by Judge Bell, the first African American Chief Justice of the MD Court of Appeals.

I then took all the remaining pictures in the museum. I also used my phone to record each artifact in the museum carefully reading the description, dates and (in some cases) name of who donated the artifact. This allowed me to take the recordings back home where I could document all the standalone exhibits as well as the exhibits contained in the display cases. After utilizing this method for the display cases I then proceeded to record the individual exhibits and then finally the special features of the museum which included the mural and the digital presentations. With all the recordings and pictures, I began to transcribe the information. I first re-structured my table of contents to divide all the sections up. I then began to list each and every exhibit that I had documented. When this was accomplished, I was able to count over 100 separate artifacts housed at the museum. Afterwards, I also reviewed the recordings that I made of the digital presentations themselves which provided useful biographical information on the individuals to highlight in the Museum Directory. I selected the individuals to include, wrote a brief biographical description and then inserted a picture next to them. In the final month I will finish the remaining sections before assembling it all together.

A 1910 mural adorns the Baltimore Legal Museum's wall.

My Internship at the Laurel Historical Society #2

My main project for my internship this semester is to go through the textiles collections at the museum. My goal was to create a write up about a few of the more prominent pieces in the collection, the most obvious of those being a dress that once belonged to Mamie Eisenhower. However, when I really started looking into the textiles in the database, a familiar name popped up. We had a few things that had once belonged to Captain George Emerson Albee, including some photos and a stamp from his collection, but I had not realized that we had an article of clothing that he had once worn during the Civil War.

So I started digging through the textiles boxes and at the very bottom of the box I found what I was looking for, although it was not what I expected whatsoever. What I pulled out of the tissue paper was not just a casual pair of canvas pants, but instead what I found were leather shot-gun chaps. From the belted waist they were as perfect as 150 year old pants could be with some repairs done around the thigh area. But from the knee down things got a little iffy; there was a grass stain, some black lines, and some holes around the calves and ankles that were surrounded by some suspicious looking dark red stains (don't worry I used gloves when I handled these).

Now, the museum description said that he wore these during the Civil War, but I had never heard of chaps being worn as a part of a uniform. This caused me to start looking for information of Captain Albee to see if maybe there could be an explanation behind these. I found way more than I bargained for. The leather chaps sitting on the work table next to me belonged to a Medal of Honor recipient currently buried alongside his wife at Arlington Cemetery.

Captain Albee enlisted in the Wisconsin Company G, Berdan's Sharpshooters (part of the Union) in 1862 at the age of 17. He was in the field for two months when he was injured during the Second Battle of Bull Run. He eventually reenlisted and was actually imprisoned in the Confederate Libby Prison in Richmond, Virginia. The journal that he kept while he was serving and while he was imprisoned is actually at the Library of Virginia.

However, it was not during the Civil War that he earned his Medal of Honor. He earned that during the Native American wars that followed. He apparently led a charge of only three men against eleven Native Americans at Brazos River, Texas and managed to gain the high ground.

While I never actually found much about the chaps, the fact that I had a face to go with them and even a highly detailed backstory was an incredible feeling. I really hope one day I can go read his journal.

My Internship at the Laurel Historical Society #1

At the beginning of this semester, I started working on Fridays and Sundays as a museum intern at the Laurel Historical Society in Prince George's County. The LHS is located in an 1840's mill workers house and functions as a small museum as well as the organizations offices. I had always wanted to work in a museum, so I was really excited. However, I was also really nervous about it. What if it wasn't what I expected? What if it turned out that I was no good at the thing I had aspired to do since I was a kid?

My first day there started out pretty standard; I introduced myself to my coworkers, signed some papers, and was showed around by my boss. It was after all of the introductory stuff that I started to become uncertain. I began learning how to use the museums collections database, and I am absolutely terrible with technology. As Ann, the executive director of LHS, was teaching me how to find what I needed, I was barely looking at the screen as I wrote down step by step directions for each thing she showed me (I highly recommend writing stuff like this down for those of you who are also technologically challenged). Luckily for me, Ann was a great teacher - it probably helped that she used to work for Past Perfect (the database company) for a few years.

For the first few weeks I got myself comfortable with using Past Perfect. I would pull boxes from the collections and go through them in order of accession number and make sure all the information was correct and up to date. This might seem like along time, but I only worked two days a week for nine hours so it took me a little longer than I wanted.

I got my first research project at the beginning of October; I was doing the research for the Edgar Allan Poe event that was being held for the first time around Halloween. My main job was to provide an information station on Poe, but I also ended up providing additional information on literary figures contemporary to Poe such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Frederick Douglass, and his fellow Gothic legends like Mary Shelley and Bram Stoker. Seeing my work displayed around the museum was one of the most satisfying feelings I have ever experienced.

More about my Adventures at the LOC! #2

Hello everyone! I am back again to tell you more about my summer adventure at the Library of Congress. As I may have mentioned in my first post, I was an intern at the Copyright Office (COP) for ten weeks. During this time, I learned so much about the Library of Congress and the Copyright Office itself. The particular internship I was selected for was the Copyright Archival Records Digitization, and the main objective of this internship was to increase the access of copyright collections to researchers. At the Copyright Office, there are file cabinets with thousands of bibliographic files from the 1950s through the 1980s. These special files were developed and long-used by Copyright staff for reports on the copyright status of works. Many of the files include search reports which are objective statements of the results from searches in the COP records, original dust jacket deposits, obituaries, correspondence, and copies of applications. As a Junior Fellow, my task was to look through these files and decide whether or not they should be digitized. 

During my time at the COP, I was able to go through 2,000 bibliographic files with the help of another Junior Fellow named Swatha. We had to work together to create a metadata scheme which would essentially become a finding aid for COP staff assigned to the digitization of the files. The first thing we did was to create a spreadsheet on excel that contained metadata meaning the cabinet|folder name|number files within the folder|author(s)|claimant(s)|date| registration number(s)|type of work(s)|. For the duration of the internship, we took inventory of the files while also doing extensive research. For example to decide whether a file should be digitized, we had to do research on the importance of the works. One of the most interesting files I came across was that of Francis Scott Fitzgerald, author of The Great Gatsby. This was a file worthy of digitizing as Fitzgerald himself contributed to American Culture with his portrayal of the Jazz Age and grand gestures that took place. The amount of reading I did this summer was exhausting, but it was worth it. One of the trickiest things about this internship was time-management and literacy skills. On top of creating this metadata scheme, my colleague I had several oral briefings There were several occasions where we had to explain our tasks and findings to the Librarian of Congress Dr. Carla Hayden and Register of Copyrights Karyn Temple. This was very nerve-wracking as we had to know how different Copyright Acts impacted the status of works. However, I quickly became comfortable with presenting because I had done my research on the 1976 Copyright Act and the 1988 Digital Millennium Copyright Act. I enjoyed my time at the COP because I not only got to do research, but I also learned about a bit about intellectual property. 

Figure 1. Dr. Hayden explaining Oculus to me 

Figure 2. Original Copyright Registration for The Great Gatsby 1925

Upon the completion of my assignment, I also had to work with my partner to create a display day project. I want to say that this was the most fascinating part of my internship. All of the interns in the program worked with Library curators and specialists to plan and present a display of the most significant discoveries we made. My partner and I chose to display a search report regarding the works of F. Scott Fitzgerald, a tray from the COP’s copyright catalog (largest in the world btw), The World Crisis book deposit, a special search report on the works of Winston Churchill, and a marbled record book from 1925. It was amazing because we got to present our findings to congressional staff members and the general public. This experience taught me a lot about preservation especially because I was able to see how they test for the acidity of paper as well as how they rehouse materials. It was just amazing! 

Figure 3. Supervisor's Facebook Post 

Figure 4. Special Search Report on the works of Winston Churchill Published in America (1945) 

Figure 5. The Burmese, Thai, Laos Rare Collections (Asian Division) Display Day Table 

Figure 6. World War II Collection's Display Day 

Mental Health Association of Maryland Internship #3

Over the summer I continued my work organizing the archive at the Mental Health Association of Maryland (MHAMD). As MHAMD is a non-profit which does amazing work, archival preservation is not their forte. After I assessed the collection and organized items from copies and originals and chronologically, the next step, which would be brutal, was to match the copies with  the originals so I could begin to get rid of the hundred upon hundreds of copies. I had to grab an original folder and find its copy, which there could sometimes be up to four copies of, and meticulously match each original document with it copy. Once I confirmed that there was an original of the copy I could finally deaccession all the copies. I spent weeks on this part and in the end I had two piles a foot and a half tall each that had to weigh at least eight pounds. There were a few copies that I could not find the originals of so I stored them in a safe place. After dealing with the copies I could finally give the originals the time they deserved. I further organized them in chronological order and removed all the Office Depot plastic from them. I then placed the fragile documents into archival safe plastic and moved all the documents into archival safe folders. I gave each folder a title which could be easily organized and also on the front of each folder I wrote every document inside of it. It was certainly tedious work but it needed to be done to ensure the longevity of the archive. After weeks of this work I further organized the documents chronologically and placed them into archival safe hanging folders. The CEO wanted all the documents to be easy to access chronologically. We also talked about digitizing and finding ways to make the collection even more accessible to people. The MHAMD also took back dozens of boxes of their archives from the  MD state archives. My time was up in the summer before I had the chance to get to this, but they have offered me the opportunity to come back whenever I was able to continue working on the collection. Although I may not be an archival professional, I felt like I really made a difference to help preserve the documents of such an important organization. I handled well over a hundred documents dating from 1915 to 2016. The picture is how I left the collection after I organized it. Also it shows the difference from start to end.

Mental Health Association of Maryland Internship #2

Over the summer I worked at the Mental Health Association of Maryland (MHAMD) in the Lutherville-Timonium area. Once I settled into my office and archive as well as put up some signs about the archive, I assessed what I had in the archival collection. There were over 100 years of documents in the archive. There actually were a large amount missing from the office and were in the MD State Archives. The MHAMD became worried their documents would not be preserved for longevity or be easily accessible for researchers at the State Archives, so they decided to get their documents back, dozens of boxes worth. These boxes didn’t arrive until I finished my internship, so my focus was on organizing the documents currently within the archive. One of my first priority was to order proper preservation items to save the documents. They were stored in Office Depot plastic and not archival safe folders. I ordered a few hundred archival safe folders, archival safe plastic (for the fragile documents), archival safe hanging folders, and gloves to handle photographs with. Once I ordered all the documents my goal was to go through all the folders and determine what was inside. The typical set up was three folders for each subject, one would be stuffed to the brim of originals in office depot plastic, accompanied with 2-3 folders full of 2-3 scanned copies of each original document. All these copies took up an enormous amount of space and because of how stuffed they were near the originals, stated to warp and damage the original documents. I went through each folder, copy and original, and labeled each document in the folder. This took as while as there were many drawers of files. Next I went through all the folders I had labeled and further classified them as copies or originals. After this step I separated the copies from the originals in different drawers and went on to put each folder in chronological order. This was only the start of the massive organization of the archive. The attached image is what all the cabinets of archives looked like when I started, this photo however is just of copies of originals.