Internship at Glenn L. Martin Aviation Museum

Beginning in December, I began volunteering at the Glenn L. Martin Aviation Museum. I do not actually work in the museum, but rather the archive. Both the archive and the museum are very small. My first project was with their magazine, The Martin Star. The Martin Star was the magazine put out between the years of February 1942 - July/August 1952. My job was to digitize every issue of this magazine. To do this, I first separated each issue and volume into piles. I found all the duplicates and tried to find the best issue, since many of them have been torn or faded. Once I had the best issue, I would put each issue in order by volume. Next, I organized all of the duplicates in a file cabinet located in the back of the archive. I then took all of the staples out so that I could cut each magazine down the middle. I only did this because it made the scanning process more efficient. Once all the staples were out and the issues were cut, I scanned each issue. I had to make sure that the pages scanned well enough for people to read. I also tried to get all the pages in the same direction after they were scanned, which was a conflict because even though they were put in the scanner the same way, they would come through in all different directions. I had to save each issue as a PDF file with the title, volume and issue number. After the scanning process was finished, I put each page into a plastic sleeve and put them into a binder. The head archivist, Stan, and I decided that we should only put one volume in each binder. I was able to finish this project around early February. More than anything, this project was time consuming. The most difficult aspect of this project was making sure none of the pages got ripped or torn in the scanning process. All of the issues were really fragile, and even the pages in good shape could be easily torn, so I had to be extremely cautious when handling them. I really enjoyed this project because I love magazines and old advertisements mainly. Some of the pictures were so interesting and I loved being able to see aspects of my own community from that time period.