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| A screenshot of UMBC Special Collections Instagram page |
For the Spring 2023 semester, my internship is stationed in UMBC’s Special Collections
department of the Albin O. Kuhn Library & Gallery. Very often, I’m asked by my peers,
“What’s so special about Special Collections?” That is, what is it about the materials
housed in this department that set them apart from things you could find elsewhere?
According to our website, Special Collections “serves to collect, house, preserve, and
make accessible scholarly collections of materials that are original, rare, unique, fragile,
historical, and archival.” During the Fall 2021 semester as an undergraduate student
assistant, I got the chance to familiarize myself with the vast assortment of materials
that can be found in Special Collections, particularly the endless amounts of
photographs we have while conducting biographical research about the photographers
who took them.
As intriguing as these materials are, unfortunately, not many know of their existence. I
had no idea about Special Collections until I started working there! Moreover, you don’t
have to be a specific type of person (say, a historian, for example) to make use of what
Special Collections has to offer. Students, faculty, and external entities from an array of
disciplinary backgrounds visit Special Collections for professional, educational, and
recreational purposes. To celebrate its 50th anniversary, UMBC Special Collections
aims to increase public outreach by showcasing the diverse ways in which our archives
have been utilized with the intent of encouraging more people to engage with them —
this is where my job comes in.
As a graduate intern, my role is to coordinate all of the promotional content that has
been prepared for this project, as well as contribute some content of my own. Most
notable is the establishment of our very own blog, dedicated to showcasing the
research efforts of Special collections staff, UMBC community members, and more. In
addition to this is regular updates on our Instagram page, where we promote our blog
postings, any exhibitions that are up for display in the gallery, and day-to-day reading
room content of interest like our #PhotobookFriday series. In order to prepare myself for
the role, I first had to learn the best practices for producing and disseminating digital
content, and then how to implement them for Special Collections’ social media.
My internship advisor, Lindsay Loeper (Reference and Instruction Archivist), helped me
by providing articles to read about the process of developing a system for social media
publication, as well as examples of established library and special collections blogs that
could serve as a model for what we hope to achieve with our own blog. I gained a lot of
insight from these materials: they conveyed the importance of deconstructing the barrier
between archives and the communities in which they exist by changing the intimidating
perception many have of these institutions. This is done through methods such as
creating an inviting environment for prospective visitors, connecting with diverse
communities, and emphasizing a commitment to service to the public. Accessibility is
particularly essential to ensure that there are no hindrances to engaging with the
content. Adding closed captions to videos and alt-text to images — processes that are
often overlooked — can be the determining factor of whether or not someone can/will
take interest in whatever you’ve posted. Speaking from personal experience, these
processes can be tedious, but I think achieving a sense of inclusion ultimately makes
the effort worthwhile.
Going forward, I am excited to see the different projects Special Collections will share
with the public to show off how special our archives really are!
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