Assistant Librarian Technician at the National Gallery of Art's Vertical Files | Blog #1

Brief Introduction

Working at the National Gallery of Art's Library for ten months so far, it has allowed me to get through most of training and immerse myself further within this research library. In particular, I work as a student assistant under the Vertical Files – this is a collection of ephemera such as exhibition notices, brochures, group exhibitions, invitations and other documents under 50-pages stored in our collection. The nature of these materials is fragile, yet essential to many art historians' research. They are the materials we often discard, throwing them away because their purpose is often temporary. However, they serve as valuable materials which can help researchers learn about artists' exhibitions, how such artists' works were presented and even key us into these documents as artistic works themselves.

What gives significance to the materials within the Vertical Files is that, while there are number that are digitized, the sensitivity of these objects makes for circulating these materials difficult. There is never a guarantee another copy can be found easily so many researchers have appointments to look through the collection themselves. As a librarian assistant here, I manage the collection through adding new materials, labeling them appropriately and filing them away within our various drawers. There are guidelines to label and organize such works, making files for individual artists & institutions who accumulate enough ephemera. And that is only a brief summary of the many responsibilities and tasks I've been put up to!

To put it simply, being a librarian here means making the materials in our collection the most accessible for our patrons. That is the goal when working as a librarian technician at the Vertical Files here!

Goals as a Librarian Technician Assistant

It is important to remember that there are multiple roles that different kinds of librarian serve in a library – especially like the museum library within the NGA. The most common librarian people think of is a circulation librarian. They often check out book materials to patrons, shelf them in their appropriate places among other things. Sometimes, they handle the cataloging of new books, which means creating a digital record for these materials so they can be searched for and tracked within the library system. As you saw previously, the work as a librarian technician at the Vertical Files is noticeably different and it is this difference that interested me in the position. 

The biggest learning goal I had coming into this position, the one that I still maintain even now, is learning more about how a research library functions differently from public libraries. Choosing the National Gallery of Art felt like a dream because it takes a particular focus on Western art (although not exclusive to just this) and this reflects in its library. As a result, the National Gallery of Art's library particularly focuses on the scholarship revolving around this Western art and the Vertical Files goes into this further. As a department within the library, it houses material culture that largely dates from the mid 20th century onward and it has a number of sub-collections such as the Evans-Tibbs collection (primarily focusing on African American Art, local Washington D.C. artists and Turlow Tibbs himself). 

Learning about the differences between these kinds of libraries is important to me because I like to think about how learning spaces are designed. Constructing this spaces and playing a role in building the collection bares much relevance to desire to eventually work as a museum curator. Personally, I believe that organizing information like the Vertical Files' materials has an artful approach to it, that it takes my own personal decision-making to label & file such works accordingly. It means thinking like a researcher and understanding their needs. In analyzing these materials, I am able to think about how they should be categorized, whether these are useful to our patrons and consider whether these materials stand out on their own. Some materials are not simple pieces of cardstock. Some fold, some have pop-out images, others containing digital media, or having text printed on soft tissue paper. Some are press releases, others invitations with the signature & writing of the artist themselves. It's in this way that I have to constantly challenge my ideas of what it means for something to be "rare", for something to be "useful" to a researcher, and most importantly, for something to be considered as valuable enough to archive in this way.

That is one of most important things I've been learning in my employment here. It is the most important thing to me to constantly expand my definitions and worldview regarding such research materials. That, to me, is an art.

Past Projects

Being brief, I have worked on a number of projects in my time here. I have linked Library of Congress name headers to artists who didn't have them.

I have worked on putting together a digital collection on Evans-Tibbs Artists, primarily those featured in David C. Driskell's Two Centuries of Black Art (1976). You can view that here, if you are interested.

I have worked on sorting a shipment of ephemera from the Pace Gallery in New York, labeling and filing them accordingly into our collection before shipping duplicates to the Maryland Institute College of Art. 

I have recently done Vertical Files orientations for our CASVA members.

I have completed shared digital project with the Circulation team, editing book volume' material information., completing 7,843 entries in that time.

Current Projects

Telework

Currently, I am doing research on our Evans-Tibbs artist who have poorly-sourced or under-sourced Wikidata pages. Wikidata is one of the platforms under the Wikimedia Foundation and it provides a structure to the data present on other Wikimedia platforms such as Wikipedia. There are guidelines to sourcing information for these artists' background, namely according to Wikidata's standards.

In addition to this, I am working on an Auction Catalogs' project where I am doing simple edits on auction catalog's MARC records. A MARC (standing for Machine-Readable Cataloging) record is a bibliographic record which describes the material, main + added entries, subject headings and what is it classified as. In particular, I am making these Auction catalogs' place of sale & date of sale fields human readable, and changing their indicators.

In-Person Work

My foremost responsibilities within the Vertical Files are

• labeling new materials into our Artist & Institutional Files, both general & artist/institution-specific folders
• weeding duplicates from the collection to create more space
• returning checked-in files & materials into their original place
• creating labels +  making records for artists and institutions who accumulate enough materials to 'graduate' into their own folder

Maryland State Archives The Legacy of Slavery in Maryland Program: Penitentiary Records- Blog #1

 

   Maryland State Archives Penitentiary Records- The Legacy of Slavery in Maryland

         The internship I am undertaking is for the Maryland State Archives Legacy of Slavery in Maryland Program. While other members of this internship are fulfilling roles in mining and examining census records, I am focusing on the Maryland Penitentiary records. My intern supervisor is Mr. Christopher Haley, the Director of the Legacy of Slavery in Maryland Program. I will be responsible for examining the digitized Maryland Penitentiary records from 1811-1869. I will transcribe these ledgers of inmates to prepare them for a separate database which researchers would then be able to access with ease of use to locate specific areas of interest. In addition, I will need to take note of any trends that I see developing or odd features to entries and discuss it with Mr. Haley, and those of my internship cohort on our Friday meetings. These features are likely among the most important aspects of the internship as recognizing them can open new avenues of research while others can help to explain racial injustice within the prison system. This internship also has a secondary aspect in which I will assist the Maryland Lynching Truth and Reconciliation Commission in their task of telling the history of Maryland lynchings and its victims. I will do so by the creation of biographies for those victims.

            I intend for this internship to help further my interest and study of racial injustice in Maryland. My interest was sparked by the current culture facing this country today, with the issues of racial shootings and the disproportionate sentences and number of African Americans imprisoned. These are big issues which are evident within our society and have their roots in the past. I have been able to better understand the roots of racial injustice of the past because of my previous work with two other graduate students on the five known lynching cases of Anne Arundel County, John Simms, George Briscoe, Wright Smith, Henry Davis, and King Johnson. With this internship, I will be able to better understand another element of racial injustice with the prison system directly from primary sources.

            I specifically chose the Maryland State Archives for this internship because I wanted to get to know the people and community of the institution. It seems to be a great place to work, and I have seen that the work that is done there greatly matters. The Legacy of Slavery Program alone seems to be of vital importance to the local community and reconciliation, and it is only one of many projects which the Maryland State Archives is currently researching and investigating. More than this, it is a local institution with a focus on local history, which does attract my attention as I enjoy the idea of helping investigate, research, and write about the local history of Maryland.

The reason I was interested in this internship was because it would focus on the study of racial injustice in the prison system as well as because I feel the internship itself focusses on what I feel is the core of archives. In terms of racial injustice in the prison system in the 1800s, I feel that it is a major, and local Maryland issue which I understand the basics of but not the specifics. This internship would allow me to delve deeper into the lives and stories of those who were imprisoned and to understand the depths of racial injustice during the 1800s. In addition, I personally believe that the core idea of archives which I would be accomplishing would be facilitating future historians by making the records of the Maryland Penitentiary more accessible. By transcribing and preparing the records for use in a database, the records would be able to reach many more historians than before and would be easier to access and search for specific areas of interest. I would be able to shed light on these records, and gain both the benefit of facilitating my own understanding as well as making the records easier for others to understand and access.

Internship at the BMI Blog Post #3

 As I conclude my time interning with the Baltimore Museum of Industry, I am proud of what I have accomplished. I utilized my research to construct historical narratives for each tour site and as a result I have brought awareness to forgotten history. In late April, I uploaded my tour sites to Explore Baltimore Heritage and it made me proud to know that I was making the public aware of these sites that either were not talked about a lot, or that were forgotten. A memory that I will always have is googling "The William G. Scarlett Company" and seeing that the first link that came up was a link to my tour description. Here is the link to access my tour of Harbor East: https://explore.baltimoreheritage.org/tours/show/34. 

My time at the BMI has taught me what it is like to be a historian. I acted like a detective, finding traces each company left behind and even though I have never met the founders of each company, I feel a personal connection to each of them from my research. Sometimes my research cases went cold, but I kept digging and eventually I found new leads to follow. It is gratifying to know that these companies once lost to public memory will not be forgotten all due in part to my research. I also enjoyed how my research manifested itself in a different final product from my usual research. For classes at UMBC, every history class that I have taken has required my research to be presented in the form of a term paper. It was refreshing to present my information in the form of a virtual walking tour because I know that more people are likely to view this tour than read my academic papers. The tour also allows me to reach a broader audience and it excites me to think that even people who do not consider themselves as history enthusiasts could possibly take my tour.

In addition, I have realized that while I enjoy bringing back forgotten pasts and researching the history behind places, I do not enjoy the physical cataloging of objects. I think for future endeavors, I would like to focus on bringing back these forgotten pasts. Overall, I found my internship at the BMI helpful in my introduction to the field of public history. At first it was challenging to write for an audience made up of the general public rather than for an audience of academics, but in the end I found the process more rewarding. Very few of my friends and family members enjoy history. However, I believe that through the creation of this tour, I have found a way to get them involved in history. 

Blog Post #2

Dogs, Old Dudes and War History

If I am being honest not a whole lot is going on at the Maryland Military Museum, between my boss getting sick, snow, vaccines and a family funeral the months of February and March blurred into one long categorizing and digitizing dream. I will say I had a few highlights these two months, first of all, Lucy, the Belgium Malonois dog finally stopped barking at me every time I stepped into the armory. That's a major win for me. Secondly I met some other volunteers, primarily older veterans who like to remind me how very little I know about history. Talking with them about their passion projects reminded me why I love history in the first place, COVID and online learning have been making feel a little disconnected from my interests and hearing about other's book projects and independent research endeavors felt like an EPI pen to my soul.  

I finally got a chance to see that actual museum, crazy I had been nerding out in the room adjacent and never seen the museum I was archiving for. The museum made me sad. It's self guided tour system was outdated and confusing, it's mannequins were creepy, and I could tell looking at the guestbook there had not been any foot traffic. How do museums with no visitors stay open? Since the MMA is part of the armory, it is funded by the state, I imagine donations come from veterans if at all. I am happy to hear the museum is planning on hiring a curator, I would love to see the space brought into the twenty first century. After my tour of the museum it was back to the Witte Library where Lucy and I try not to rip 70 year old pieces of paper by accident. After coming across a perfect condition hardback book with the names and ID numbers of every life lost in the 27th regiment, I started thinking about what the museum seemed to be lacking. There it was right in front of me in the names of men who dies with the same last name as I do, emotion. The museum was emotionless. The further I dug into the archives the more I found things I felt the museum was missing, the museum talked about triumph and glory, but here I was holding a huge file on how some soldiers and their superiors were involved in the creation of a personal use prostitution ring while stationed in Germany. It seemed clear to me people did not want to talk about that side of the regiment, but honestly I think that's what makes them more real.Aside from finding really cool stuff and scandals involving sex work, abuse of power, and what not. I'm learning a lot about archiving, dealing with other museums, coding and how to talk to veterans about their experiences so that's pretty cool. Someone should do an oral history on them while they're still around, maybe that person will be me, 

Internship at the BMI Blog Post #2

For today's journal, I will be reflecting on the progress I have made on my project throughout February. As I stated in my first blog post, I am in the process of creating a virtual walking tour of Harbor East. So far, I have been able to find information on seven sites and I only need to chose three more sites. 

The seven companies that I have chosen so far are: the Wilson Steamboat Line, the Rennert Hotel, the H & S Bakery, Gibbs Preserving Company, the Blue Top Diner, the E. J. Codd Company, and William G. Scarlett & Co. I have been struggling to find an overall theme to link each of these smaller narratives together. Currently, my idea is to have each narrative focus on diversity in the workplace, but this is proving to be difficult due to the limited collections of the museum. I cannot find information on some of the companies in the BMI's collections and the result is that I have a tour that appears to be impractical. So far, my tour stretches from the Inner Harbor all the way to Boston Street in Canton. I plan to walk the tour to see how feasible the route is, but I also am trying to meet the minimum requirement of ten tour sites. 

I was inspired by a discussion on inclusive narratives in my Introduction to Public History class and my goal is to create a multifaceted view of the workforce of Baltimore. I first ran into trouble when researching the Rennert Hotel. I became distracted by the overarching narrative of a grand architectural wonder and the elite patrons who visited the Rennert Hotel. By chance, I happened to come across an article discussing an interracial fight at the hotel. It was then that I realized that I had excluded the narrative of African Americans. After this realization, I began to be more cognizant of the groups I was subconsciously excluding in my research. In order to make my research more inclusive, I started utilizing the Baltimore Afro-American archives to find the narratives of African Americans. I ended up finding an article about an African American named Henry Cummings who was head chef of the Rennert Hotel. After reading Mr. Cummings' story, I decided to focus on what was hidden behind the glamour of the hotel's decorations. I wanted to take away the curtain and show the narrative of this hardworking man who was praised for his traditional Maryland cuisine. 

The story of Henry Cummings inspired me to continue to look for these overlooked narratives. Once I began to be more conscious of the narratives of minority groups, I had more success in my research. I discovered that the Wilson Line practiced segregation and further down the rabbit hole I learned about the issue of segregation at beaches in the Chesapeake. I am currently using this information to talk about two African American sisters who founded all black beaches. 

In my research, I have covered a diverse group of people (blue collar workers, African Americans, women, Polish immigrants, Greek immigrants, for example) and I am hoping to continue to make the narrative of Baltimore East's industrial history even more inclusive. 

Blog Post 1: Internship at The Maryland Military Museum

 I have just completed my first month at The Maryland Military Museum. I figured I would wait until I had an actual goal, actual skills and actually learned a few things before I wrote my blog post. The first few weeks went slowly, I spent most of my time putting documents into protective slips, navigating Past Perfect software, and hanging out with the office dog. This internship gave me a refresher on handling fragile artifacts, what gloves to use, hand washing, how to describe the condition of the documents and now my new favorite word is “foxing”. I have never really been too interested in military history, in hindsight that’s silly because war touches so much of history. After looking at lots of documents involving prisoners of war, blowing up windmills and telephone conversations between generals, where men begged for reinforcements and were met with silence, I finally saw the people behind the scenes. 

Originally my goal was to just learn how to use Past Perfect. The Maryland Military museum has a vast and most impressive collection of newspapers, letters, postcards, telephone transcripts and even Nazi paraphernalia. Despite this huge collection, the museum had no digital archive, the system of organization is fairly dated, most record systems in the museum are handwritten. So I had planned to just help in anyway I could to start making the archive a little more accessible to the public. With that goal in mind, I set out to become fast and efficient in Past Perfect. I believe I have already accomplished this task. So I set out for an other objective. An other student is working on creating an exhibit for the museum, I plan to see if it is possible for me to be more involved in that aspect of the museum as well. Although at the moment, I am really enjoying the archival work I do. I really enjoy talking to the people who come in and out of the office, it gives me a lot of good insight to the world of museums and research. I talked to people who wrote books about their passions and veterans who I hope will give an oral history soon. More than anything this internship reminded me why I like history, with Covid I’ve felt so removed from it. This internship makes me actually feel like setting new goals, learning new things and writing about things I care about. 

Internship at the Baltimore Museum of Industry Blog Post #1

 

This semester, spring 2021, I will be interning at the Baltimore Museum of Industry. Currently, I am unfamiliar with local history and although I have lived near Baltimore for most of my life, I know very little about the city. I am excited to learn more about Baltimore's past and I am particularly excited to learn more about the industrial history of Baltimore. For my internship, I will be creating a virtual walking tour of Harbor East consisting of ten sites. The BMI has granted me access to their database and currently I have a large excel spreadsheet which lists all of the companies featured at the BMI to sift through. My supervisor has also input all of the BMI data into a map so that I can see roughly where certain companies were/are located. My task is to choose ten sites for the tour, research each of the sites, and then report my findings in a way that gets the attention of community members. I have been thinking about how to create an interesting tour and will be basing my tour design off of my experience in giving tours for UMBC's Office of Undergraduate Admissions. In addition to providing in-depth research on each of the ten sites, I have to carefully select which information I feel is most vital to the understanding of the history of each site. The tour I create has to be a reasonable length so that community members can actually walk the tour. After the tour is completed, the BMI plans to post the tour on the Baltimore Heritage website. If I finish constructing the tour and still have hours remaining, the BMI is willing to let me perform inventory on one of their exhibits. My personal goal for this internship is to learn how to convey history in a way that interests society. I feel that much historical scholarship fails to capture the interest of the public and I would like to get more people interested in learning about their local history.