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Week Fifteen

On the fifteenth week of my internship, which was my final week, I mostly worked on helping my peers complete their projects. I had the opportunity to work on my favorite part of the process once again. I mostly worked on helping one of my peers complete their finding aid by coding. I also finished up a few duties that I had left for last, such as preparing recyclable materials that were used in my collection for future use. Ultimately, I only had a few hours left on my internship for this week and so I spent a short amount of time in the office.

Looking back, working at the Special Collections and University Archives department was an extremely rewarding experience. I was able to learn a lot thanks to Mary, who was my manager, and through working on the collections that I worked on. I was able to gain a firm understanding about the basics of archiving paper documents and outdated media formats. I also learned about what the goals that archivists work towards are when they process a colleciton. The most important of these is preservation and organization. Preservation is important because, when a document is first created, it is difficult to gauge how much historical value it will have in the future. Furthermore, it was simply interesting to learn what leads to document corrosion and what methods are employed in order to mitigate corrosion of documents that may have historical value in the future.

I was also able to learn a lot from having the opportunity to work on a collection that was submitted to University Archives by a UCF professor. The papers that I worked on in the collection were able to provide me with a small but valuable view of the kind of work and achievements that a person who wishes to be a successful professor must obtain. I was able to obtain a view of what it takes to obtain a successful publication. I was also able to see how a successful professor can become a pillar of his/her community. Going through the collection by no means provided me with a complete picture of what it means to be a successful professor. This summer I will be graduating and I am very happy that I decided to take this internship opportunity on this semester.

Completing my collections made me feel very accomplished. I can only hope that I was able to help the department as much as the staff in the department helped me during my learning process. Although I do not plan to follow a Public History graduate degree, but a General History graduate degree, I would definitely say that Interning at Special Collects and University Archives is a very valuable experience for history majors. Mary works very hard to help her interns. She also provides weekly readings that provide insight about how vast and important archival work is for academia and the community at large. Interning at the department was a pleasure.

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Week Fourteen

This week at my internship I continued to work on the Black Faculty and Staff Association collection. I dedicated most of this week to what is likely my favorite part of the process: creating the finding aid for the collection. I started this the process of creating the guide by using the guide I created for the James Wright Papers as my own personal guide. As always, Mary was there to help me whenever I found myself needing assistance.

I first created all the text that would go into the guide code on a word document. This is where I relied the most on the guide I had previously created. The guide provided something of a template for me to follow so that I could make sure that I was providing the adequate amount of information for the guide. After I completed this section, I started my work on Note Pad Pro, the program that is used to create the code. This program is awesome because it contains a template for the code needed for to create the guide. It works by creating the code and then prompting the author to insert the text through dialogue windows. Unfortunately, this is the part where I made the biggest mistake of the process. I was unaware that moving the curser would result in the code being generated inconsistently. When I rendered the page, it was broken. Luckily, Mary was able to look at the issue for a short time and was able to help me fix the code.

All in all, I can say that creating the finding aid for the Black Faculty and Staff collection was went by much quicker than the previous collection that I worked on. This, I believe, can be attributed to the small size of the collection, the bit of experience that I had when starting this collection, and the order that the creator of one of the series had provided to the collection. Where I found myself creating folders sometimes in the James Wright collection, I found myself removing folders that were redundant. I’m glad that I had a chance to work on a second collection. Towards the end of the week, the guide was completed and Mary provided me with a list of things I had to edit in order to complete the guide. I should be done with the finding aid at the start of next week.

This week I was also finally able to read the article that my supervisor assigned regarding scientific archiving. The article was about a place where miles of ice cylinders, that have been extracted from deep ice shelves, are stored for research. The theme of the article was that although the items that are archived by these scientists contain valuable information for the scientific community that focuses on climate change are in danger because of lack of funding. The place where the ice is stored runs on a cooling liquid that is damaging to the atmosphere. Remodeling the system is expensive and it would be difficult to move the ice to a different location while the work is done. Under an administration that does not value climate research, it will be difficult to fund the facility.

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Week Thirteen

On the thirteenth week of my internship, I continued to work towards processing the second collection I am working on this semester. As I stated last week, this collection is only a fraction of the size of the first collection I worked on. Nonetheless, it feels like a great opportunity to put what I learned while processing the first collection to the test. Last week I stated that the collection was not organized by the party that donated the documents to University Archives, but it turns out that my conclusion was premature. While going to the third part of the collection, I found that this section had been given a pretty good organizational structure.

While going through this collection, I was able to pick up on patterns much quicker than I had on my first collection. This resulted in me being able to do some organizing during the first phase of the process, which is the phase where acquaint myself with the contents of the collection. I was able to notice what kind of material could be found in the collection. My first idea was to condense any folders that could be seen as redundant into single folders. After figuring out what the nature of the documents were, I was able to go through the folders that were poorly organized to efficiently organize the contents into the condensed folders. This process resulted in the removal of many folders as the contents of the folders that ended up being removed were sorted into their relevant folders.

Next, I made sure that the folders reflected the dates of the papers in the folder. This was absolutely necessary because of the moving around I did mentioned in the paragraph above. Using excel in order to come up with the organization of the collection has once against proved crucial in the process. As of this week, I have completed the process of renaming the folders in order to reflect their contents. I have also come up with the organization details remaining for the collection. I have begun working on physically renaming the folders and rearranging them.

There are also some redactions that need to be made to some of the papers. Most of the papers needing redactions are scholarship applications that contain student information that should not be public. Unbeknownst to me, I also learned to keep an eye out for information that may be redacted so that I can consult my supervisor on whether the information needs to be removed or not.

Starting next week, I will be working on the finding aid that will be associated with the collection. I am quite excited to work on a finding aid for a second time this semester because it is currently my favorite part of processing a collection. My second favorite part is seeing the collection neatly organized in brand new folders and a brand new box. This week, Mary will be providing us with a reading about scientific archiving for scientists who collect glacier ice. I am curious to learn about how that works.

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Week Twelve

On the eleventh week of my internship I completed all the revisions necessary for the finding aid that is associated with the Dr. James Wright collection. The collection is called James Wright Papers. The finding aid was then reviewed by my supervisor and uploaded onto the University archives page. The finding aid can be accessed through the following link: http://ucfarchon.fcla.edu/?p=collections/controlcard&id=232.  Seeing the guide finally placed on the University Archives website felt very accomplishing. It would be interesting to learn how Dr. Wright would feel about how I organized the collection he provided to University Archives.

After I completed the finding aid, Mary provided me with the next collection I will be processing for University Archives. The collection I will be working on for the remainder of the semester was provided to University Archives by chair embers of the Black Faculty and Staff association. The collection is much smaller than the James Wright: measuring a little less than a box where the James Wright collection measured four boxes. This week I have mainly focused on going through the collection to examine its contents. The BFSA collection, as I will call it henceforth, has some similarities to the James Wright collection.

The BFSA collection is similar to the Community Agency Papers that is found in the wright collection. There are a lot of meeting documents, such as minutes, agendas, schedules, and roll sheets. When compared to the Wright collection, the BFSA collection was not organized very much by the individuals that provided the papers before donating them to University Archives. The folders were not named in a very descriptive way and the documents are not separated in an ordered fashion. The So far, a lot of my short time with the collection has been spent finding how I might be able to organize the collection.

My supervisor asked me to keep one of the existing organization that the collection has. The collection was compiled by University Archives through three donations by BFSA members. The donations where kept separate in the boxes where the collection is stored. So, in essence, the collection already has three subseries and it will remain this way when I am done processing the collection. Mary informed me that the reason she wants the series to remain as the day that the parts of the collection were turned because she expects that the collection will be growing in the future.

This week, we were also provided with readings regarding how archiving can be beneficial for researchers. The collection that was referenced by the article was the Panamerican Airline archives which are found at the University of Miami. It was very interesting to see how vast the collection is. It is comprised of hundreds of boxes. Mary provided a link to the collection and it was interesting to see that everything from bankruptcy filings to plane models are part of the collection. The article also provided some insight about the funding necessary for an archiving department to process such a vast collection.

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Week Eleven

On the eleventh week of my internship, I continued to work towards completing and posting the finding aid for Dr. Wright’s collection. As of last week, I was approximating the completion of the process. This week. I primarily focused on tidying up the finding aid and the rest of the collection as a whole. When I came for my first day of work this week, my supervisor provided me with a print out of the rendered code of the finding aid. On the print out, Mary noted all the parts that needed to be edited on the finding aid before it could be published.

Some of the issues were certain characters that needed to have a specific code in order to be rendered properly in the aid. An example of characters that needed to be coded was the “&” ampersand sign, which needed to be coded as “&amp:” Other issues with the code was missing information. When inserting the portion of the code that contained the information regarding the series, subseries, and folders, the code did not include the portion that provided the scope and content for the series. I had to go back and make sure that the code was inserted in the appropriate area, as the “scope and content” is a crucial part for the finding aid. The scope and content gives a brief, yet useful, description of the contents of a series.

After reviewing the finding aid, it was also determined that some of the folders could use better placement within the collection. I had to change the folder placement in the finding aid and then verify that the folder was physically changed within the collection. All the editing had to be done within the code, which at first seemed to be a bit confusing and complicated. Fortunately, all the computers in the archiving office are equipped with a program that color codes the actual text within the coded sections. A few times, I tried editing section of the code and broke the whole rendered page. I had difficulties resolving these issues at times and had to ask Mary to help me find where my mistakes were made in the code. Mary was extremely helpful and taught me where mistakes were more likely to happen in the process.

This week I plan to have all the editing to the finding aid completed. The creation of the finding aid has been a great learning experience. It demonstrated how multi-layered processing a collection truly is. On Thursday, I was briefly shown the second collection I will be working on after completing Dr. Wright’s collection. I was not given too much information regarding the new collection but I am very excited to put my newly acquired knowledge to the test. The new collection is much smaller than Dr. Wright’s collection, only taking up about one box when compared to four boxes for Dr. Wright’s collection, but I am sure it will be a great opportunity to continue to further develop the skills that I have learned in my internship.

`.��]F��On the eleventh week of my internship, I continued to work towards completing and posting the finding aid for Dr. Wright’s collection. As of last week, I was approximating the completion of the process. This week. I primarily focused on tidying up the finding aid and the rest of the collection as a whole. When I came for my first day of work this week, my supervisor provided me with a print out of the rendered code of the finding aid. On the print out, Mary noted all the parts that needed to be edited on the finding aid before it could be published. Some of the issues were certain characters that needed to have a specific code in order to be rendered properly in the aid. An example of characters that needed to be coded was the “&” ampersand sign, which needed to be coded as “&amp:” Other issues with the code was missing information. When inserting the portion of the code that contained the information regarding the series, subseries, and folders, the code did not include the portion that provided the scope and content for the series. I had to go back and make sure that the code was inserted in the appropriate area, as the “scope and content” is a crucial part for the finding aid. The scope and content gives a brief, yet useful, description of the contents of a series. After reviewing the finding aid, it was also determined that some of the folders could use better placement within the collection. I had to change the folder placement in the finding aid and then verify that the folder was physically changed within the collection. All the editing had to be done within the code, which at first seemed to be a bit confusing and complicated. Fortunately, all the computers in the archiving office are equipped with a program that color codes the actual text within the coded sections. A few times, I tried editing section of the code and broke the whole rendered page. I had difficulties resolving these issues at times and had to ask Mary to help me find where my mistakes were made in the code. Mary was extremely helpful and taught me where mistakes were more likely to happen in the process. This week I plan to have all the editing to the finding aid completed. The creation of the finding aid has been a great learning experience. It demonstrated how multi-layered processing a collection truly is. On Thursday, I was briefly shown the second collection I will be working on after completing Dr. Wright’s collection. I was not given too much information regarding the new collection but I am very excited to put my newly acquired knowledge to the test. The new collection is much smaller than Dr. Wright’s collection, only taking up about one box when compared to four boxes for Dr. Wright’s collection, but I am sure it will be a great opportunity to continue to further develop the skills that I have learned in my internship. `.��]F��

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Week 9

On the ninth week of my internship I continued to work towards completing the finding aid for Dr. James Wright’s collection. The creation of the finding aid was a very constructive learning process because I got to work with coding which is something I had never done in the past. Although I did not receive any in-depth training regarding the coding process I was at least able to familiarize myself with how it feels to work with code. I was also able to gain a superficial understanding of how XML works and how it transfers onto the University Archives web-page to display a complete guide to the collection. I enjoyed the process quite a bit.

After completing the code for the table of contents that will go with the collection, I learned that I had to complete other portions of the finding aid. I was informed that I would need to complete other parts of the finding aid, such as the abstract, the creator biography, and the scope and content of the collection. This process was straight forward than I initially expected. Most of the information was not extremely descriptive but descriptive enough provide guidance for anyone wishing to conduct some research with Dr. Wright’s collection. I felt that this portion of the guide was quite important because of the scope of the material found in the collection. The three series of the collection are quite unrelated.

As I am nearing the end of processing Dr. Wright’s collection, I am quite amazed at how long and drawn out the process of processing a new collection is. The work requires a high degree of planning, organization, and patience. The work is also very different in every stage. In my first weeks I made sure to clean the collection of any corrosive items. I went through the material to gain an understanding of the contents to figure out how I would organize the collection optimally. Towards the end of the process, I was creating an online finding aid by using XML. It takes several skills to complete processing a collection.

At times, the process could feel drawn out. It felt as if progress was slow and minimal. I felt that this was specially the case when initially going through the collection to remove paper clips or isolate acidic paper. The physical organization of the material did not feel anywhere near as long, although I spent an almost equal amount of hours completing the task. The work is rewarding once you see the physical aspect of processing the collection complete before you. I expect to complete Dr. James Wright’s collection late this week or on the first day of next week. I am excited to learn what collection I will be working on next. I am also looking forward to applying my hands on experience, and the knowledge that I have gained while processing this collection, towards a collection in the future. It will be a different experience but an equally rewarding one.

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Week 8

On my eight week of my internship I continued to work towards completing to process the Dr. James Wright’s collection. I continued to restructure the collection in a way that would make it more accessible for any researcher who may wish to view the collection. As has continued to be the case, I found myself changing small details at the last minute in order to make the collection more organized. These included things such as changing the name of a folder. In some instances, I concluded that it would be better to create new folders and separate the material of existing folders after concluding that they were unrelated. For example, in a very large folder I found documents pertaining to Dr. Wright’s public involvement in the Coalition for the Homeless organization. In the same folder I found information regarding Dr. Wright’s involvement in establishing the UCF Applied Sociology Ph.D. program. I separated these into separate folders and placed them in their respective subseries. I would guess that I have created approximately 10 new folders in the collection.

Towards the end of the week completed the restructuring, renaming, and refoldering portion of processing the collection. On Friday, I began to work on creating a finding aid which will be displayed on the UCF website along with other finding aids. The Finding aid will perfectly reflect the structure of collection and serve as a table of contents. Creating the finding aid involves using an existing code that was provided to me by my manager. The code is then edited by me so that I can provide the names of the series, sub-series, and folders for the finding aid. At first it looked very confusing, as I have never worked with HTML or any other web code. Nonetheless, after a few minutes of instruction I was able to see the structure of the code and to understand what the many portions of it meant. Fortunately for me, I worked carefully to document the structure of the collection on Excel spreadsheets. This is allowing me to quickly draw the information and place it in the code. After finishing a section, I verify that I have done the work correctly by matching it to the physical collection.

This week Mary also provided us interns with two readings on archiving. The first reading was a satirical “evil archivist” twitter page which gave me a good laugh. The second reading was more serious. It involved how materials worth archiving may not look like they are worth archiving when they come into existence. I earned through the article that when this is the case, archivists can often rely on fan communities in order to make up for the lack of foresight. The article really emphasized how difficult it can be to determine whether something is worth archiving or not. This led me to ask myself a somewhat comical question. What is the difference between an archivist and a hoarder? The collection that I am working on has the obvious value of containing some of the work carried out by published professor who has been heavily involved in the Central Florida community. Nonetheless, this may not always be the case in the future.

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Week Seven

This week, I reached the halfway point of my internship. Thus far I have learned about archiving at the University Archives Department. During this week, I continued to work towards processing the Dr. James Wright collection. I am still working on placing all the folders in to new folders and making sure that all the materials in the folders are acid free and safe for storage. I am renaming the folders and making sure to keep track of any name changes I am making. I am doing this in order to make sure that all the folders are accounted for and in the correct order when the process is completed. In the spread sheet I am making sure to connect the new names to the old names. Once I am sure that the contents in every folder are in the correct new folder I delete the old name.

Ideally, I would be able to keep the original names on the folder. Unfortunately, after going through the collection I realized that some of the names provided by the professor for some of the folders made very little indication, if any indication, of what the contents of the folder are. Some of the folders are named in very vague terms such as “notes” or “conference.” When this has been the case I have gone through the contents to see what I can add to the name in order to make sure that it is more specific. In other cases, I have found names that are perhaps too specific. For example, there is simply a name on the folder. When this has occurred I have tried to add more general information in order to make sure that the name reflects something that relates to the series or sub-series it belongs to.

While working on this portion of the processing steps I have constantly kept in mind the reason why I am processing the collection. The ultimate goal, as explained by my manager, is to make the collection organized and accessible for anyone who might want to conduct some research on Dr. Wright’s folders. This is ultimately why some of the names had to be changed. I try to think the way that someone who has never seen the collection and is looking for something very specific might think. After all, I have spent hours upon hours going through the collection and interacting with it. I suppose that this will not be the case for a researcher.

This week I also read an article assigned by Mary, my manager, about digital archiving. Every time I read these articles I become more interested in the subject. The article this week brought up a very important point that I feel is central to the very concept of archiving. The article was about archiving digital media, more specifically about archiving video games. In the article the author discussed why something may be worth archiving. Determining what is worth archiving and what is not seems like something that would be straightforward and easy but it is not. When applying this question to video games it is interesting to consider, as the author in the article suggests, that there are thousands of video games that exist from the dawn of the industry. In addition to this, there are also thousands being released annually. So the question is, which ones do you archive? This question I ever present in the archivists mind.

This week I will hopefully complete rehousing all the contents of the collection and renaming the folders in the order that I have given them. Next week I look forward to beginning my work with creating a finding aid for the collection.

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Week Six

This week I completed creating an organizational structure for Dr. Wright’s collection and began to organize the collection. I decided to separate the collection into three different series which encompass the whole of the collection. The Three series are Publications, UCF Involvement, and Public involvement. The names, as of yet, are still tentative. If the names are changed, they will be closely related to the tentative names. The three series are then being organized into subseries. For example, one of the subseries for the Publications series is Fixin’ to Git, which was a book written by Dr. Wright and published by Duke University Press in 2002. The Fixin’ To Git subseries is then being organized into sub-subseries. One of sub-subseries for Fixin’ to Git is Research which encompasses notes and research material that Dr. Wright used in order to write his book.

After having created the organizational structure for the collection, I began to physically organize the collection. As you may remember form my previous post, Last week I mostly worked on spreadsheets in order to visually create an optimal organizational structure. Some of the folders in the collection had no name. Other folders had names which were not very descriptive of the contents within the folder. I had to address these issues before being able to move anything. Also, I had to make sure that all the redactions that were needed in some of the folders were addressed. Having all this information on spreadsheets is helping me greatly in the physical part of processing a collection.

This week I completed the physical organization of the Publications subseries. I went folder by folder, renaming the new folders in a way that reflected the organizational structure that is being applied. I used acid free folders, and, for the what is probably the fourth time, I went through the contents of each folder in order to make sure that there were no acidic materials. These materials can be newspapers and sticky notes. If I found anything acidic was found I made sure to isolate it, although mostly everything was isolated in previous searches. Redactions were left until the end by my choice. Things that need to be redacted are mostly papers with personal information. Sometimes the numbers on the original cannot be covered so they have to be photocopied and the original has to be shredded. This is done after whiting out or blacking out the number.

All in all, this week went by pretty fast because of how busy I felt when physically organizing the materials. It felt very nice to look at a brand new box with all the materials in new folders. Everything looks very clean and tidy for anyone who might need to pull out the collection for research. Next week I will continue to organize the other two series and then work on creating a sort of catalogue for the collection. I have not received too much details on how this is done although I was advised to look at the catalogue pages for other University Archives Collection.

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Week Five

On the fifth week of my internship, I have been working on organizing Dr. Wright’s collection in order to make it more accessible to researchers. Working on this has been very rewarding as I am seeing the hours I spent going through the collection bear their fruits. Although I had believed that I had gone through the collection thoroughly, I have often found myself going back into the folders in order to collect further details. This section of the work, involved with processing a collection, feels very “hands on.”

After completing my task of going through the collection, Ms. Rubin, my manager at the University Archive’s department, advised me to make organizational drafts on excel in order to create a visual guide to possible organization formats. I learned very quickly that there were many correct ways to organize the collection and that I would be working on finding the most efficient way to organize. The ambiguity of some of the files found in the collection caused me to have to really contemplate where some files would have to be placed. A second observation would usually clarify this issue. On the other hand, some of the files were very straight forward which was very nice. This second portion of the work related to processing a collection made me aware of specific things that I should be looking for during my first examination of a collection. This was especially the case when I had to go back to the file to look for guidance.

Very quickly, I found myself working with multiple spreadsheets in order to maintain a high level of organization and clarity for myself. I tried to document any changes that I had made to the tentative organization of the collection so that if, after reaching an end point I decided that the organization was not optimal, I could go back a few steps instead of having to start off from the ground up. As of now, this is something that I am still experiencing on a regular basis.

When this part of the process is completed, I will have organized the collection into categories and sub-categories called series and subseries. The series being the broader identifying name with sub-series being more specific. Fixin to Git, which is a publication by Dr. Wright which I have mentioned in previous blogs, will be organized under a series named “publications” and a subseries named “fixin to git. Then the “fixin to git” collection will be organized into further subseries of which one will be “drafts.” I closed this week with a tentative organization format, tentative series names, and tentative file names. Although this is still a work in progress, I am glad to see my work of the past weeks finally take shape.

This week I also did a reading about video game archiving which peaked my interest. The editorial argued that video games are worth archiving because they possess cultural value in the same way that music and movies, as well as other forms of media, do. I could not agree with the article more. The article also presented the problems of archiving digital media. An eye opening example regarding how video games have cultural value,  provided in the article, was the author’s mention that in the 1920s Mickey Mouse, a cartoon character, was the most recognized mascot by children. Currently, Pickachu, a video game character is the most recognized mascot by children. I have taken an unexpected interest in the subject of digital archiving over the past few weeks.

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Week Four

This week I experienced an interesting turning point in my internship as I transitioned from going through the collection that Dr. Wright provided to actually organizing the contents of the collection in order to make them more accessible to researchers. I started off my week by going through the final section of the collection. This section of the collection mostly focused on Dr. Wright’s involvement in improving the UCF sociology program. This portion of the collection also contain other information about works Dr. Wright engaged in.

After arriving at UCF to teach in 2001, Dr. Wright began working on the establishment an applied sociology PhD program at UCF. This goal required an extensive amount of coordination between the University of Central Florida, the ASA (American Sociology Association), and the professors involved. Dr. Wright also conducted research in order to determine how the program would need to be established. Currently, Dr. Wright teaches undergraduate level classes as well as graduate level classes in UCF.

A second project that Dr. Wright embarked on was the establishment of a service learning program for the Sociology Department. Dr. Wright considered the development of an effective service learning program as paramount for the quality of education for students. He attended conferences and developed connections in order to provide Sociology students with the opportunity to engage in service learning. Among the various documents regarding Dr. Wright’s work in improving the Sociology program, there were also various publications and conference documents.

After completing my task of going through the collection in order to document the contents of the collection, I began the new task of finding a coherent organizational structure for the collection.  Reorganizing the collection will enable individuals wishing to use the documents for research to find what they are looking for more effectively. I learned that the collection will be divided into series and sub-series. Although this sounds pretty simple and straightforward, it requires quite of bit of thinking about the contents of the collection. I found myself going back into the collection several times in order to verify the documents within files. I also found myself creating new files in order to properly organize files which contained a variety of different documents. Although the process sounds a little tedious I am actually finding it quite entertaining.

This week I also read an article regarding media archiving. I learned that that Internet Archive has created, and will be maintaining, a collection of President Trump’s media in order to provide journalists with a sound method of going back and viewing past interviews, speeches, and other things of that sort. I found it interesting that a project of that sort would be undertaken so soon after he assumed the presidency. Nevertheless, I think it is very important for a project of this nature to exist. The archivist working on the project will seek to create a free and enduring archive for future generations to reference. Starting next week, I will continue to work on the organization of the collection and hopefully begin to rename and move around the files provided by Dr. Wright. It is nice to see that the work that I put in during my first weeks in my internship are beginning to materialize in a way. Especially since the first few weeks was mostly not taking and observation.

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Week Three

This week, I continued to go through Dr. Wright’s collection in order to document what the collection contains. Dr. Wright is a sociology professor at the University of Central Florida. He serves as the Director of the UCF institute of Social and behavioral science and is held as the Provost’s Distinguished Research Professor. Dr. Wright Completed his PhD program at the University of Wisconsin and has been active in the Sociology field since 1973. He began teaching at the University of Central Florida in 2001. Dr. Wright has had 21 books published and has been involved in community service throughout his career. This week, through the documents that I was processing, I was able to gain some insight into Dr. Wright’s public service.

Research is for more than publications and book writing; it is for helping your community. Dr. Wright has worked extensively with the various communities of Central Florida in order to fight homelessness and poverty. He has conducted surveys and studies in order to find ways by which to help those in need. In the collection Dr. Wright provided to the University Archives department, he provided documents related to his involvement in public service as a board member OATH which is an organization which seeks to end homelessness. In this organization, Dr. Wright was responsible for providing grants to other organizations that had the same goal, as well as undertaking public works.

In his collection, Dr. Wright also included meeting details for the many organizations that he worked with and managed. He includes documents like “minutes,” budget statements, personal notes, and studies. Dr. Wright, through these organizations, also aimed at educating local governments and the public regarding the causes of homelessness, statistics of homelessness, results of studies, and possible solutions to the problem.

After seeing a whole section of the Dr. Wright’s collection be about Fixin to Git, which was a publication about NASCAR culture in the late 1990s and early 2000s, it was interesting to see how he was simultaneously involved in public service. His collection contains presentations and studies regarding homelessness that date within the same time period during which he was working on his NASCAR book. Once again, I was surprised at the amount of work that a professor is involved in during a career.

Unsurprisingly, the third section of the collection was more research and drafts about Dr. Wright’s publication; Fixin to Git. The research in this section was a little different than the first section. It dealt more with race and southern culture. The collection did not contain any correspondence between the publisher and the author. There were a few files about conventions that Dr. Wright attended about sociology, as well as files on more public work involvement.

Next week, I will complete going through the collection and begin working on actually organizing the collection from an archival perspective. I will also be working on creating a collection overview page for Dr. Wright’s collection. I am quite excited to learn a different aspect of archiving in my internship.

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[jay-a-internship-blog]

Week Two

For my second week of my internship in public history, I continued to work on processing Dr. James Wright’s collection. As expected, it is turning out to be a great learning experience. While completing the first box of Dr. Wrights collection I was able to gain extensive insight regarding the amount of work and perseverance it takes to be a published writer. In the first box of the collection Dr. Wright included a copious amount of information regarding the research and drafting process necessary for the writing of a scholarly book. I was able to witness first and second drafts and the notes that he took in order to make those drafts. I can only imagine that this was only a fraction of the work that it took to write Fixin to Git.

As an undergrad student, I imagined that most of the work of a published writer went into drafts and research but going through the collection I was surprised to learn that it entails much more than that. In the collection I was able to find some of the documents related to finding a publisher for your book. Dr. Wright worked with a publishing agency to provide his book to over ten different publishers with which his publishing agency exchanged correspondence. Many of the publishers were not receptive to the theme of Fixin to Git, despite the intense amount of work that went into creating the work. Eventually, it was accepted by a renowned publisher; Duke University Press.

I also learned about how involved the editing process is. The professor included in his collection a lot of correspondence between himself and his editor. The decisions that Dr. Wright had to make involved very specific details, such as the pictures that he would include in his work and the captions that would go with it. There were also many suggestions by the editor that Dr. Wright had to decide whether to accept or decline regarding the wording of things that some readers overlook, such as chapter titles. Looking to through the collection, it felt like the work involved in completing the book was never ending. It was quite exciting to find the document asking Dr. Wright to look over the work one last time before its publishing.  

Finally, I was also able to gain a limited view of the amount of work that goes into marketing after the book has been written. I learned that the author and the publisher are in contact for quite some time after the book has been taken up by the publisher in order to work out details of the business aspect of writing. Being someone who is interested in perhaps continuing on with History in order to one day become a professor, it was quite invaluable to gain at least some degree of insight regarding the work that goes on behind the scenes of a publication. I have heard from professors about the amount of work that scholars must engage in to be published, but quite frankly, the sharing of a second hand experience does not do the workload justice. Towards the end of my week, I began to work on a section regarding Dr. Wrights involvement in public service. I am looking forward to learning about this aspect of a professors career.

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[jay-a-internship-blog]

Week One

My name is Jay Aguilar and I am a senior at the University of Central Florida. I am a history major. This week, I began my first Internship in Public History at the University of Central Florida University Archives department. My interests include modern history, history of the developing world, and international relations. This semester I will be processing a collection for the University Archives department that was provided to the department by Dr. James Wright; currently the director of the UCF Institute for Social and Behavioral Sciences.

The University Archives Department collects University items in order to catalogue them and preserve them, and make them available for any person wishing to conduct research on any of the many collections that are held by the department. The University Archives department processes and maintains items such as Student Government Association documents and UCF Sports memorabilia.

This week at my internship, I met with Mary Rubin to receive directions on how I can start to process the collection properly. This entailed learning the preservation process for University Archives. I learned that all metal objects have to be removed from the papers in the collection so that they are not damaged by rust. I also learned that all newspapers have to be separated from other papers in the collection, that photos have to be sleeved, and that all the items need to be placed in an acid free box. This is just a sample of the many things rehousing the collection entails.

This week I also learned how the Library of Congress call number system functions and why it is so essential in the libraries that use the system. Although the library of congress system is the only system that I learned about this week, in detail, I also learned that a variety of different system are employed by different libraries for archiving purposes. I was able to take a practice test in order to put what I learned into a bit of practice.

Learning how to use the equipment located in the office and learning where all the materials necessary for processing a collection are located also took up some of my time during this first week of my internship. I had the pleasure of meeting the individuals who work for the UCF archiving department and other students who are interning in the department.

I am looking forward to learning a lot about archiving this semester. I believe that this internship will provide me with much knowledge about archiving that will serve me well in my quest to familiarize myself with fields associated to my major. I am looking forward to processing Dr. Wright’s collection and familiarizing myself with the information that he collected in his endeavors. Going through the first box of collections, in the limited degree that I was able to with the short amount of time I have had with it, it was quite surprising to see how much research and work went into one of Dr. Wright’s publications; Fixing to Git. I am sure that Dr. Wright’s collection, along with all the other activities that I will be engaging this semester, will be a valuable experience.

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