Student Internship: Lindsey Bosak
Working with Arizona State University’s Chicano/a Research Collection was an opportunity unlike any I have had before. Nancy ensured my semester as an intern was both educational and entertaining, as well as entirely hands-on! Arguably one of the most memorable aspects of my semester was the time spent working on and discussing community outreach. When working with an inherently underrepresented group, significant effort has to be put towards obtaining collections through donations, in addition to educating those donors on the importance of the work archivists do. Hosting open houses and tours – inviting donors and their families – is one of the best ways to share information about not only the collections but the steps archivists take to ensure records and artifacts are properly preserved. Being able to assist during one of these events was eye opening and highlighted the fact that outreach and community relations are a significant portion of an archivist’s day-to-day life.
Throughout the months I spent with the majority of my time creating preliminary inventories, re-housing, and entering collections into ArchiveSpace. Going through this process from inventory, to re-housing, to data input gave me the chance to experience a large portion of the lifecycle of a collection. I saw firsthand the variety of conditions in which a collection might arrive after donation, be it reports neatly organized in binders or simply loose papers and artifacts stacked in boxes. Working with ArchvieSpace was also enlightening in terms of availability for those interested in the collections. In the coming years I am looking forward to working further with the digitalization of collections – and subsequent organization of those records – in order to gain better understand that aspect of community access. I do believe the Library and Information Sciences field is evolving technologically, and the digital world will come to play an even more significant role in both the preservation and viewing of archival collections.
Aside from inventory and data input, I was also able to do some hands-on work with a collection of records containing mold. As was explained up front, mold removal is one of the unfortunate but necessary duties for archivists working with collections donated by individuals with little or no archival background. Experiences like this one served to remind me that collections come to archives in all manner of states, ranging from pristine to water damaged and even illegible due to weathering and improper storage. As such, once received it is the responsibility of the archivist to re-house each record according to a standard practice so they will be preserved for future use. The work done by archivists is truly invaluable, for it is through their efforts that we are able to document the world’s history – its people and their stories – for those generations yet to come.
