Personal Reflection
Overall, I’ve really enjoyed the Archives and Manuscripts course I took as part of the Master of Library and Information Science (MLIS) degree program at San José State University this semester, as I found it very interesting. I especially liked the diverse range of assignments we had to complete, such as visiting an archives, creating a finding aid and a “historic timeline” (Lawrimore, 2017a). Also, not initially knowing much about archives to begin with, I certainly learned a lot. I must admit that I now have a new appreciation for what archivists do, particularly regarding processing a collection. Thus, I didn’t have any idea about the huge amount of work that can potentially go into that, especially creating a finding aid and the components it consists of. In addition, I didn’t know there were such funding issues with a lot of archives. This surprised me because you would think that the preservation of our society’s history would be valued by more people.
Aspects about the class that surprised me were the finding aid assignments, involving the Ted Carlson papers. This were a real eye-opening experience for me, mainly because I didn’t realize how interesting but time consuming these assignments would be. I thought it was terrific that we got a good idea of what it would be like work to with a real collection but I certainly wasn’t expecting the assignments to involve analyzing so many files! Nevertheless, reading about Carlson’s life was fascinating, mainly because of the World War II era that most of the assignments’ collection is set in. I especially enjoyed reading the letters between Carlson and his parents because I felt like I got to know the type of person he was. However, reading the handwritten letters got frustrating at times, due to writing that wasn’t legible, mostly in a few of the letters from one of Carlson’s friends. Despite the latter, I very much enjoyed the assignments, particularly putting the puzzle of those years of Carlson’s life together and organizing the collection appropriately, so that researchers would get an accurate picture of what went on in Carlson’s life during the time period the collection covered. I was pleasantly surprised that I did well with this because I’ve never done any kind of archival work before these assignments, so this made me think maybe I should consider applying for archival jobs in the future.
A couple of examples of topics that we learned about in the course that I would like to explore in more detail are preservation and conservation, in terms of hands-on experience. Hence, they’re both very important in the protection of archival material, which is often rare and sometimes very valuable. I would especially like to have practical experience in some aspects of digital preservation, which due to the rapid rate that technology is updated, archives are doing more and more as time goes on, (if their budgets allow it). During the course, we learned the fundamentals of preservation and conservation theoretically but if I was asked to convert an audiovisual tape into a digital format, I wouldn’t be able to do it, so it would be great to get some practical experience, which I realize is a challenge in an online, introductory course to archives.
In terms of my new knowledge of archival practice, I think it will benefit me in several ways in my future Library and Information Science career, even though I’m not exactly sure what that will look like yet. I know that I would like to work in either a special or academic library. However, I believe some of the things I learned in the Archives and Manuscripts course will be useful no matter which direction my career heads in, such as learning about “public relations and public programming,” (Lawrimore, 2017b) and how to effectively handle difficult situations, (our ethics assignment was very useful concerning the latter), as well the very valuable organizational skills I gained from the finding aid assignments and learning how to effectively navigate new technology in the “Timeline” assignment (Lawrimore, 2017a).
Finally, a change in the archival profession that I see as being important is digital community collaboration. An example of this is the South Asian American Digital Archive (SAADA), who sought “grant funding to provide a platform that…[would] allow users to tag, contextualize, and comment on archival records, essentially…enabling…[SAADA] to share archival descriptive authority with…[their] community of users” (Caswell, 2014, p. 34). I think archives being open to some form of digital collaboration with their users is important because let’s face it, we are living in a Digital World, where many of us are used to and enjoy expressing ourselves online. Therefore, I believe a lot of archives would attract more users if they tried this out. However, they would have to carefully choose the appropriate digital environment that would meet their users’ needs.
References
Caswell, M. L. (2014). Seeing yourself in history: Community archives in the fight against symbolic annihilation. The Public Historian. 36(4), 34. Retrieved from https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9gc14537
Lawrimore, E. (2017a). Assignments. Retrieved from: https://sjsu.instructure.com/courses/1245910/assignments
Lawrimore, E. (2017b). Unit 5-b: Public relations and public programming. Retrieved from Lecture Notes Online Web site: https://sjsu.instructure.com/courses/1245910/pages/unit-5-b-public-relations-and-public-programming?module_item_id=9113395
