As I wrap up my internship at the Erminie Wheeler-Voegelin Archive, I am proud of the work I was able to do. Not only did I gain a lot of experience working on digital collections, I also helped create a stronger connection between the Glenn Black Lab and the IU Libraries system. This connection will be extremely helpful as the Archive will need to continue this relationship as plans are made to digitize future collections.
Next week I will begin working for the EWV Archive. My goal is to continue working on the Great Lakes-Ohio Valley Ethnohistory Collection with the hope of completing a large portion of the digitization over the next year. I also hope to complete the digitization of the map collection associated with that collection. Once this digitization is completed, we will need to work on making connections within the staff at Image Collections Online, where we hope this map collection will eventually reside.
In the next few weeks, I will also be training staff at the EWV Archive on the workflow and best practices of digitizing the rest of this collection. Hopefully this process will go well and we can begin having multiple people working on the same project.
This week I was also able to go with other staff members to the Illinois State Museum to pick up a 3,000 volume personal library that was donated to the library. This collection will greatly expand the geographic area of the library collection. The new portion of the collection focuses on the American Southwest while the rest of the collection focuses on the Midwest and Great Lakes regions.
As those pictures show, it was hard work packing up the collection ans moving it to Bloomington, but it was definitely worth it as the library will now be useful to significantly more scholars.
Overall this experience has been very rewarding and I look forward to many more great experiences at the Glenn Black Lab over the next year.
Adventures in Archives 