Well the semester is in its first week and things are officially gearing up.  I definitely didn’t end up with a super easy last semester like I originally planned a when I first started grad school, but I would definitely say this is all the good kind of busy.  I told the professor I do research for that I’m taking Database Management this semester and his response was “Aww, Mt. Everest!”  I thought that kind of summed things up well.

What I’d really like to talk about tonight though is the start of my volunteering at the Erie Canal Museum.  I’ve volunteered at quite a few institutions in my time since discovering this field and I’ve got to say that this is already my favorite.  I have not one criticism of them.  They really care about their collection, they really care about representing the true history of Syracuse, and everyone really seems to be truly interested in what they’re doing.  Plus the fact that my project is all about manuscripts, primarily from the the 18 and early 19 hundreds, certainly isn’t hurting!  I can’t remember whether or not I’ve expressed my love of manuscripts before, but let me do it (possibly again) now.  I LOVE manuscript collections.  Rare books have their magic, artifacts can be truly fascinating, but nothing pulls me back to a time in history like a handwritten letter or diary by a real person going through the true everyday life of that time.  Mixed with the posters, ads, pamphlets, papers, records, what have you that also pop up in manuscript collections, what better way to understand the truth of history?

My job at the museum is to pick up where someone else left off (actually a friend of mine who doesn’t have the time anymore but knew it would be right up my alley) taking the existing manuscripts collection and cataloging/updating the existing catalog records in the museums database using PastPerfect.  Along with my cataloging, I’m also keeping notes about condition and focusing on finding provenance.  If time permits, I may also be doing some rehousing for the materials since their existing housing is older than most of the museum staff.  The existing records in the database are really a prime example of the problems facing many cultural heritage institutions today.  As with many repositories, keeping a standard quality method of cataloging was not always a priority in the past in the light of limited resources.  Although sometimes this is a result of people who didn’t care enough, more often it is the result of different times and different priorities, or even just different people with different ideas.  I in no way criticize this second possibility, it’s just an unfortunately confusing reality sometimes and a strong argument for keeping a standard policy and for keeping communication a priority.

During a semester of stressful classes and even more stressful job applications, having a volunteering opportunity for something I really believe I will have a great time with is going to be a huge relief.  I just might stay sane.

So what have I been up to?  Yes, I was on break from school (and work since I work for the school), but I haven’t just been sitting doing nothing for the last month.  I’ve really jumped into the deep end of job applications.  I’ve spent weeks perfecting my resume, getting tips and edits from everyone I can think of, and started collecting listings that interest me the most that I think I’m genuinely qualified for.  I’m both super excited and completely terrified about this whole process.  I’m a planner to the core and nothing kick starts my anxiety like not knowing what I’m going to be doing in six months, but mostly I can’t wait to finish school and start this next part of my life.  At 24 (almost 25) years old, I’ve literally been in school for 22 years (if you count preschool).  Even when I took one year off between undergrad and grad schools, I was studying for the GRE and writing essays for applications so it really didn’t feel like a year off.  I’m just ready to have a life without homework, without finals, and without grades.  I know, I know, sometimes similar things will be necessary in a job from time to time, but it won’t quite be the same.  At least let me believe that for now

So here’s to good year and to the beginning of the end of this chapter of my life!  I’m genuinely excited about 2012.

What I did get from my time at the SCRC was a just about everything else that goes along with processing a collection.  We started by surveying the entire collection (and seeing as I’ve put in 300 hours and we still aren’t done, it’s clearly a pretty big collection).  Although I wish we’d used the lists we made during the survey a little more later in the process, I did find it gave me a very good idea of the kind of collection I was really dealing with.  Next I moved onto tackling the organization and foldering of the extensive personal correspondence that had been donated (something I’ve discussed at length previously so I won’t get into it much here).  Although I did hit a point of frustration with this part of the job because of the time it took, I very truly enjoyed the detective role I got to play in comparing handwriting, searching content for continuity, etc in order to identify correspondents.  In the end, four months later, I ended up with 10 linear feet of neatly alphabetized and foldered personal correspondence and a really extensive understanding of the kind of man who created the collection and what his life was like, at least in part.  Passionate is the best word I can come up for him, with all the good and bad connotations that come with it.

In the last month or so, I finished my stretch of this internship by first organizing the rest of the contents of the collection into reasonable series and began organizing, foldering, and boxing as much as I could and creating lists of their contents in Excel.  I have sadly only had time to complete five series in this entirety (including 22 linear feet of programs that we decided just to put in chronological order and box without folders).  But that disappointment in and of itself is really a lesson because I learned how long this process really does take.  Plus, I at least got a lot of satisfaction from those five series once they were all neatly boxed and labeled and put back on the shelf.  There were frustrating days and there were fun days, but that too is part of any job and overall I’d say I enjoyed my internship very much.  Now I just need to graduate and find a position a little more permanent so I can make another collection my baby and have the chance to see it the whole way through.

I find myself afraid of losing any professional credibility if I put too much of myself into the equation and at the exact same time end up getting really frustrated with the total lack of personality in my posts.  I guess I’d also say that as much as I try to be myself, I end up trying to sound way more authoritative than I really am so that people take me seriously.  I don’t even know if “trying” is the right word there because I don’t think I consciously try to sound extra knowledgable, it just ends up reading like I’m trying to.

I guess the base line of this issue is that as a student I’m still trying to develop my professional persona.  It’s hard to find your voice when you still aren’t entirely sure who you are in this part of your life.

In regards to the NMAI, this fact is especially important.  As explained to us by our guest speaker, what’s important about Native American artifacts and culture is that the whole point is for everything to be from the Earth and to return to the Earth.  Preserving items in a way that prevents them from completing this cycle may be in line with our traditional ideas of preservation, but it entirely disregards the culture of the Native American communities.  It may go against everything we are trained for in many ways, but our obligation is to the culture of the peoples we are representing.

Of course, at the same time, we can’t completely ignore the importance of the artifacts either.  Without them, what do we really have?  This creates a conflict with no easy answer and one that has to be resolved in many ways on a case by case basis, or at the very least an institution to institution one.

Fun or not though, I’ve found it all extremely informative.  I feel like I could probably write a whole book on the man just in the small portion of the collection that I’ve covered.  I know who he slept with, who he loved, his inside jokes, his fears, his ambitions, his temper…the list goes on and on.  This is exactly why I liked studying Latin.  I didn’t really care about the grammar and such of learning the language, but what I learned about Roman civ from translating letters and manuscripts and texts for myself and learning how to extract information from what seem like unimportant papers.  This is why I loved manuscripts the first time I ever worked in a library and why I want to find work in them in the future.  I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I’m just a naturally nosey person

http://www.accreditedonlinecolleges.com/blog/2011/20-celebrities-with-stunning-home-libraries