2020 Internship Blog Post #3
This week,
at the UCF Special Collections and University Archives, I worked further on the
survey of my assigned collection. I removed the staples and took many of the
documents out of the clear plastic sleeves that were house previously in three-ring
binders. This week, I was able to get through two full binders and start on the
third. I have been struggling a little bit trying to understand which dates are
the dates most important for the boxes and the finding aid, as I had mentioned
previously in last week’s blog. Many of the documents have several dates on
them and trying to pick the one date that is the most important sometimes gets
a little confusing. I want all of my work to be perfect so I ask my supervisor
a lot of questions. I also began to put the documents in acid-free folders this
week and putting them in the first box. In one of the binders that I went
through this week, there were a large number of duplicates of a similar item
from another folder from a different binder. The second binder was the one
which held many duplicates. I was quite surprised by just how many duplicates
there were. My supervisor told me that this is not all that uncommon. He showed
me other boxes of duplicates from other collections that will be sent back to
the people who donated them. Seeing those boxes, I think what surprised me the
most was that there were many duplicated artifacts even.
However, aside from the duplicates
in the second binder, that binder contained a portion of a handbook on a
multitude of subjects related to various historical structures in the city of
Eatonville. So far, the collection has covered Eatonville and the third binder
looks at Apopka. I am learning a great deal about Florida and its history,
which I am finding very helpful since I am from out of state. Now that I have
begun to go through the documents in these binders, work on a survey of the
documents, and rehouse them into folders, it is interesting to begin to see
what kind of documents are in this collection. It also should be quite
interesting to see what other cities will be focused on in this collection.
This collection has sparked a great
deal of interest for me in the specific history of these cities. How are they
linked, if they are? How are the histories of these cities important to the
memory of African American history in those cities and the state? To me it’s
very exciting that this collection is raising so many questions in my mind
because that will help me create the best finding aide possible. I would like
to do some research in my spare time about the cities I come across, so I
understand why everything is so critical and important. Next week I am hoping
to pick the pace up with creating the survey and rehousing the documents into
acid-free folders so I can move on to the next step in a timely manner.
The
University of Central Florida Special Collections and University Archives
Website:
Comments
Post a Comment