2020 Internship Blog Post #8
This week,
at UCF Special Collections and University Archives, I began working on a second
draft of the finding aid in Microsoft Word. I suspect there will be at least
one or two more drafts before the information is ready to be put into the
program that will ultimately upload the finding aid I have created onto the
library website for Special Collections and University Archives. This week I
did not really have to take the cart out of the stacks in Special Collections
since I was primarily just organizing the finding aid on a folder level by city
and then in alphabetical order. If there are folders that have the same name
due to the similarity the folder goes by numerical order, with the earlier
dates coming first and the more recent dates after. It is a system that will
make a lot of sense for anyone using the finished finding aid.
As I work on each process of
creating the finding aid, I find that the things I was confused with before
seem rather trivial. This week, I ran into a few issues with creating folders
and series for certain folders and which subseries I should put them in or in
their own. I brought the issue to my supervisor’s attention. Should we divide
up those 3-4 folders into the appropriate individual towns or keep them as
their own series of Ocoee and Apopka? I showed him one of the folders. My
supervisor is not sure if he wants another subseries with the same names on it
as other subseries or if they can be divided at all. The only thing I will be
removing is the photo that was in one of the folders since the photographs have
their own series in the finding aid. My supervisor and I decided that once I
completed the rest of this draft of the finding aid, minus that one subseries, we
would go talk to my supervisor’s boss David to see what he recommends. This
week in the last hour or so of my shift on Wednesday, I wanted to look into
more of those manuscripts and who the author was. I had previously done some
research but it yielded nothing fruitful. However, this time I landed on a
jackpot of information, I found that Perrine Slim was the pseudonym for William
Gladden Jr. This is significant because he and his family come up in much of
the census data and throughout this collection and the African American
Legacy: The Carol Mundy Collection (the other Carol Mundy Collection at UCF
Special Collections and University Archives). There is also a book entitled The
Pennings of Perrine Slim: Stories of Northwest Orange County Florida, which
was edited by Dr. Phyllis M. Olmstead. My supervisor had me print out the
information from Amazon and give it to him so perhaps they can purchase the
book for the collection. I was very happy I found this information and I hope
the book will be able to be added to the collection. I wonder if the
manuscripts that we have from Perrine Slim/ William Gladden Jr. are in the
book. I am sure they are but I am curious to find out. One of the manuscripts
was published in a newspaper.
I
extremely enjoy working at Special Collections and University Archives. I
believe it has given me a different perspective on public history that perhaps
not many people get the chance to have. Preservation of history in the archive,
while in many ways can be seen similarly to that done in museums or other
institutions, to me has subtle nuances that are different, that make
preservation slightly different from institution to institution. However, more
specifically, working at Special Collections has opened my eyes to how public
history works at this magnificent sanctuary of history and preservation. How do
we have to shift our mindset in terms of creating a finding aid to begin with?
How do we need to look at dates differently from tradition historians? Why might
some dates be more significant than others to archivists and public historians
than to traditional historians? When I began this internship, all these
questions were swirling around in my mind. Now as I am slightly more than
halfway through my internship I am understanding why these questions are
important and how much I have truly learned in my internship. It is absolutely
fascinating work. I really would love to do another internship at the UCF
Special Collection and University Archives if possible before I graduate.
The
University of Central Florida Special Collections and University Archives
Website:
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