The Day is Done

It truly seems as though my time in Special Collections started only a few short weeks ago, when in actuality three months and a variety of projects have since taken place. From making countless boxes, to repairing a 200 year old book, to digitizing dance cards, my time in Special Collections has provided me with invaluable hands-on conservation and processing experience. One of the most unique aspects about Special Collections (that I’ll greatly miss) is the spontaneous experiences of discovering a new historical treasure on every shelf or seeing a patron bring in a valuable item and share their side of the story on any given historical event or time period. I think it goes without saying that I won’t be able to stay away for too long before coming back to visit!

As the Holley Intern, my internship continues through the end of the 2015-2016 academic year; so even though my time in Special Collections has drawn to an end, I’m only moving a few floors down and will be splitting my days between Technical Services and the Research and Instruction Department. It is with sadness that I will be leaving Special Collections, but eager excitement with which I will be starting what are sure to be a variety of new projects!

-Alexa 

And Then There Was One. . .

As you can tell from the many “last posts” below, Special Collections has grown increasingly quiet over the past two weeks, as all of the other interns have completed their time here at the library. Despite being the last one standing, a very quiet Special Collections has allowed me to put the finishing touches on the Dance Card Collection (Shall We Dance) that Avery and I spent a large portion of the summer working on. Though at times the project seemed never ending, between finding new dance cards in the depth of already existing collections, to learning what it means to create metadata for our newly digitized dance cards, the project has been finally launched. 

Here’s a quick screenshot to entice you on over to the actual page. Make sure to pay special attention to the variety of ways to search through the dance card, either by event theme or Greek affiliation.

Enjoy discovering the many treasures we’ve been spending each and every day with! 

For Good: My Last Post of the Summer

Hello!
So the summer has flown by and as my last day is Friday,  here's my last post. I have finished my first draft transcription of the H.L Baugher travel diary and am in the process of proofreading it (which I hope to finish tomorrow!).  I have made a finding guide to describe the diary and it's contents and digitized several pages containing flower samples as well! This project has been so much fun and I have truly enjoyed working so closely with such an amazing artifact. Baugher describes the interesting stories and experiences so well, I feel like I'm right there with him climbing St. Bernarnd (yes the mountain the dogs are named after) or boating around Switzerland. His descriptions are breathtaking and I would love to travel to all the places he visited some day. This internship has certainly changed my perspective for the better and I would like to thank the staff in Special Collections for this amazing opportunity I have had this summer. I can't wait to take all I learned and use it in the future!

Have a great last bit of summer!
Liz

Parting is such Sweet Sorrow

Book repair

Book making

As the words of William Shakespeare elaborate, this will be my final blog post of the summer. Tomorrow will be my last day here at Special Collections as the Diane Werley Smith '73 intern and it is amazing how fast the summer has flown by. For the past few months I have learned and experienced so much and I am grateful for every moment. From processing the letters of a World War II housewife, Lillian Quinn, to rehousing and digitizing dance cards, it has been a busy and fulfilling summer. I believe one of my favorite projects was my work with the dance card collection. After having begun the project this Spring semester it has been wonderful seeing it come full circle; being rehoused and transformed into a digital collection. I can’t thank the staff of Special Collections enough for the great opportunity and all the help that they gave me. Also thank you to my fellow interns for the good times, and fantastic pie times J I’m looking forward to the fall! So for the last time, Avery over and out. Cheers!                                                  

Envelope from the Lillian Quinn Letter Collection

Dance Card rehousing

Our first day

"Let us cross over the river and rest under the shade of the trees", My Final Post for the Summer

Showing the swords to the
other interns

As the summer comes to a close, the more I think about my experiences here at Special Collections. This internship was completely different compared to my past internships, going from giving tours to creating finding aids for collections. I lived a Civil War Era Studies student's dream, being able to handle a wide range of artifacts and documents while helping preserve them at the same time. The Hosford Collection has portions of it digitized on GettDigital and I am currently working on reorganizing and editing the Civil War Vertical File Manuscript.  The Hosford Collection helped me establish my understanding of archiving very quickly, double and triple checking my work. His diaries strengthened my understanding of what a soldier's life entailed and the hardships they faced. 

Civil War Book Display
for the CWI Conference

Hoadly G. Hosford
44th New York, Co. I
Post War Years

Hosford's collection was the first of many collections that I got to preserve and explore this summer. They ranged from swords, diaries, personal items, to even rifles. The access to all of the collections allowed me to get a better understanding of what soldiers experienced, remembered and carried during the Civil War. I could have not asked for a better internship this summer to establish my archiving skills and add to my knowledge about the Civil War. I want to thank the staff at Special Collections for their hard work and extremely kind nature in training me and working with me on the Civil War collections. This summer was one full of great memories with coworkers and friends in the area. 
  I wish everyone the best and have a great rest of the summer!

Shall We Dance?

Hello readers! The summer at Special collections is flying by and next week will already be my last week here as the Diane Werley Smith intern ’73. Though the weeks are winding down, we still are busy as bees here in Special Collections. As I said in my last post, I finally finished the rehousing of the Dance Card collection, and the next step taken my Alexa and myself was to start scanning and digitizing the cards for a digital collection. We chose to digitize 56 from around 80 dance cards to serve as highlights of the collection, for their aesthetics and unique charm. From that point we went through the tedious task of scanning each card, some just the front and cover, others multiple pages. After that we learned from Catherine how to create metadata for each card and to upload them into a digital collection. Just today I finished uploading the last of the cards that Alexa and I have been working on for the last few weeks. The next step for this and next week will be some additional corrections and proof reading. We decided to title the collection, Shall We Dance ~ The Gettysburg College Dance Card Collection. I’ll be sure to let you all know when the collection is primed and ready for viewers. So far the project looks great and both Alexa and I are excited for everyone to enjoy these small pieces of Gettysburg College history.

                

In other news, I finally got to rehouse the Lillian Quinn Letter Collection into new binder boxes. The letters are now really happy in their new home with their finding guide and are ready for eager researchers J That is all for today but be sure to tune in next week for the last updates on my, and the other interns’, projects. Ta-Ta for now! 

To England and Beyond!

Greetings Dear Readers!

As I mentioned before, I am primarily working on transcribing the European travel diary of H. Lewis Baugher. He and his friend have so far arrived in England, and traveled to Wales, Ireland,  Scotland, and the 1867 Exhibition in Paris.. He has described in detail all the wonderful sights he has seen including Oxford, beautiful rivers, and talked to several interesting people. My favorite parts of the diary, however, are when he describes the scenes of nature. One particular scene that grabbed my attention was describing Mt. Snowden in Wales and he has also described the scenes in Paris with various churches .  I'm almost done and can't wait to see how their trip ends up!

In addition to transcribing, I have also created a box for the diary to be safely housed in when not in use. This has been an interesting experience and I enjoyed learning about book conservation!

Well got to get back to transcribing so stay tuned for my final report!
 
 Liz

The Art of Processing a Collection

One of the most astounding things about Special Collections and Archives is that there is no necessarily right or wrong way to process a collection. If you have the same questions as I did when I first started, you may be wondering what exactly processing a collection means. Coming from a background of working in libraries, there has always been a right and wrong order, and most often than not the right way includes being alphabetical and chronological. However, that’s not always the case in Special Collections. What I’ve learned so far is that effectively processing a collection means to organize any array of papers, letters, artifacts, etc., in a manner that will make it easiest for researchers to either know if the collection could be useful to them, or quickly identify which parts of a collection they’re interested in.

With this new knowledge, I’ve been spending a large majority of my time processing what have become the Schwartz Family Papers and the Papers of Janet Biesecker Schmidt ’32. Though the contents of both began as one collection, I made the decision to separate Janet’s belongings because she had not apparent relation to the Schwarz’s. After many hours of sifting through and reading letters and documents, it became obvious that the collection contained items from three generation of Schwartz’s: John William Schwartz (1834-1919), his son Frederick Keller Schwartz (1893-1966), and Frederick’s son, John Frederick Schwartz (1928-2007). Each of the Schwartz’s graduated from Gettysburg College, respectively in 1856, 1917, and 1950. Beyond College memorabilia, the collection includes information about Worthington, Pennsylvania where John W. was originally from, a photograph album from Fred’s early years at Gettysburg, and John Frederick’s letters home while serving in the Navy for 18 months during World War II.

Separated from the Schwartz Family Papers and turned into their own manuscript collection were the belongings of Janet Biesecker. Janet graduated from Gettysburg College in 1932 and the items in her collection primarily consist of 12 dance cards and various paper ephemera (such as College event and sorority invitations, a pin, ribbons, name cards, and bridge score cards, among other things) from her time at Gettysburg College. 

As always, new and exciting things continue to happen in Special Collections and Archives each and every day!

Alexa 

Would you care to Dance?

Dance cards rehousing solution. 12 Trays in total!

Howdy readers! There are so many updates here in Special Collections. As of late, I, and the other interns, have received cataloguing training from Kate and Carolyn and soon I will begin cataloguing the pamphlet collection. Also, I have continued work on a finding guide for the Lillian Quinn letter collection.

Most exciting, however, is my work on the Dance Card Collection. When I started working in Special Collections during the past spring semester I was given the task of rehousing the dance card collection. The collection spans from Gettysburg College from the late nineteenth century to the mid-20^th century. With the help of Mary and Amy, I came up with a housing solution and for the rest of the semester and into the summer I worked on creating the housing. The housing consists of constructing a tray and forming compartments for the individual dance cards. This housing will keep the cards covered and will keep their chords from getting tangled up. Finally last week I finished the rehousing project and the dance cards are now happy.  I am excited for researchers to look at them in the future.

Dr. Birkner's papers

Along with that, Alexa and I have been working on organizing and inventorying papers from the office of Dr. Michael Birkner. As you can see from the photo it is quite an undertaking but a good practice in inventorying and organizing. That is all for now folks and tune in later on to hear about all of the adventures we are having here at Special Collections! Cheers!

Faces of the Civil War

As the internship enters its final month of the summer, I've been processing and looking at various Civil War collections. This era in history is well know for the bloody conflicts that separated the nation. However, not much is known about most individuals that fought in different regiments across the country, or even what they looked like. Special Collections is home to a few faces that at Gettysburg, out West, prisoners at Andersonville, or stationed in places like Florida. The collections I have recently processed included photos of those soldiers at different stages in their life.

Hoaldey G. Hosford 1st Sergeant,
Co I., 44th New York

I mentioned in my first post that my main project was processing the Hoadley George Hosford papers. The dairies provide great information about an individual's experience during the Civil War. The three diaries are not the only thing in this collection. There is an entire folder of tin types and photographs of Hosford, showing how he aged after the war and left some puzzling picture that we cannot identify. The earliest pictures of Hosford were from his time as a soldier. In his tintype, he looks very proper and distinguished in his New York State uniform. The same man was wounded at Second Bull Run, saw the battles of Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville and Gettysburg before this picture was taken. When reading his accounts during this battle, especially after Gettysburg, he was very cool under pressure but is absorbed in the chaos that the battle descriptions are not very detailed. He mentions key information but does not go down into the deep detail that is seen in other diaries.Its very hard to tell what Hosford was thinking during the time that the picture was being taken but it definitely shows an example of a young man that joined the Union Army to protect the United States.

James K.P. Scott, Bugler
Co H. 1st Pennsylvania Cavalry

Herman A. Stowe, Private
Co. D., 1st Wisconsin Cavalry

Hosford is one of many tintype/ photographs that we at Special Collections have in the collection. Two collections that I recently processed contained images of the individuals that fought in the Civil War, both in different Theaters. Their collections completely differ from each other but both help identify soldiers who fought. Herman A. Stowe was a member of the 1st Wisconsin Cavalry, which served in raiding parties across the west. He would serve two years and helped aid the unit in capturing Jeff Davis. His collection included two diaries (1865 & 1871) and a tintype from 1874 of himself. The other collection is a large manuscript collect that contains some of the original drafts of The Story of the Battles at Gettysburg by "Col." James K. P. Scott. Scott enlisted with his father in the 1st PA Cavalry in October of  1861. He was only 16 at the time but enlisted as a bugler. He was capture in August of 182 but was  released due to a prisoner exchange in December of 1863. Even though his book was written about Gettysburg, he did not participate in it. He moved to Gettysburg in the 1910's and wrote until 1927 when the book was published. "Col." Scott was never promoted to Colonel during the Civil War and had no indication of his promotion. However, everyone refers to him as Col. Scott is buried in the Gettysburg National Cemetery. The picture of Scott was taken in the early 1900's, showing a very old Scott. There are no pictures of Scott before this point to my knowledge.

The men pictured in this post show the various faces that went through the Civil War. Special Collections contain more tintypes of Civil War soldiers that tell completely different stories. I am very fortunate in being able to work with these collections and hopefully discover the stories of the other photographs in the collection. 

Summer in Special Collections

With no windows to the outside world and a thermostat that always reads a brisk 66°F, it feels as though summer never comes in Special Collections. However, these measures are taken to protect the many rare and delicate items housed behind the doors of the Special Collections and College Archives Department in Musselman Library’s third floor.

Working closely with Avery, a fellow intern, the past few weeks have provided a diverse speckling of learning new skills, all primarily revolving around conservation. Such activities have included encapsulating Chinese posters from the 1950's and 60's, paper repair, and most notably rare book repairs. For the latter task I was given a copy of History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814 that had detached covers, pieces of spine missing, and a few loose pages. Though it appeared as though my book would come apart easily in order to replace the spine, the cloth it was bound in turned out to be incredibly fragile, supported only by the deteriorating boards I was working to remove or repair. I can’t deny that there were moments when I truly questioned whether this book would’ve been better off with detached covers, but my doubts were proven wrong as my book slowly came back together!

Paper repair 

Removing the spine of my book

Toning my new spine to match the old

Inside cover- BEFORE repair

Inside cover- AFTER repair

Book spine and label- BEFORE repair

Book spine and label- AFTER repair

Most recently, we’ve just completed making book boxes to house our repaired books in, since we took the time to repair them, we surely want to make sure they’re now protected! But unfortunately, with the completion of this project, our time working with book conservation has come to an end and Avery and I will be moving into the realm of cataloging in Special Collections. Somehow it’s already July and a whole month has already passed in the Library, yet I’m more than eager to see what the next month and beyond has in store!

Until next time- 
Alexa 

Book Repair, Letters, and Pamphlets... Oh My!

Hello Readers!

A lot has been going on in Special Collections since my last blog post, so I’ll get you up to speed. As mentioned in my first post, I and the other interns created our own book. It was an awesome project and I learned to appreciate books as physical masterpieces and not just the words inside. I made my book with a black cover, and the end pages were made from homemade paper.

 

 

 

 

My poor bandaged book.

The spine after reattaching it

Most recently, I and fellow intern Alexa have been working with Special Collections Conservator, Mary, repairing damaged books. The book I was given was titled Peter Parley’s Tales About Asia, which was written for children’s education in geography and culture. When I received the book, the covers were detached or becoming detached and pages were falling out. The poor book was in bad shape. The basic rule I gleaned from this whole book repair process was that in order to fix a book, you pretty much have to break the book even more. It seems counterintuitive but Mary assured us that everything would be fine. In order to repair Peter Parley I went through a dozen different steps; taking off the spine, peeling up the covers on the boards, re sewing the binding, adding new hinges, filling in any tears or holes that were found in the book, etc. We also had to tone paper for new spine covers and hinges( pretty much playing around with paint to match a color to the original shade of the book), which was my favorite part of the process. I was also able to wash some of the pages to take away some discoloration. Throughout the process, the work table, between both my work and Alexa’s, looked like the scene of a book massacre. But once we finally finished yesterday it was all worth it and the books were much happier! Here are some pictures of me and Alexa at work as well as my book in its repaired state, but be warned… the pictures are rated BV for book violenceJ.

Filling in any tears or large holes with Japanese paper

Finished book from the front cover

 

 

 

 

For my other projects, I have finally read through all of the correspondence in the Lillian Quinn letter collection, and  I am in the beginning stages of creating a finding guide. What I find interesting about Lillian Quinn is that I do not actually like her personality; I find her to be an annoying busybody. She does provide an interesting perspective of World War II from the eyes of a woman as well as the experiences of those on the Pacific Coast during the war, but I just can’t bring myself to like her. Though I am not a fan of Lillian’s character, these letters really do make her come alive, for better or for worse J and I am excited for other researchers to read through the letters to see what they think of Lillian and her experiences!

In addition, I am continuing work on the Pamphlet collection, and I have just finished inventorying all of the pamphlets that have not yet been inventoried. At this point I am moving onto cataloguing the pamphlets into our database and eventually finding a new way to house and organize them. It is amazing how much time it takes to go through 950 pamphlets!

As you can see, my internship has started off with a bang and there is never a dull moment. I will bring this long winded post to a close and please tune in again to see what else I will be doing here in Special Collections. Cheers!

Avery

Greetings from the Civil War Intern!

Hello everyone! I would like to welcome you to Musselman Library's intern blog. I'm Steven Semmel (the big goofy guy at the bottom of the current intern's section) and I am the Brian C. Pohanka Civil War Institute intern at Special Collections for the summer of 2015. I will primarily be working with anything that deals with the Civil War in Special Collections. This includes diary transcriptions, digitizing, cataloging, creating displays, you name it! I am having a wonderful time so far this summer and currently working on transcribing three years worth of diary entries from Hoadley G. Hosford. Hosford is a soldier from the 44th New York and the 146th New York during the war. He wrote diaries from almost the entirety of his service. Some of the diary entries, (pictured on the right) shows the wear and tear of what Hosford went through during his time in the Army of the Potomac. I am very excited to see where this project leads ( I promise to post pictures).

So I figured I would tell a little bit about myself so you have some understanding of who's posts you will be reading this summer. I promise, I will not put you to sleep (try not to anyway). I am from the small town of Palmerton, Pennsylvania at the base of the Poconos. I am a History and Computer Science double major and a Civil War Era studies and Public History double minor at Gettysburg College as a rising senior. And yes, I do have a social life. I am also a Campus Recreation Intramural Supervisor, Vice President of the Civil War club on campus and a member of the 26th Pennsylvania College Guard, the college's reenacting group.  I used to play football here at the college but now focus my time on academics and combining my History and Computer Science backgrounds in most of my work. One of my current projects is creating a GPS based touring app that will allow you to create your own tours and take notes and pictures on other tours. I might be working on similar project here for Special Collections (shhhhh, its a secret!).

This is my second time receiving a Pohanka internship, my first in 2013 with the Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania  National Battlefield Park. I applied for Special Collections because I wanted to get a new experience and always love going through historical documents to learn new things every day. Gettysburg has been one of my favorite places since I was in middle school and was overjoyed to be going to school here and now working on campus for the summer. I hope you enjoyed this post and looking forward to posting more on the blog this summer!

First Post!

Hello! My name is Elizabeth Steinhour and I am working in Special Collections as the Diane Werely Smith '73 Project Intern. This is the second summer I am spending in Gettysburg and I very excited to see where it takes me! This summer, I will be working on various college history projects and learning the ins and outs of book conservation and archives. Currently, I am working on transcribing the diary of the son of former Gettysburg College President Henry Lewis Baugher that was written during his trip to Europe in 1867 and I'm very excited to share with all of you where he travels! I will also be working on organizing other college files.


I recently graduated from Gettysburg with an Individual Major focusing on American Presidential Leadership with a concentration in Education Certification. I was involved in many activities on campus including  Sigma Sigma Sigma sorority, Alpha Phi Omega Service Fraternity, Kappa Delta Pi Education Honors Society, and Dance Ensemble. I have also interned with the National Park Service here in Gettysburg at the Eisenhower National Historic Site and in Harpers Ferry WV at Harpers Ferry National Historical Park. Additionally, studied abroad in Copenhagen, Denmark in the Spring of 2014 (I'm anxious to see if the diary travels there =)) !

That's all for now, I can't wait to share with you all my where my projects take me this summer so stay tuned!

Hello Everyone!!

 My name is Avery Fox and I am the Diane Werley Smith '73 intern for the summer of 2015. My opportunities in the Musselman Library Special Collections include a spattering of  conservation, archival, and cataloguing projects and getting an introduction to all of the activities that take place in Special Collections. I will be working closely with the staff experiencing first hand all of the work that goes into the organized and preserved collections. So far I have begun work on a collection of letters from Lillian Quinn, a woman who lived in the World War II era, as well as a project with the pamphlet collection. In addition, I and the other interns have been working with Mary, the Special Collection's conservator, on a variety of conservation projects.  There is more to come on these projects as the summer progresses, and I'll be sure to post pictures!

For some background, I am from Lancaster, PA and I will be a senior at Gettysburg College in the fall. I am a History major, and once I finally get down to the registrar's office, I will declare an Anthropology minor. I also spent a semester abroad in Bath, England in the fall semester of 2014. Other than academics I am a member of the Sigma Sigma Sigma sorority, the Senate Representative for the Gettysburg College Dance Ensemble, and a fitness instructor. Gettysburg is my home away from home and I'm so happy that I have the chance to stay on campus over the summer to work in Special Collections. Tune in throughout the summer to read about all the awesome projects that I will be completing. Until then, Cheers!

Hello, readers!

My name is Alexa Schreier and I am serving as the Barbara Holley Intern for the next year (through Academic Year 2015/2016)! As the Holley Intern I will be moving around between the four main departments at Musselman Library, which includes Special Collections & Archives, Tech Services, User Services, and Research and Instruction. With that said, I will be spending the entire summer in Special Collections & Archives where I am currently learning the ins and outs of both book repair and preservation as well as what it means to process a collection, whether that be letters, journals, relics, historical memorabilia, or anything else that finds its way into the Special Collections department. As this is only an introduction, watch soon for details on the exciting projects I’ve already been tasked with!

Though there is a brief biography of each intern on the side panel, I’ll take just a quick moment to tell you a little bit about myself. As a Pennsylvania native, it felt only natural to be applying for a position at Gettysburg College after spending four years at McDaniel College in Westminster, Maryland as a double major in English and Environmental Studies. My childhood and teenage years were spent in and out of libraries, forming both an appreciation for the curation of knowledge and information as well as the fostering of community support in both public and private libraries, making it seem only logical to consider a career in the field. After discovering a dual passion for Environmental Studies, it soon became evident that Academia provided the research setting I was most interested in pursuing. In an effort to continue familiarizing myself with the ideas of research, information accessibility, and community involvement, the Holley Internship at Gettysburg’s Musselman Library seemed as though it would provide the exact opportunity I had been hoping to find as a graduate fresh out of college.

With that, hopefully you feel slightly more informed as to who I am and what I am/will be doing during my time at Musselman Library! Make sure to check back often for updates on the many neat things happening around here. 

My Last Post!

I cannot believe that this is my last post.  It seems like only yesterday that I was writing my first post about how my training for the reference desk was going.  This semester has been truly wonderful and I have learned so much.  Through the many projects that I have taken part in and my final project that I designed myself, it has been an amazing opportunity.

As a senior employee of the library, I was asked to pick a book to be plated in my honor.  It was certainly a hard decision to pick only one book! In the end, I chose Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. I know that it seems a little cliché, but this book has influenced me as a reader and as a student.  I, like many of my generation, read this book as a young child.  I have always been an avid reader and this book remained one of my favorites throughout the years.  Additionally, I had to opportunity to read this book last semester in a class entitled The Golden Age of Children’s Literature.  That class meant a lot to me and helped me solidify my plans for after graduation.

With that being said, in the fall I will be attending Simmons College in Boston for a dual master’s degree program in Library Science and Children’s Literature.  I am very excited about this next step and I know that the knowledge and skills that I learned at Musselman Library will help me as I continue my education.  Thank you so much to the Reference Department for all your support this semester !

Last Post

I cannot believe this is my last week working in Special Collections and there are less than three weeks until graduation. My time up here has gone by so fast and I'm sad it's coming to an end! I've made a lot of progress and learned a lot as well.

On Mondays, I'm finishing what I can on the PR collection. I'm still going through binders, labeling individual slide sheets with what the slides are, and then adding that on to a Word document. My hope is that the next person who works on the PR collection will understand my notes and continue what I've done or something related to it. It has been interesting to look at slides from the 80s and 90s, especially at clothing style and how that has changed.

On the other days, when Melanie is in, we work on the Soldiers and Civilians exhibit. She mentioned a lot of what we've done so far, so I'll try not to repeat myself. However, working on it reminds me of how much effort goes into designing an exhibit and then implementing it. The objects originally in it had to removed and put back in their proper place, then we had to find the objects, pick a fabric to use, cut and install the fabric, rearrange the objects in the cases, find supports for some of them, craft fabric around some of the supports, and then give support to the old documents that are propped up. This week, we will have to work on labels to explain what the objects are. It's a lot of work for even a small exhibit and it reminds me how much work Special Collections specifically and museum professionals more generally put into exhibits. I've really enjoyed working on this partner project though - two heads are better than one and Melanie always has good ideas! Hopefully we will be able to finish most of it before the end of the week!

This has been an amazing experience and I am so lucky to have gotten it! Working in an archives is definitely a career option for me. I'll miss Gettysburg and working in Special Collections and Archives but I look forward to what the future holds.

The Final Week!

I can't believe that this upcoming week will be my last as a Fortenbaugh intern! While I am sad that this semester is coming to a close, I am also very aware of all I have left to complete.  Abby and I have made great progress with our display.  The creative process has been really rewarding for both of us, and I know that I personally have really enjoyed doing this as a partner project.  We worked together to decide which fabric backdrop to use and we're having a lot of fun moving the objects around to see where they fit and look best.  It's really interesting to think like a curator and try to think about how people will look at a display.  What will they find most interesting?  Where do we want to direct their attention first?  These are all questions that we have to keep in mind as we work this upcoming week.

Abby and I have different schedules, so some of my time is spent working on other projects as well.  I am still working to identify theatre production photographs.  My goal right now is to get as much of the groundwork laid as I can for the more troublesome pictures, so that next year it will be easy to continue with the project.  I have learned so much from my time at Special Collections and I am so looking forward to continuing with some of my work in the year to come!

Testing the Guide

This past week, I implemented the user test that I had designed for the new History research guide.  I enlisted five participants from the history alias, ensuring that I had one participant from each class year so that I could test the spectrum of students here at Gettysburg. 

I believe that the testing went great!  I used a program called Morae, in which two computers are connected over the internet, with one being used by the participant and the other recording the test.  The recordings show mouse movements, as well as video and audio recordings of the participant as they move through the test. 

Although I was in the testing room while the test occurred, I am very excited to begin watching the tests, so that I can pull out further themes and struggles that each person had throughout the test.  Over the next week or so, I will be decoding each of the recordings, in order to learn from what happened and so that I can make changes to the new guide based upon how the users reacted to it.  Additionally, I asked each of the participants to fill out a post-questionnaire, which included comments and suggestions for improvement.  An initial reading of the comments has brought up some interesting suggestions that I will definitely explore as I work to improve the guide. I am excited to go deeper into the comments that each participant made and working to incorporate their suggestions. 

What some of the old covers looked like 

So as I mentioned two weeks, I re-housed a lot of old slides. I've added some pictures, to show the wear that old slide covers get and how slides need to be housed in specific, archival sheets. I got through all of the slides in the back. Then, Amy (archivist) and I went to look at some of the slides in this other area and we found at that there are lots of slides in nice, healthy slide covers, but they're all completely out of order. There are slides from 1986 in the same sheet as slides from the early 2000s. Instead of trying to sort through and rearrange all of these slides, I started to label the sheets with the years and the subjects of the slides. I also have a corresponding Word document that lists the slide numbers. the subjects of those slides, the years, and if there are photographers listed, them. It's a long process, so I'm not sure I'll be able to finish before I leave, but hopefully an intern or student worker down the road can figure out the process and continue it.

Moving the old to the new

The Old Slide Covers 

In their new covers!

 Melanie mentioned this in her post, but we've started working on an exhibit about black soldiers and civilians during the Civil War that will be shown in the Reading Room of Special Collections. It's exciting to find the artifacts we need, but it's incredibly difficult when we look through boxes and we see items such as slave shackles, chains, or wood from a whipping post. Sometimes I believe we view history from this faraway lens and don't fully understand it until we see documents or objects. That's part of why I love working up here - I have a fuller understanding of events that transpired but when those events/actions are horrible, it can make someone sad and really think about those objects and the history around them.

Finally, we took a library field trip to Washington, D.C. on Monday! Special Collections staff and student workers first went to the Folger Shakespeare Library, which was exciting for me because I've never been there before. We looked at the gorgeous Reading Room, saw some rare books (including one that was painted, a first folio of Shakespeare, and two books sewn together). We also visited their conservation lab, which is very big and has a lot of technology used for conservation that I didn't fully understand. Afterwards, we went to lunch at the Library of Congress, saw the incredible Reading Room there, and toured some exhibits. Overall, it was an excellent day - I love DC and I learned things as well!

For the last few weeks, Melanie and I will continue to work on the exhibit project and I'll describe and identify slides. I always say this, but I can't believe how fast the semester has gone by!

So many projects, so little time

Recently I've been going back and forth between a few different projects.  I've been working hard trying to identify people in the digital photos from past Gettysburg College theatre productions in the GettDigital Theatre Arts collection.  The staff taught me how to use the ContentDM program so that I can actually have the website show the names I've uncovered.  I've been using yearbooks, alumni catalogs, and some of the staff from the Theatre Arts Department as resources.  At the beginning I was making a lot of headway with identifying people; however, things are going a bit slower now and the people in the pictures are getting harder to identify.

I've also spent some time working on the Fred Fielding collection we have.  Fielding is an alum of Gettysburg and was very active in both Bush Administrations.  His papers reference a lot of government programs and I am finding them very interesting to sort through.  At this stage I am just taking general notes on the materials in the collection so that we have a better idea of what we are going through when we actually process it.

Today my fellow intern Abby and I got introduced to a project that just came up.  One of the staff is finding herself a little overbooked, so they asked us to help with creating the new exhibit that will be displayed in the Reading Room of Special Collections.  Abby and I are really excited to be working on this project together, especially since it's the first project we will actually be doing as a team.  Today we spent our time looking through the artifacts from which the displayed materials will come.  The artifacts have not been stored in a particular order, so it was a bit of a process for us to start sorting through them in order to find the materials designated for display.  We found some really interesting things to look at while we were perusing the artifacts, including a military uniform from the 1860s!

Designing a Test

Over the past couple of weeks, I have been developing a new History Research Guide.  I have spent time digging through all of the databases that Musselman Library subscribes to in order to categorize them on the new site.  I was hoping to make the site as easy to navigate as possible so that students can easily find the right sources.  I finally feel that I have reached a point where the new guide is ready to be tested. 

This past week, I have done research into usability testing and have designed a test for the new guide.  I sat down with Ronalee, the library’s Director of User Services, to learn how to use a user testing program, Morae.  The program tracks mouse movements, clicks, and records the user so that an observer can go back and listen to their comments.  I have laid out six different tasks that each tester will be asked to complete, so that I can determine where errors or confusion might arise with the new guide.  For a sample, one of the tasks asks the user to find the contact information for the history liaison, Clint Baugess.

Over the next couple of weeks, I will be searching for participants (preferably those who are taking history courses) to test out the new guide.  I am looking forward to learning from each of the tests, so that I can make changes to the guide. It will be interesting to see how others perceive the changes that I have made and I am hoping that those changes are good! 

Eisenhower and his grandson David at the
Eisenhower Farm in 1966. 

In the past two weeks, I've been working on the Whiting journal and re-housing the PR collection slides. I'm editing Kate Whiting's travel journal, which is coming along nicely! I would've loved to meet her and talked to her about her adventures, including but not limited to why she and her family picked the boat and places they did and if they ever took any other trips, I've re-housed a lot of PR slides and they look way better in the new covers. The old covers get sticky and start to smell funky when they get old. I'll post some pictures next time of "before" and "after." Today, I saw some slides from the 1950s - fascinating how different things were then! (They were laying the cornerstone for Stine Hall in one image).

 In other news, I was lucky, as a senior, to be asked to pick a book from Musselman Library to have plated in my room. Naturally, I picked a book relating to history - Dwight Eisenhower's second memoir Waging Peace. After my experiences with Eisenhower in my senior seminar, the Garthwait Leadership Institute, a program in the Eisenhower Institute, studying the Little Rock crisis for a class project, visiting his farm for fun and for a class, and various lectures/speeches on or involving him, I thought it appropriate to leave my name in the book of someone whose legacy has shaped my time at Gettysburg. The funny thing is, after I made the decision, Amy and I were looking at the 1950s slides and we saw some of Eisenhower campaigning in Gettysburg in 1952! What a coincidence. I have to say, after four years, I have grown attached to him.

I look forward in the next month to completing the finding aid for the journal and re-housing all (or as many as I can) slides!

Travel and Publicity

The Cover of Whiting's
Travel Journal

So in the past couple weeks (interrupted by Spring Break), I spent time cross-checking the PR files with the Finding Aid for them in Word, which some of the interns last summer compiled. It's incredibly detailed and I only made a few additions - they did a really good job! Since then, I've been reading and researching a travel journal written in 1898 by Kate Burr Draper Whiting. I just finished reading and taking notes on it today and it's incredibly fascinating. Whiting, around 60 years old at the time, took a two and a half month long "cruise" with her husband and two of her sons. They traveled to an incredibly amount of places, including Spain, France, Tunisia, Algeria, Jerusalem, Lebanon, Istanbul, Greece, Italy, and Egypt. Two of the most interesting part of the journal are the fact that it is typed (probably by a typewriter, which would become fully standardized ten years after Whiting's trip) and the multitude of photographs taken. Over 100 photographs line the pages of Whiting's journal. In 1888, George Eastman invented the Kodak camera, which allowed anyone to take a photograph while allowing others to process that photograph. In 1901, the Kodak Brownie became mass produced for the general population. While the Brownie was released after Whiting's trip and she does not refer to the process she used to take the photographs, I think the photography alters her narrative - not only did I get to read in great detail about the places, but I was able to see them as well. Pretty cool in my opinion!!

Street and Marketplace in Jerusalem

One of the Egyptian Pyramids
and a Camel

After this, I will be fully processing and organizing a Finding Aid for this journal. I have thoroughly enjoyed reading it so far because of my dual love for history and travel, and look forward to completing more research on its author. Simultaneously, I will continue to work on re-housing the negatives from the PR Group, which will show me more of the College's history. As the second half of the semester launches, I look forward to more interesting work within Special Collections and Archives!

So Many Choices!

As the semester progresses, I have been working on many little projects to get a feel for the different aspects of reference librarianship.  One of the projects that I just finished working on was a collections development project, in which I got to work closer with one of our reference librarians, Kerri.  Collection development is an ongoing process, for there are always more books being written and published.

First, Kerri had me work with the McNaughton collection, which is housed in the library’s browsing room.  Each month, a list is published that includes all of the titles that will become available to be acquired for a collection.  I was able to look at the May 2015 collection.  There were so many titles, but of course the library does not have room for them all! It was so hard to narrow down the list from over eighty to twenty-five.  In the end, I looked for a wide variety of genres and viewpoints, as well as other factors such as the author and how popular the book was.  It made me realize how much thought and effort goes into developing a collection.

Additionally, I looked through a list that is published by the group Indie Bound, which highlights titles that were published by indie publishers.  With this list, I had to do some deeper research because there is no synopsis with the titles, so I looked up the book for its content and also for the reviews.   It was hard to separate my own personal interests in order to make decision that would benefit the community, but in the end I got the hang of it.

I really liked this project because it allowed me to see a different side of the library! Below are some titles to look forward to in our collection!

              

Keeping busy!

I have been keeping very busy in Special Collections!  I just finished a project combing some papers that had initially been separated.  One box was intended to be department papers, while the other was supposed to be personal papers.  I talked with some of the staff and we decided that it would be best to combine the papers, as they have a lot of common information that would be good to have in one place.  That collection is finally complete and it feels great to have my first full project all done!

The day I finished this project I got to talking with the book conservation specialist.  Since I have been in Special Collections I have been interested in learning a bit more about this field.  It was really cool to learn about some different ways rare books were bound and what kinds of attributes makes them special.  She told me about some of the rare books the college has and what kind of work she generally does to preserve and repair them.  I also got to learn a little bit about the projects that students were working on.  Some of the students are working on creating special boxes for rare books.  These boxes will have a rounded edge, which is not something normally done.  They chose to do this because the books are quite beautiful and rare and they wanted the boxes to reflect that.  I love having the opportunity to learn about things like this!

Today I got introduced to a new project I will be working on likely on and off for the rest of the semester.  I am going to work to identify people in photographs from the Theatre Arts Department's past productions.  This will be an awesome project because I can work with the theatre arts materials, which is something I am really interested in as a theatre arts minor.  I'm eager to be working with with digital collections for the first time, and excited to reach out to alum as a resource to help identify people in pictures.  There will certainly be more posts about my progress with this project!

Time for my second post!

So I have fully processed the Leo Jarboe Collection. At some point, my draft finding aid will be read and edited and will eventually go online. To top of finishing the collection (or so I thought at that point), Melanie and I took a little trip to New Oxford (about a 20-minute drive) to meet Leo Jarboe. It felt so surreal to meet a man whose papers I had been going through for the past month. We talked about his adventures on the USS Callaghan (DD-792), his life after World War II, and his family. In addition, he donated more documents to Special Collections, which means I added more to the finding aid and more to the boxes! Thankfully, the extra documents fit nicely into the folders I had already set up.

I also finished putting some College Publications into their correct locations. These publications originate from various departments around the College and are filed away according to that department. I did have to create a few new folders and figure out how to hyperlink in Excel (which I never knew how to do before.)

Now, I commence on a big project dealing with the saved public relations documents and photographs of Gettysburg College. So far, I have been re-housing all of the old negative sheets from the late 1960s and early 1970s. Some of the negatives feature what the College looked like during those times. There was no Quarry Buildings, Musselman Library, or the new Athletic Center, and Apple Annex was being built. Even while re-housing a collection, I learned information about the College's history. I can't imagine the buildings currently here not here, so it's very interesting to see them "not here" visually!

I think I learn something new every day, whether it's about Gettysburg's Special Collections and Archives specifically, archival work in general, or new information about a person, place, or department I did not know before. Even moving old negatives to a new, protective sheet teaches me about something I did not know before. While it's hard to believe that the semester is almost halfway over, I look forward to learning more!