School begins next week, as does my internship, all's well that ends well...goodbye winter break, how I loved thee.
Time to dust off my notebooks, charge up my Kindle, and prepare my autonomic nervous system for increased stress levels. I'm not exactly anticipating that crazy of a course load, my classes are pretty specific and should not require too much writing. I hope to hell that I'm not jinxing myself, but I suspect that the work will be more technical and straight forward. One class is about Preservation Management, dealing with different issues in book preservation and conservation. We get to do cool exercises like dip a book in water and figure out how to rescue it...and I don't mean with a life raft or floaty, I mean how to get the water out of the book and back in working condition. The second class I'm taking is on Encoded Archival Description (EAD), which is an XML encoding system for archival finding aids. This class could potentially drive me bananas, but I thought it important to take since I'm really liking the archival profession. However, I'm just hoping that it's not too technical and crazy, I don't want it to be so specific that it doesn't speak to other aspects of librarianship. Either way it will be good since I'm doing an internship in which I'll be creating a Finding Aid, which is what EAD is all about.
As I've mentioned before, I'll be at the One Institute in LA, on a pretty tight schedule of every Saturday through May. Bonkers yes, but that's the only day my schedule will permit, though I might be able to squeeze in a Wednesday here and there if I use some vacation time. *not advisable* :P
They already have the collection chosen for me to work on, I'll be processing the papers/writings/paintings of William Christian Miller, who apparently was this semi-important figure in 1940's gay NYC. According to the basic biography they already have written on him, he was a merchant marine/sailor, and involved with other gay luminaries like Paul Cadmus and Gore Vidal. They've got over 30 boxes of his materials, I'll have to sift through the wreckage (kidding) and create a finding aid that will help future researchers and patrons with locating and understanding his collection/legacy. I'm a bit intimidated by the work, I've only done a finding aid in the class setting, so I'm still trying to wrap my head around this. Though I'm not too freaked out, the two archivists there seem very helpful and knowledgeable. It'll be interesting to see how my tune changes once I have the project underway, hopefully it will go smoothly...and I hope to learn a ton while I work there.
Time to dust off my notebooks, charge up my Kindle, and prepare my autonomic nervous system for increased stress levels. I'm not exactly anticipating that crazy of a course load, my classes are pretty specific and should not require too much writing. I hope to hell that I'm not jinxing myself, but I suspect that the work will be more technical and straight forward. One class is about Preservation Management, dealing with different issues in book preservation and conservation. We get to do cool exercises like dip a book in water and figure out how to rescue it...and I don't mean with a life raft or floaty, I mean how to get the water out of the book and back in working condition. The second class I'm taking is on Encoded Archival Description (EAD), which is an XML encoding system for archival finding aids. This class could potentially drive me bananas, but I thought it important to take since I'm really liking the archival profession. However, I'm just hoping that it's not too technical and crazy, I don't want it to be so specific that it doesn't speak to other aspects of librarianship. Either way it will be good since I'm doing an internship in which I'll be creating a Finding Aid, which is what EAD is all about.
As I've mentioned before, I'll be at the One Institute in LA, on a pretty tight schedule of every Saturday through May. Bonkers yes, but that's the only day my schedule will permit, though I might be able to squeeze in a Wednesday here and there if I use some vacation time. *not advisable* :P
They already have the collection chosen for me to work on, I'll be processing the papers/writings/paintings of William Christian Miller, who apparently was this semi-important figure in 1940's gay NYC. According to the basic biography they already have written on him, he was a merchant marine/sailor, and involved with other gay luminaries like Paul Cadmus and Gore Vidal. They've got over 30 boxes of his materials, I'll have to sift through the wreckage (kidding) and create a finding aid that will help future researchers and patrons with locating and understanding his collection/legacy. I'm a bit intimidated by the work, I've only done a finding aid in the class setting, so I'm still trying to wrap my head around this. Though I'm not too freaked out, the two archivists there seem very helpful and knowledgeable. It'll be interesting to see how my tune changes once I have the project underway, hopefully it will go smoothly...and I hope to learn a ton while I work there.
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