Today is my first day as an intern at the Burke Library, working with Brigette on the UTS archives. One of the tasks of getting started is to write a blog post about what I hope the internship will teach me. You can see some entries from my predecessors and fellow interns here, here and here.

So, on to what I hope to learn from working as an intern…

The short answer:

Everything!

I come to this internship having completed most of the requisite number of credits for my Masters in Library Science at Pratt. I’ve studied all kinds of things related to digital libraries and libraries’ use of social media in outreach and research. I’ve learned the basics of metadata and collection development.

However, none of my coursework so far has incorporated more than a cursory study of archives. And I’ve been kicking myself about that since I started talking to Brigette. I had clues that I might be interested in archives: I tend to pore over antique cookbooks and recipe collections, and rummage through bins of vintage photographs at yard sales; and I got positively starry-eyed over maps George Washington had drawn, when I saw them on a school trip to the Library of Congress. And yet, I haven’t taken so much as an introductory archives class. What have I been thinking?

The learning curve of getting started at Burke will include more than just the usual directional and procedure orientation to how things work here. I know I need to develop my understanding of archival theory and procedures from the ground up. I come to this internship with a rudimentary knowledge of how to work with archives: wear gloves for photographs, use pencil to take notes.

I’m sitting at a desk surrounded by shelves of tantalizing gray boxes. As this internship progresses, I look forward to learning my way around the care and documentation of the knowledge contained in these boxes and the rest of the collection, piece by piece. I’ve started reading about archives, so I can begin to fit these mysterious boxes into a larger context of what archiving means.

I’m also looking forward to working on developing ideas and content for the social media at Burke. I’m looking forward to learning more about what works best for archives and libraries on social media and using different platforms to showcase the great resources in the collections here.

What are some of the discoveries you’ve made in the collections here? Tell me about your favorites in the comments!