The Pathfinder Less Travelled

Just as I had hoped, today was full of new and exciting things! After processing a collection, the next part is to create a pathfinder that helps identify what is in the collection and where specifically it is located. It was actually really fun to create one! A little overwhelming at first when I had to look at the collection as a whole and decide exactly how I wanted to organize it, but eventually once I got the general trends I had in my head out onto paper, it was making more sense. The only reason that it was a little difficult was because my collection is an addendum, so someone had already come up with an organization system. And while their's made sense, it was different from mine so their organization was not as applicable as I thought it would be at first. Regardless, it was fun to look at the larger picture and really feel like I was forming a coherent thing.

As much as I felt like there were more exciting and new things for me in store for today, I feel the same way for tomorrow. I really enjoy feeling like I am doing productive work as well as learning something completely new. Until becoming a history major, I had no idea what an archivist was. Intuitively, I think I always knew there had to be a position like this, but it was not until I really began looking at the different aspects of history that I truly understood what an archives is. History is written by the victors, and that has never made as much sense to me as it does now. Through Historical Methods I was able to really see the different aspects of history, whether gendered, social, cultural, environmental, etc. Before college I never really gave it a thought as to who decides what people learn or remember from an event. Now that seems like all I can see. I read things and immediately think of the context that they are writing in. I can see how a rich white guy will write about a historical event, and how it is completely and wholly different from what a woman, or slave, or minority would see in it. By looking different types of history, I saw the many different influences that history is subjugated to. Working at the WLA is no different. I bring just as much bias to this as anyone else. Some material is going to be important no matter what, I can hardly imagine throwing the original charter out as irrelevant, but some falls into a grey area. With my background, and my view of the organization, I can see something as extremely important, while someone else could see it as the most pointless aspect of the whole collection. This is one of the reasons why I love studying history. You can spend your entire life looking at the same event, and learn something completely new everyday about it. There is an infinite capacity to learn, and explore. And I get to do that three days a week and consider it "work."

Step 1: Check!

Last Wednesday and Thursday were really great days at the WLA! It was almost like karma was making up for all the difficult decisions that I had to make one Monday, which was really appreciated. I focused on the very last part of my collection and all of the documents within it was specific to the primary organization. It was a little tedious at points, but it was also extremely easy to understand what was relevant and worth keeping. It was a great feeling after the uncertainty that I had on Monday.

Another great part of last week was that I finished processing the collection. It was a great feeling of accomplishment! It is nice knowing that tomorrow I am not going back to the same box to do the same thing that I have been doing, but instead get to learn new things! Don't get me wrong, I really really enjoy looking through the boxes. I really enjoy making those decisions to decide if I believe something is important enough to keep or not, as much as it seems like I complain about it. I really enjoy that aspect of everything, and can't wait to do it again when the time comes. But I am also looking forward to learning the other aspects that are involved in processing a collection. I'm extremely excited to learn more about what it means to be an archivist. I'm very optimistic about what is coming this week and I can't wait to start!!

This is Totally Relevant?

I have to say, week two is off to a good start. One of the things that I love about this internship is that it challenges me, and it lived up to that today. It might have been the lack of sleep, but today was a little rough. Not in a bad way, by any means. There just weren't as clear cut of decisions, and left me at many points wondering if I had made the right decision.

The challenge in the collection that I have is that it is an organization that is extremely involved in other companies. While it is great for this organization, it's hard for me to determine if something is considered historically relevant or not. For example, they are a part of a larger association of charities within Illinois, and have included the agendas for their annual meeting into their collection. The problem with this is that it poses contradictions to deciding if something is relevant or not. On the one hand, these agendas are public record and if someone is looking for them, they would probably look at the records of the larger association. But my organization is deeply involved in the association so it reflects what they believe is important, and has a direct influence on the organization. Because of this, I have generally decided that these notes are important to the collection. But once I made this choice, it raised the other issue of what is considered relevant within that context. Are the financial reports for the association important? Are the emails between member important? Are the different campaigns they were involved in important? It was difficult at times to look at each aspect of the collection and weigh its importance individually. A number of times I would put something in the discard pile and wonder if I had made the right decision immediately afterwards. And then went digging through the pile to get something that I saw as irrelevant 5 minutes before, but now because of a new document, saw as extremely important.

While this is a difficult process at times, I am ok doing it. The different struggles I am having, I choose to look at them as the new ways that I am learning. While I may not be completely confident in all my decisions, I feel as though I am on the right track. And every time I was truly unsure, I was surrounded by intelligent people that were willing to help me make decisions and knew what they were doing. It was great knowing that there was someone there that had experience when I had gotten to the point of just staring at a piece of paper for a minute, and helped me make the right decision.

While it was difficult, it was a good day. I walked away knowing that I was learning, helping contribute to the archives, and being a part of the historical process. That's realistically what I want at the end of the day.

My First Big Girl Job

When people ask me how I would describe myself, one of the things that comes to mind is how huge of a history nerd I am. I feel as though I need to make that perfectly clear before someone begins reading my blog, because there will be a lot of history nerding out. I'm sorry in advance. But when I say nerd, I truly mean it. I am that kid that will stay home on Friday nights reading history textbooks. I constantly watch the History Channel. I live for debates on why the USSR no longer exists, or what would have happened if the South won. Ask any of my friends and they absolutely dread once I begin explaining what the historical significance of something is, and make it last a good 20 minutes. This being said, it is clear why my internship at the Women and Leadership Archives in Piper Hall is such a match for me. I am surrounded by other history nerds, and I get to do something that I feel is making a contribution. I always ask myself why something is considered historically relevant, and with this internship I get to be a part of the process. This is a dream come true for me.

Last week was my first week of work, and it was absolutely amazing. This is my first "big girl" job and I'm not going to lie, I was terrified. I had no idea what I had gotten myself into. What do I wear on the first day? What if I don't know enough history? What if I accidently exclude the most important important part of the collection? What if I mess up, basically? I was clearly way more nervous than I ever needed to be. When I got to Piper we talked with Beth, who no joke is one of the sweetest women I have ever met. She gave us a more in depth tour of the archives and explained what we were supposed to do. She gave each of us a project and just let us go, which was absolutely amazing. I did not feel the stress of having someone watch every decision that I made but let me figure things out on my own. Beth, along with two graduate students, were more than willing to answer questions and checked in on us. It was a great balance of getting to discover everything on my own, but knowing that someone was there that would make sure I did not screw up too badly. I was still nervous, none-the-less.

My collection that I am working on is about a Christian center that works for justice, and it is very cool to see what they have done. To see outlines of meetings that detail what they truly care about, and the different projects that they started to help better their community, or an entirely different community in Central America, is extremely cool. It is weird because they are still an operating company, so I know that what I am looking at is only a few years old. It does not have that "old time" feeling to them yet. Then I found notes from the 1970s, which are so cool! It shows what was happening in their community, their thought process towards social problems, and how they planned to fix them. It really gave a clear view into the society that they were trying to better. It is almost hard to put into words what it feels like looking at something like that. I begin thinking of everything that I know was happening at the same time, and allow the new information to fit into that working picture. I told you there would be some history nerding out. I feel like even after one box of information, I have not seen enough. I feel as though there is so much for me to go through and discover. Thank goodness I have a completely full box waiting for me on Monday morning. It's hard to explain, but it feels incomplete. It might be because the box that I just processed was mostly that organization involvement in a third party charity, and not really about my center specifically, but we will see what happens on Monday. At points it was challenging to make the judgement call on whether something is relevant or not, but I feel like it is getting easier. It is definitely taking longer than I had thought it would, though. That could be because I'm looking at all the things that I find very cool and trying to learn about them.

It was a great first week of work. I am actually looking forward to Monday when I can dive back into everything. I'm still a little nervous about everything, but after spending time with everyone else in the WLA, I feel a lot better about it. It is a comfortable and easy going environment, and I think that that makes a world of difference. I really don't want this to come off as completely sucking up to the WLA, either. I mean everything that I say and would not write it if I did not believe it 100%. I'm not going to write if something is bad, because frankly that would be between me and the WLA, but this place has already made such a great impression on me that I am sure I made the right choice for where my first big girl job would be.