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Last Week of Internship

During the last week of my internship at the UCF Special Collections and University Archives, I finally finished my exhibit that has to do with UCF Theatre and its growth. I only had to do a few finishing touches this week. Mary had some last minute corrections on some of the pages of the final product, which I had to fix before moving forward. Once I finished them, Mary told me I could head out as there was nothing more I could do in only a few hours. It was bittersweet to be leave the office for the last time as an intern. Luckily, Mary and I discussed about me volunteering at the department next semester. This will allow me to receive much more experience, work on some more exciting collections, and put up my exhibit in March!

 Prior to this, I had to do the final presentation in front of Mary and Dr. French. I was quite nervous in the weeks prior, but I feel I said all the information that I wanted to convey. After the presentation, Mary and Dr. French both gave me some great advice in how to pursue a future career as an archivist. I need to try and have another internship, possibly at the Orange County Historical Society, to gain further and different experience in the field. Also, they were discussing a master’s program that I could apply for and would fit in perfectly with my goals to become an archivist. After this, I took a end-of-internship picture with Mary to celebrate the ending. 

I have to say that I had a blast this semester working at the UCF University Archives. At the beginning, I was worried that I was not going to do a good enough job for the department. I felt overwhelmed with the Dr. Seay collection at first and believed I was falling behind. However, I eventually finished that project and moved onto finishing two other projects. I learned an immense amount of information about working in an archive, and Mary always took the opportunity to show me something different each week. The weekly readings helped me put the role of an archive into a larger context throughout history and even Sci-Fi. In regard to everyone I worked with, I can say that everyone was a pleasure to talk with. Burak, Mary, David, Chris, Alex, Scott, and everyone in the office were very helpful, informed, and welcoming. I do not regret applying for and accepting this internship in the least. Beforehand, I honestly had no clue of what I wanted to do with my history degree. I always thought of working in a museum or trying to become a professor. However, archival work seems like it could be a very rewarding and exciting career. This will be especially true if I could work my way into a video game or movie archive! To everyone at the UCF Special Collections and University Archives, and to Dr. French, thank you for allowing me to be an intern this semester at such a fascinating place!

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Twelfth Week of Internship

This week at my internship at the UCF University Archives, I finished up my UCF Theatre exhibit, for the most part. Starting this week, I had to put an individual picture of each item for the exhibit into a word document, and then I would have to put a little caption under the photos. I had to correct grammar and spelling issues that were in the document. Moreover, I had to add detail here or there when more was needed. After all of this, Mary looked over it and made a few corrections and said that I was almost done with it. The only thing I would need to do next is to add in the location of where I took each item. This consisted of me typing the collection, the specific box, and the specific folder that corresponded with the exhibit item. I’m not sure if my exhibit is completely ready to go, but I believe it is really close to the end.

One other thing I did this week was look over my PowerPoint for my upcoming presentation on Monday. I tried to clean up the slides and make them more succinct. Mostly, I just tried to run through my head what I wanted to talk about and how I might answer questions directed towards me. Overall, I think it should be a pretty good presentation if I don’t use too many Ums.

Since I’m getting to the end of my internship, Mary had me catch up on the readings I have been doing this whole semester. The first article I read was about the Canadian government keeping historical information, including wire-tapping in the Cold War, away from the public archives in the country. One of the reasons was is that the government has too many boxes of documents that can’t be looked through fast enough to get through. Moreover, they must check if there is any critical or classified information in there that would make them look rather bad. Personally, I think that all information should be given to the public after the 30-year rule, even if it is some damning evidence against the state. Another article I read was about the struggle to digitize archives in Delhi. The trouble with digitizing all their rich history is that it needs to be continuously updated. The formats that they upload them on are outdated within 5 years, and it takes a massive effort to reupload them. However, they were buying new machines that could help expedite the process. These efforts are necessary to keep hold of India’s history. The third article I read was about Cartier, a famous jeweler, which took a lot of its best jewelry from their collection and put them on display in New York City. The purpose of it was to show their jewelry to everybody, not just the rich. Even though it seems their archive is running well, you still must be extremely rich to afford their jewelry. The last article I read was about Prince’s house/studio, Paisley Park, turning into a museum which used a lot of his own things to display. I find it fascinating to create a museum out of a famous person’s house. Personally, I wish they would have done this with John Lennon so I could go visit.

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Eleventh Week of Internship

This week was my eleventh week of my internship at the UCF University Archives. Much like last week, I continued to work on my upcoming exhibit that will be based around UCF Theatre. The naming of the exhibit was tough to think about, but Mary and I decided that “On the Stage!” was a great name for the exhibit. Also, I had to work on an about section for the exhibit. For this, I merely talked briefly about what each of the five cases would contain. To get a better look at how to arrange the pictures and documents of my exhibit, I went out to the display area and looked at Eli’s display that is currently out. I now think I have a pretty good idea of how many things I need to make an effective display with also having enough space between objects for captions. I had finished most of the word document that houses all the information of exhibit, and I had given it to Mary to review. After she was done reviewing it, I noticed that she made a lot of corrections. I don’t feel too bad about all the corrections as the word document was basically just a list of my thoughts. However, I went ahead and corrected all the grammar and spelling mistakes that I had made, and then worked on adding more detail where she thought it was needed. Moreover, I removed the information that was not needed or moved it to another place in the exhibit. Although a lot of my exhibit ideas were already done last week, I made great strides in adding much more information to each case. I added captions for each picture, news clipping, document, and memorabilia that was in the collection. I’ve been trying to have a strong theme throughout the entire collection, which I have decided will be the growth of UCF. The beginning has pictures of the old theatre tents that were used for the department. Moreover, Mary Monroe’s time at UCF in the mid-70s’ will give good insight of how small but potent the department was at the time. The next parts show the growth of UCF under Dr. Seay and how it expanded immensely. I don’t think I am explaining my exhibit well and I probably am repeating what I said last week, but I do believe it will be a very interesting exhibit. Hopefully I can have more to say next week with great strides in my exhibit.

I also had the chance to continue working on my final presentation that will be presented on the 25th of November. So far, I think I have a pretty good PowerPoint that can convey what I want to say about my internship. I might have to change around a few pictures or key points, but it will allow me to explain what I did and what I gained while I was here. Specifically, the presentation will have about eight slides with five being informational, 2 having pictures, and the one title page.

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Tenth Week of Internship

This week, which marked the tenth week of my internship with me going over a hundred hours, was one that was like last week. I continued to work on my UCF Theatre exhibit that will be displayed probably sometime next semester. At the start of this week, I had only two definitive cases mapped out for the exhibit. Both had to do with Dr. Donald Seay’s directed productions at UCF, as these allow people to view some past productions that they might not have been here for. Last week, I had ideas about the last three cases being about Mary Monroe, the growth of the theatre department, and one with old photos of the department in the 60s’ and 70s’. I described these in last week’s blog, but this time around I have had time to find out exactly what I want to be displayed. For the Dr. Seay case, I have a few pieces of correspondence that are awarding him for his help in growing the theatre department. In an old newspaper clip, he talks about wanting to put on more productions and adopt a B.F.A. major into the department. I have an informational poster from 2001-2002 that shows all the different types of B.F.A. majors that are offered which shows that he came through. Moreover, there are some annual evaluations of him that show how the department has grown from 240 majors to a possible 400 in the next semester. For the old photos of UCF Theatre case, I’m going to use a few pictures of the old theatre tent back in 1968-1969. Along with these, I have a few articles from the Central Florida Future that are dated to the construction of this tent, which compliment it well. Last week, I had the Mary Monroe Theatre collection in front of me, but I did not have the chance to dig through it. However, this week I found tons of information about her, the productions she worked on while at UCF from 1973-1976, and how the department was during her time. I decided to put out pictures and information about the first play she was in, the last one, the only musical she worked on, and the one play that she was chosen to direct. I guarantee this will be one of the best cases out in the exhibit because it shows UCF Theatre through the eyes of a former student.

One other thing I had the chance to help with this week was putting up a fellow University Archives staff member’s exhibit. Sure, it was nice to be able to help her put the pictures in the correct spot, carry a very heavy statue out to the tall case, and making sure everything was going according to her plan. The biggest thing was that I was able to see what lays in store for me when I come back and volunteer to put out my exhibit. I do have a tough act to follow though, because he exhibits looks stunning and informative.

For the weekly reading, I read an article about NPR and it’s archiving efforts from its inception to the current day. They have put forth the effort to restore and preserve audio from past event, such as protests, speeches, and riots. I find this very intriguing, because it helps someone relive the event. I can read the transcript of an old speech, but the audio helps me become entrenched in the past. To this day, NPR is trying to keep their archival methods up-to-date with a program called Artemis. I can’t say I’ve ever tuned in to NPR before, but I do appreciate them trying to preserve history as much as they can.

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Ninth Week of Internship

This week marked the ninth of my internship at the UCF University Archives. I had a challenging goal to take on this week, which was to think of ideas for an exhibit that shows off the Dr. Donald Seay collection. I thought about it over the weekend and I had decided that at least two cases should contain memorabilia, posters, pictures, and playbills from productions that Dr. Seay had directed while at UCF. The way I chose which productions to display was based on the number of items that I had for each production. Dracula, for example, has a big poster, cast photo, set designs, and a playbill that all make for an interesting visual experience for anyone looking on. The next case I decided to do was one that had playbills and posters from various productions such as Proof, The Lark, and Fifth of July. These seem to be important plays to Dr. Seay as he kept a lot of memorabilia from the productions, including a decorative picture frame for The Lark. Originally, the other two cases were to house items that described how the UCF Theatre program and department had grown under Dr. Seay. However, there was a lack of visually stimulating items in my collection, so Mary had the suggestion of using pictures and news clippings from another collection to discuss the growth of the department since its inception. I asked to see a box full of old photographs from the ‘60s and ‘70s, and they showed detail of how small the theatre department was at the time. It was sharing the science auditorium as its classroom building, and it had to put up a large tent to stage productions. Nowadays, they have their own building plus another one that is for offices and classrooms. The display case that will show off the growth of UCF Theatre, in my opinion, will be extremely interesting to anyone who walks by. I am thinking about having a whole display case dedicate to either the Mary Monroe collection that I obtained from the University Archives, or one that covers Dr. Donald Seay and his decorated career with UCF. I believe both will be a useful way to show what we have in store for people at the archive.

               Regarding my weekly readings, this one was about the need to back up and archive online resources such as blogs, memes, snaps, and tweets. I found this highly interesting because I never think of these things as necessary to keep, but they do represent my generation well, so I do agree that they should try and be preserved. The article talked about a website that contained millions of blogs and uploads from fans that was suddenly forced to shut down. If it wasn’t for the community of the website, this would’ve been lost forever. However, it also talked about how archiving could be an intrusive act because the original owner of the blog may not have wanted their name attached to it or wanted it kept forever. This brings a new type of archiving to the mix which allows the archivist to digitally preserve the information but allow the owner to hold onto the actual files and not have them moved. I like to think this is a fair middle-ground to meet on.

               One last thing we did this week was have a little celebration for Halloween! Although I did not dress up, I did enjoy visiting the other departments of the library and seeing the festivities that were running rampant. I do enjoy the sense of comradery and fun the faculty and staff of the library possess.

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Eighth Week of Internship

This week at my internship at the UCF University Archives I had to finish up my second collection. The only thing I had left to do was to rewrite the titles onto the folders. This was an extremely daunting and tedious task as I had to write the name of over 250 folders. My hand was in pain after I had finally finished on Thursday, but I would say it was all worth it. After this though, I had finally finished my second collection on University Audits. The other task that I completed was that I read a couple of articles that went into detail about how the Empire’s archival system was extremely inefficient and remarkably inconsistent. In the movie Rogue One, the Empire is seen to have a giant building that serves as an archive, which houses information on large disks. This is seen by archivists as very silly and inconsistent. In the movie before this one, Revenge of the Sith, it is shown that the Jedi have an extremely advanced system compared to the bad guys. The archivists in these articles loved to poke fun at the movie’s archival lapses, but it was very entertaining to read.

As I was finishing up with my second collection, Mary was talking to me about starting my third collection. I believe it was to be on some other organization within the school. However, she was thinking of something else I could do that would give me experience in something other than processing. She then asked if I wanted to create an exhibit for my first collection on Dr. Donald Seay and the Theatre Department. Although I was intimidated at the prospect of having to make my own exhibit, I thought it sounded like a fantastic experience that could be useful in the future. She told me I was going to be using the four display cases just outside the quiet study room on the fifth floor of the library. My objective for Thursday was to think of some possible themes to pick out for these cases. After some thought, and looking through my old collection again, I had decided on three themes to pursue. One or two cases could be about the productions that Donald Seay had directed while at UCF. These productions will include the ones that have the most displayable information including posters, pictures, playbills, and set designs. The next theme will be about the theatre department here at UCF and how it had grown under the leadership of Dr. Seay. I have ideas to post a newspaper clipping from 25 years ago that talks about the department’s inadequacies and Dr. Seay’s plans. Moreover, I have an informational poster that shows the growth of the department and all the new bachelor’s degrees that it offers. The last subject will probably be about Dr. Seay and awards or information about him in his career here at UCF. Overall, the whole project is still up for changes, but I believe I have a great foundation and tons of intriguing information in my collection to display.

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Seventh Week of Internship

This week marks my Seventh full week of my internship at the UCF Special Collections and University Archives, and the completion of over half of my required hours. I continued to work on my collection of UCF University Audits from over thirty years of the school being open. I was pushing close to the end of my time on this collection as I had started coding this week. My memory of coding from the first collection was a tad foggy, but thanks to Mary and being able to look back at my other collection, it went smooth. For this coding, I had to input a lot of information from my finding-aid example that I had been working on last week. The only two coding tasks that took a lot of time was the subject tags and the listing of every folder, series, and subseries. Luckily, the subject tags only had one code that I could copy and paste repeatedly and just fill in the correct information of the new subject. For the content listing of folders, it was more of the same thing. Unfortunately for me, my collection has over 250 folders that needed to be coded. This also required a lot of copy and pasting and inputting dates and titles. After I had finished this, Mary was able to take a peak at my finding-aid and see how I had done. She offered me a few suggestions and corrected a few of my silly mistakes that I had missed. However, I had taken her suggestions and some of them required me to physically rearrange the folders and in the coding. I had consolidated a few that were of similar subjects and created a new subseries for one specific subject. Other than these things, I had to input my related material into the finding-aid, which was one of the final things that I had to do for this collection. I believe the only things I need to do to finish my second collection is to rename each folder, which will take quite a while, and fix some minor organizational problems. I’m very excited to start on my next collection and see what I can find inside.

One other thing I did this week was read a couple of articles about video game preservation at the University of Michigan and one other institution. At UM, they have a massive archive that is dedicated to preserving as many games as possible. They have titles that date back to Pacman and recent ones like Halo. I thought this was extremely interesting because although I do enjoy processing collections and being in an archive, I believe that working at a video game archive would be close to a dream job. The other article was talking about the method of which a video game archive would pursue in preserving their video games. One option would be to only focus on making the game playable, even if that means on an emulator. The other option is a more cultural and true-to-form route in preserving games. An example of this was including the link cables with Game Boys that were needed back in the past to link up with your friends. I absolutely loved these articles because they show that video games are getting the historical and cultural respect that they deserve, and it also gives me hope that maybe I could work in a video game archive one day!

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Sixth Week of Internship

This week at my internship at the UCF University Archives was one full of digging through my collection on University Audits and working on organizing it. From the beginning, the collection was organized to an extent before I even laid my hands on it. I made an inventory of every folder, their dates and which box they reside in. The collection was originally 2.5 boxes, but I have already cut it down to 2 boxes. I took out the related materials that are already catalogued in the library database, which freed up a lot of room. After doing the inventory, it said I had over 250 folders in my collection. However, they weren’t organized in a way that I thought would be easy to navigate for researchers. I decided to put the entire inventory in alphabetical order which immediately made it look that much better. Moreover, the folders that have the same title and department were organized again chronologically. The inventory of the collection was looking much more navigable, and so I decided to start working on the finding-aid. I put in the creator of the collection, the primary years, and how the collection was organized and processed. Next week, I will have to start working on the abstract, historical note, and maybe even the coding. Before I could start the finding-aid, however, I needed to physically arrange the folders to reflect the order in which I put them on the excel worksheet. This was a painstakingly long process, but now the actual folders are looking well organized now.

           There were a couple of articles that I had to read this week that had to do with an archive at the University of Miami that was about Pan American Airlines. Reading the background information of the primary archivist of the collection, I can confer that it was a massive effort to organize 1,500 boxes and make them available for all sorts of researchers to utilize. They have information in this archive that range from Pan Am’s involvement in WWII, the Beatles’ first US trip, and financial records that dealt with their bankruptcy in the early 90’s. In these 1,500 boxes, there was one series that had over 7,000 folders. Coming from someone who has only ever processed about 250, I could not imagine the time and effort it would take to write new titles on that many folders and to rearrange them. Moreover, this collection was organized and processed by only one full-time archivist and a handful of students. It was quite interesting to see what an archive can do when they have a massive budget like the one in Miami.

One other thing I did this week was receive my midterm internship evaluation. From the beginning, I was super nervous to start this internship and wasn’t sure if I was performing well. However, I was pleasantly surprised that I had received a great review from Mary. It has been a pleasure working at the University Archives since the beginning and I am thankful for the opportunity.

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Fifth week of internship

This week in my internship at the UCF University archives I had to finish up my first collection about Dr. Donald Seay and the UCF Theatre Department. I only had a few steps left to go, which included adding the related materials, finishing coding, reordering the actual folders, and putting the documents in new folders that had a more concise name that will tell the reader exactly which series and subseries they pertain to. This will pair well with the online directory of the collection that I have finished also. The only thing I must wait for to finish my collection is to add one more publication to the related materials section. The On Stage publications were given to the cataloguer by Mary and we will have to wait until they get back to us. I am excited that I have basically finished my first collection, and it is amazing to see how far I’ve come from the first week of the internship.

Most of this week has been dedicated to working on my new collection that I picked out, which is University Audits. I was unsure of what this collection would entail, but I assumed that when I picked it, it would most likely be boxes stuffed from side to side with folders. I was correct, but it was honestly extremely interesting to sift through the collection and see all the audits throughout the years at UCF. Every department that you could think of was in this box, and it encompassed a span of about 30 years. The folders that had to do with intercollegiate athletics were much thicker than the housing fees and parking fees. I found it intriguing to look through and see how much money was spent on different parts of the school, and also looking at the auditors comments and recommendations on how to better the department. The processing of this collection looks like it is going to be quicker than the last as it is already in a pretty good order, and has all of the staples and paper clips removed. However, I do have ideas of how I am going to approach this collection going forward. I think I might put the audits in order of dates but within each specific department. I believe this would be the best way to organize it, and any specific department and year could be looked up once they are put online.

Overall, I am so proud of myself for completing my first collection at the UCF University Archives. At first, I was extremely nervous and unsure if I could process, code, and organize one efficiently. However, with the help of Mary and Barak, I would say I was successful. I am looking forward to getting farther along in the process of my current collection. I hope that I may finish this one pretty quickly and be given a third collection because I say I have the bug for processing collections at the moment. Each one has invaluable information that needs to be put out there.

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Fourth Week of Internship

Greetings! I just finished my fourth week of my internship at the UCF University Archives. After starting on my collection in week one, I felt like I was going slower than I should’ve been. However, this week and last I’ve made tremendous progress in completing my collection and making it available to researchers. This week I’ve gone over the inventory of my collection with Mary numerous times, and I think I’ve made it concise enough for coding. Speaking of coding, Mary had me start at the tail end of my shift on Thursday. At first, it did seem complicated but luckily, they have streamlined the process which made it much easier for me to catch on. Before I started on coding, I needed to clean up my finding-aid and make it much more, well, correct. I added various tags that pertained to my collection and changed around the different series in my collection. Throughout my collection, I needed to condense folders that had the same things in them. I had multiple folders that contained evaluations, correspondence, and syllabi, so I merged them to create a more concise collection. I originally had three series, but Mary and I decided that it was best to cut down to two and make a couple of subseries inside the first series. This made it much more organized as the first series is mostly miscellaneous documents. We made it so that one section pertains to Dr. Donald Seay, and the other contains documents about the UCF Theatre department. The second series, which pertains to productions that Dr. Donald Seay directed or participated in at UCF, is now arranged chronologically. Moreover, I added better detail to the folder names so people could know what exactly it contains. Next week, I will continue to code and finalize my collection, and possibly start on my next collection regarding University Audits!

I also did a weekly reading about the new Trump Archive and an archive in Denver that is in danger of having to give up some of its collection unless they receive the adequate funding. I find the Trump Archive, and the idea of preserving current media to be quite interesting. I often don’t think that current media needs to be preserved, but the article talked about how websites go down and information is lost, so it’s important to make sure this information will remain accessible. The Denver archive, which houses ice samples that contain immense information about the climate over the previous 15,000 years, is running out of options to stay around. Their current cooling solution is hurting the environment, so they are looking for another solution to keep their samples cool. Moreover, they do not yet have the funding to expand, so they might have to dump some samples out of necessity.

I also had the chance to speak to a Professionalizing History class about myself, processing, and the process of interning. Since processing was fresh in my mind, I feel I shed some good light onto what it is and how it’s important to an archive. Moreover, I gave them all the information on internships that I could, and how it could help in deciding what kind of career they could pursue with a history degree. Although I am not the best public speaker, I hope that I gave them helpful information that they could use to possibly pursue an internship in the future.  

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Third Week of Internship

Greetings! The third week of my internship at the UCF University Archives was quite the change of pace from the previous two. I had finished processing my collection about Dr. Donald Seay and the UCF Theatre department, and it was time to start working on the computer to begin the digital process. First, I was to put my entire collection on an excel spreadsheet, marking down every folder with their corresponding dates and boxes. This took quite some time, but after an hour or so of typing, it was completed. I had to describe the method in which I sifted through and organized the collection. This consisted of describing how I removed staples, paper clips, duplicates, etc. Next was to start working on my finding-aid that was to be eventually shown online to help researchers and students understand what my collection entailed. This part took a lot of work, as I had to do a lot of research on Dr. Seay and the UCF Theatre department. Luckily, there were newspaper clippings in my collection that informed me of how the department was before Dr. Seay became chair in 1992, and how he immediately made an impact. It made it easy to show how the department has grown tremendously since his onboarding. These newspaper clippings and Dr. Seay’s resumes offered immense information on his education, professional, and administrative background. The last section of the biographical note consisted of all the affiliations that UCF Theatre had with many organizations with the help of Dr. Seay. The other section of the finding-aid that took a lot of work was the series/box/folder layout. For this, I needed to explain the scope and contents of the collection, how it was organized, and the titles and dates of each folder. I had to revise this list multiple times as I made organizational changes, and some sections I had to leave blank because I still need to figure out the dates that they pertain to. I believe that Mary might eventually help me code this section and others, but it is at least complete for the time being.  

After I thought I had finished, I went back to finish up reading the UCF Archives training guide to learn a little more about the tactics I could be using. I read something about having multiple series in a collection, each one pertaining to a specific group of documents. I immediately decided to group all the folders that had to do with Dr. Donald Seay’s production at UCF into one series. This added a lot more organization to the boxes themselves and the finding-aid. Eventually, I might reorganize the first series so that everything is easily accessible, but I would like to keep the original order as much as possible.

I’m very interested in learning about the next step to complete my collection, or at least make it closer to a finished product. I’m excited for everyone to be able to access this collection online, and know that I was able to organize in such a way that makes sense.

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Second Week of Internship

Greetings! I must say that I was excited for the second week of my internship in the UCF University Archives. The hurricane had taken away a week from the internship, and we were busy preparing and taking tarps down after the hurricane. I was looking to dive back into the rhythm of working on my collection. Thankfully, this week I was able to fully experience how it was to dig through my collection and see what was inside. I was constantly removing paper clips, staples, checking to see if folder labels matched their contents, and seeing which dates were contained inside. I managed to sift through every box that my collection had and was met with different obstacles to push through. One box had a framed, intricate poster for one of Donald Seay’s directed plays. This needed be handled differently, and ultimately it seemed best to leave it in its frame, while removing others and placing them in new folders. I stumbled upon a folder that was filled with almost 100 photos, and they all proceeded to be sleeved. This was a long process, as I was trying to be extra delicate, but it was interesting to look at these old photos from plays and events in UCF’s history. After finishing looking through the collection, Mary introduced me to my next step of working on the computer to start the digitization process. Next week, I will be putting every folder and box on an excel spreadsheet to accurately and effectively locate any specific piece of information in my collection. Moreover, I will start working on the main document that will explain most of what my collection is about. I will be researching Donald Seay and the UCF Theatre department to give a good biographical note on the collection. Every detail that you could want to know, this document will easily explain it, even the breakdown of every folder and its contents.

               To take a break from sifting through my collection, I was able to read a few articles about digital archiving and its benefits and challenges. The National Museum of Brazil caught on fire with over 20 million pieces of history being destroyed. One must wonder if they were saved digitally somewhere, would these items have been saved or if there would be a cycle of diminishing returns. Moreover, I read about an entire collection uploaded digitally at the University of Chicago, which is a fantastic feat. In the final article, I read about the Domesday book that contained English history but had been uploaded and only viewable with very niche technology that was expensive and outdated. It brought to my attention the challenges of dealing with digital archiving with the rapid advancement of technology in recent years. Data must be uploaded every so often to remain accessible to scholars, students, and anyone who wishes to use them for research or knowledge.

               Working on my collection took up most of my time, but there was time to celebrate the birthdays of a couple of coworkers in the office. It showed me the friendship and camaraderie between everyone in the University Archives department and was ultimately a fantastic experience.

               I am enthralled to start the third week of my internship at the UCF University Archives, and to see how my collection will progress from here.

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First Week of Internship

Greetings! My name is Brandon Lynch, and I am a senior at the University of Central Florida who is majoring in History. I haven't yet had a job or experience that was related to History or something similar, so I was excited about starting an internship in the University Archives at UCF to help narrow down my interests. History majors can traverse a vast amount of career paths after graduation, and I am not close enough to deciding what I would like to pursue. However, when I was searching for an internship in History at UCF, the University Archives really struck me as an interesting experience. I loved the idea of being able to sift through documents, pictures, playbills, etc. Putting my hands on history and making it accessible to everyone is very appealing to me, and should be a fulfilling experience.

My first day of interning at the UCF University Archives was full of excitement and nerves. Mary Rubin showed me around all the archives and special collections that the University has in store. I even was able to see a little behind the scenes of the ARC building, which is where a good number of books are stored on campus and can be requested online. There was a lot of introductory information I was able to soak in by reading the Archives training manual and first looking through the collection I will be working on. A lot of my time this day was spent working on learning the Library of Congress Classification system, which is a sensible way to catalog collections, but can be confusing for a beginner. My collection is about a theatre professor, Donald Seay, who worked at UCF for over 25 years. Immediately, I found old resumes of his, audition forms for his play from the mid-1990's, old UCF Theatre magazines, and many documents describing the relation between UCF Theatre and Walt Disney World. I have barely made a dent in my collection, but I am learning how to organize it and weed out the information that isn't needed. I am grateful that Mary was there to help me if I really needed it, but I do need to effectively work on my own and be quite productive. I am extremely excited to see what the other folders, packages, and boxes contain about Professor Seay and UCF Theatre.

The second day of my internship at the University Archives started off with a great session of working on my collection. I learned that it was vitally important to make sure each folder is dated, de-stapled, and had a pertinent title. The last two-thirds of my second day was spent preparing the archives for an inevitable hurricane that will be coming through Florida in a matter of days. A person on the outside looking in couldn't realize how much work it takes to prepare multiple archives for a potential storm. Tarps were wrapped around every row of books, letters, paintings, and collections. It is not a one-person job, and that is why I'm glad we had a fantastic group of peers to help with the preparations. Even though it could be tedious work, nobody wants to see these antiquities become damaged by water.

After my first week of this internship, I can confidently say that I am looking forward to getting back to working on my collection, and seeing what valuable information lies inside for the world to see.