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Smithsonian Institution: National Museum of American History
Eight SI students - Chris Borawski, Kristen Demlow, Lynell De Wind, Anne Karle-Zenith, Jolie Matedne, Mike McCaffrey, Helga Rom and Ashley Young - spent their ASB week at the Archive Center of the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History. The students - many of them not in the archives specialization at SI - ventured into their various tasks with great energy and interest. The Archives Center is full of unique and interesting collections that are often poorly preserved or neglected altogether for lack of human resources to properly organize and treat them. As such the students were quickly put to work organizing, classifying, identifying and digitizing a number of the collections. 
Following are some of the collections students worked on throughout the ASB week: Scurlock Collection, The Ivory Project, Doughnut Machine Company Scrapbooks, Leon Weinraub, Chicago World's Fair Scrapbook, Edward H. Angle Orthodontics Collection, Felix P. Caruthers Papers, Max Kronenberg Papers and Video Press Kit. The variety of collections and projects helped mitigate some of the more mundane tasks during the week, and the students were able to gain a better understanding of what archival work entails in one of the nation's foremost institutions. In addition to working on the collections the students attended two luncheons where they met with the head of the center and the audio-visual archivist. The talks proved to be very informative and helped provided some background about the Archives Center and some of the challenges faced by archivists in light of ever-changing media. 
The following quotes from the students help highlight their unique experiences at the Archives Center: "[The Archives Center staff] did make us feel right at home… Part of the homey feeling may have been because they and the rest of the Smithsonian staff fondly call their workplace "SI" just like we do." "I learned how to use an ultraviolet laser machine and a heat sealing machine to make plastic sleeves to preserve old pictures. These weren't just any old photographs; they were photographs of Thomas A. Edison and his laboratory and experiments from the collection of one of his assistants, William J. Hammer." 
"[B]y the end of the week I felt that we had actually helped to accomplish something useful for the center." "I have been working with Digital Conversion Services on facilitating a digitization project at the Bentley, and while I have learned a lot about scanning requirements and various capture methods, I have never actually done the scanning myself… The scanning experience that I gained over spring break week was invaluable training that I will definitely be able to use." "This was a great opportunity for me (an HCI student) to get a glimpse into the archivist world." "It was also interesting to see the handwritten forms [from an 1850-1870 Pennsylvania coalmine]. On the back of one form, someone had written a note about how busy the mine was and how he planned on spending his next day off." 
"It's rewarding to know that because of my efforts these great photographs will be around much longer for others to see and learn from." "We had two other unique experiences at the museum that I'd like to mention. First was the heartwarming moment we all had when we noticed their Information Age exhibit. Its tagline was 'People, Technology, and Society' - truly the core elements of what it is we do at the School of Information. Second was the unique experience of seeing the nation mourning Mister Rogers pretty much firsthand. One of his signature red cardigans is in the NMAH. Needless to say the media was there filming it the day he died and gathering the public's thoughts about the man and his work. Having grown up watching him it was comfort to be in a place where you could in a way pay your respects." |