Tackling the Mountain: My Internship in Manuscripts & Digital Curation

My internship with the Manuscripts & Digital Curation Department was a requirement for my concentration in public history, but this was something that I was excited to do. I did not have any experience with the inner workings of repositories and archives. Once I knew where I was interning, I was excited to start working. 

During my first two weeks, I worked on smaller projects, building up some of the basics and learning the ropes before working on something larger. My first project was relabeling files for the John and Mary McLeod Grier Family World War II Collection, during which I ran into multiple files of letters from one individual, Lieutenant Raymond L Dennis. After seeing a picture of Raymond and the stark contrast from what I imagined, I knew that I had to write a blog post on his Letters to Mary.  

After finishing this task and working on adding new material to other collections, I was given my big project, Round Table Book Club Records. This required me to organize, describe, and rehouse the full collection. At the start, this was a daunting task, with an office box of yearbooks spanning over 100 years serving as a disorganized tangle of information that I had to sort through piece by piece. 

Picture of The Round Table Book Club Records during processing, with the yearbook box on the 2nd shelf.

After breaking down the collection into distinct categories, I tackled this mountain one step at a time. Luckily, the club kept much of its materials in chronological order, so I was not as overwhelmed with dates as I could have been. The first few boxes were easier than I expected, but I was still finding odd bits of programs and events sprinkled in. Once I had to add the yearbooks, I was more confident in myself and could get them organized by decade. Seeing the century of history categorized by decades made the project feel far more manageable and much less daunting than it had been when I first opened the box.   

Once everything was processed, I wrote the overview, biographical/historical note, and scope and arrangement for the collection, made final edits, and published the collection online for research. This entire process, from inventorying the collection, rehousing, adding it online, and writing the collection guide, took over a month to complete, but it built my confidence in working with archival materials. 

I continued working on smaller projects and adding materials to the archives, such as War Risk Applications, Biographical Sketch of Francois-Xavier Martin, and a super cool Civil War Diary. 

Civil War Diary of Charles A. Tournier, a Union soldier who was stationed in New Bern during the Civil War. The item can be viewed as part of Charles A. Tournier Civil War Collection (#1508), East Carolina Manuscript Collection, J. Y. Joyner Library, East Carolina University, Greenville, North Carolina, USA.

Overall, I have had a great time interning with the Manuscripts & Digital Curation Department. Handling items as diverse as World War II letters, century-old yearbooks, and Civil War diaries taught me that being a historian is about being a steward of stories. I have gained the confidence to look at a mountain of disorganized papers and see the narrative waiting to be found. I feel better prepared than ever to pursue my career in public history, equipped with the hands-on experience that only an archive can provide