Internship Week 4

This week was tough, particularly Friday, the second day of my internship week.  I did not want to go in to my internship at all and once I got there I still did not enjoy my day, did not feel good, and just wanted the day to be over with already.  Because of this negative attitude, of course the day just dragged on.

Earlier in the week I came across some old map books from the 1850s, 1880s, and 1910s which were pretty interesting.  The railroads followed about the same paths as the highways do today, but other than that, it was very difficult to figure out exactly what you were looking at on the map.  I tried to find where my house is, that was unsuccessful.

Overall this week just was not a positive one. :-(

Thanks for reading.

Internship Week 3

This week I came across both some very interesting and super boring parts of cataloging books.  On the first day of the internship week I went through about half a dozen scrapbooks containing mostly clippings of local historical landmarks and buildings and their processes toward historic preservation.  It was very cool to see even those who are not directly "interested" in history still show their connection to the past through their collections in materials such as scrapbooks.

The second day of my internship week, I began cataloging a collection of yearly publications from a magazine.  All of the cataloged information was the same in every entry except for the Vol. and years.  This was super boring.

Overall, I am still getting German books every once in awhile.  Judging by the remainder of the shelves that need to be cataloged, you will probably hear me mention several more times that I wish I would have taken German in High School.  My next job is to catalog several personal library collections, which apparently some were owned by German immigrants.  This should be fun so stay up to date here on the blog. :)

Thanks for reading.

Internship Week 2

Still cataloging this week.  I put in another ten hours this week.  I am beginning to feel really comfortable at my internship location and I have figured out the amount of books I can usually catalog in one day.  Instead of running back and forth from the book room to the office all day, I just pile up my cart with about 40-50 books and bring them to my desk.  Although it is tedious work, I have come across a few interesting books that I probably would never have known about otherwise.  I still wish I had taken German in High School because several books are written in German and simply trying to figure out the author, publisher, and general idea about the text is difficult since I know pretty much zero German.  I just hop on Google Translate and try to figure things out from there when I come across German books.

One interesting topic I saw a lot this week was a city in Germany called Marbach am Neckar, which is the sister city of the town where I am doing my internship.  These books were of course in German, but I can across one filled with photographs.  Apparently the Hitler mustache was cool in Germany.  I never really knew that, I always thought Hitler was pretty much the one and only original creator of that look.  It looks like a beautiful town and makes me want to visit Germany.

I also saw some poetry books written by local authors which was nice.  I used to enjoy poetry when we had English class and it was cool being able to read through a few poems once again.

I came across some transcripts of local records dealing with licensing for pool halls and bowling alleys from 1890-1920ish.  I didn't realize one had to have a license to play those games.  At the beginning of this transcript, the lady who had transcribed it had a paragraph designated to say something along the lines that, anyone who thinks our culture today is lacking because we no longer have elegant flowing handwriting has obviously never tried to read through pages of that handwriting.  She tried her best but mistakes were of course inevitable, she stated.

Overall, the internship is going good and I look forward to seeing what other interesting little tid-bits of information I will come across as these weeks go by.

Thanks for reading!

Internship Week 1

I hope everyone is doing great in this holiday season.  This week I began an internship with a local historical society and I though I would document my experience here on my blog!

I worked ten hours this week in two days and so far I have been cataloging books in the PastPerfect system.  I wasn't given any training in the system so I just looked through other entries and based my entries on what I saw in the system.  This is a local historical society, so perhaps things could be a little more professional, but there is only one paid employee and everything else is run by volunteers.

At my internship location, there is a room full of rare and locally relevant books that have been partially cataloged, so I have been going through and finding what hasn't yet been cataloged and cataloging the remaining items.  So far, after ten hours of work, I have completed about two and a half book shelves out of the ten or so in the room.

Cataloging can be a little tedious but the fact that these books are a bunch of rare and locally relevant titles that I have never come across before, it's actually pretty interesting too.  This week I wish I had taken German in high school instead of Spanish.  I live in Missouri, where we have historically had a very large German population.  So far I have come across a handful of books written in German and I have to get on the internet and translate a bunch of stuff just to figure out the basics on a book, such as the author, publishing co., etc.  That's interesting but also somewhat frustrating.

Some of the books are in pretty bad shape, with their covers falling off and pages really damaged, but most are not bad.

So far, this first week has been pretty much what I expected cataloging would be like.

Stay tuned for other updates after the holidays.  Christmas and New Years weeks my boss is on vacation, so I won't be at the historical society, but hopefully I can remember to check back on my blog once I get back into the internship experience.

Thanks for reading!