Week 12: Key to the Next Door

They say all good things must come to an end. Although the semester internship that is coming to a close, realistically, it has opened doors, and it is not truly the end. During these three months, I have gained knowledge and skills that I have tucked away in my back pocket and plan to take with me. Fortunately, I had a fantastic team to work with and made collaborations an easier task, and they are people I hope to work with again in future projects. Being part of Team Metadata has also meant working hard on our final presentation, taking time out of our week to meet through Zoom to practice and address any issues that arise.

Over the weekend and throughout the week, editing, refining, and practicing my slides have been my priority. Truthfully, one of my most challenging tasks was creating a presentation that could be covered in only four minutes because I felt as though I barely scratched the surface of what my research really meant to me, and the nitty-gritty details of how I worked through and completed the collections. Once I completed my portion during the Internship Showcase, I was glad to have shared my experiences with other faculty members and interns and to hear what others had been doing. It was inspiring to see what other students, at both undergraduate and graduate levels, had accomplished over the summer, and to realize that there is still a lot to offer for people who love history besides just becoming a historian.

If there is one thing about me, it's that I'm big on taking time to reflect on the experiences I’ve had and thinking about where I started to see the growth. Naturally, I thought about my first post and my expectations of how I hoped to come out of this, and I don’t think I expected to achieve as much as I did. Before I took a step into this internship, I touched a metadata sheet for one day, and even then, I did not know exactly where it went after I left that building and what it all meant; only that I had described some of the details of the photographs brought in. A major takeaway for me is diving into metadata and getting the constant hands-on practice that I had hoped for every week. In the future, digital aspects of archiving will continue to become more prevalent in the field, and I want to ensure that I’m prepared to the best of my ability before entering the workforce after graduation.

Beyond these twelve weeks, this is nowhere near the end for me and what I want to accomplish in this department. This was only the beginning of research opportunities and archival work; if I can find a way to potentially present more at future school events, I still need to look into what is required for it. Only a few days after this internship ends, I will visit the Melrose Center to assist with an oral history and the digitization of artifacts for the descendants of Orlando pioneer, Joseph Bumby, as an addition to the Greenwood Cemetery collection. Even more importantly, when more History Harvests are scheduled and I’m able to volunteer, I will understand the great importance of filling out the metadata sheets by speaking with the donors there; it will save someone a lot of time in the future.

It has been an honor to preserve history and have the opportunity to create data for community artifacts that will someday make them searchable and accessible. I hope you’ll follow me on my next history-filled journey.

Now, I'll leave you with some 1950s headlines that really caught my attention during my research for this internship.