Two Weeks In

I just finished the second week of my last semester.  I’ve got a pile of textbooks to read and projects to do. 

Historic Preservation has 6 students total, including one undergrad.  It’s a mixed bunch of students, two of us are in the dual program, one is in forensics, two are straight public history and I don’t know about the last student.  We’ll learn some interesting stuff about the National Trust and see how the application process works.  There will be a couple of guest speakers too. 

In order to finish up the history degree I need to take a comprehensive oral exam; which doesn’t sound fun.  One of the professors I had was a visiting professor and is not here to sit on the exam board.  My advisor suggested I ask the department chair who knows the Civil War, but who I’ve never met.  So I just sent him an email.  A second professor just retired and is currently in Florida, he might be back at the end of the semester.  The third professor, my advisor, is not on campus this semester.  He said I can do a written portion for his section, which is fine by me.  So at some point in the next couple of months I have to re-read/brush up on 29 books and a binder of primary sources.  And then hope the two professors agree to sit on the board and that the one professor will be in NY at some point before May.  So much fun.

To finish up the Info. Science side of things I need to do my internship over the summer.  Which means I need to really get looking into places where I might like to go.  Probably something small/medium sized in the general capital region. 

My archival representation course had our first meeting on site yesterday.  Five students went to SUNY Special Collections, five went to the Schenectady Museum.  Four other students and I went to the Foundation of New York State Nurses, which is just around the corner from my house.  We were given an introduction by the archivist and then we got to choose the collections which we will work with for the semester and process.  I chose a recent collection, which consists of artifacts, awards, and memorabilia.  It doesn’t contain any papers or scrapbooks, just 29 items.  So in one sense it looks like it will be relatively easy to process.  On the other hand I’m not sure yet how to organize it; and I have to do a decent bit of research on the donator and several organizations for the bio. sketch for the finding aide.  A couple of my fellow students had 3 or 4 boxes to look through.  Our first assignment is due next week, so we are all a little frantic to gather all the information we need.  Most of us will be back on Friday to do more work.  We are expected to visit the archive once or twice a week during the semester to get all of our project finished: from unsorted boxes to arrangement, learning EAD, finding aides, and websites.  It will be tough but really helpful to have a hands-on course.

XML hasn’t really started yet, since this week we had a review of Java and HTML.  But it will pick up soon enough.  Archival preservation has gotten off to a good start.  We watched a short film “Slow Fires” the first week.  This past week we watched a video about a British paper making company and “Murder in the Stacks” a Columbia University Sherlock detective video.  It was quite fun.  I’ll have several projects to do; and I think that class is the largest ~25 people.  Things seem to have gotten off to a decent start. 

In addition to all that I've also agreed to do a presentation at our April DAR meeting, in the War of 1812, since it's the bicentennial.  So I have to do some research, since I know almost nothing about it, and then some sort of presentation/discussion.  Should be interesting.  One of the suggestions from the national office was a book review of a biography of James Madison.  I don't actually own any books on him or the war, but I'm sure I can find more than enough sources between SUNY and the public library.  I get to somehow fit that in during my free time.

I’m still trying to finish off a few more fun books before things get crazy busy.  I’m currently working on The Return of Sherlock Holmes, Tea: Addiction, Exploitation and Empire, American Gods, and Romantic Religion (essays on Barfield, Williams, C. S. Lewis, and Tolkien).