Week 5 - Reaching Out

Lisa and I were unable to meet this week because of conflicting schedules; but have continued discussing our approaches and the interesting tidbits we have found in our files. We have finished the first file drawer and plan to meet early next week on-site to reorganize these files and venture into the back room of the archive! 

We will also likely begin assigning ascension numbers for our files, to be used in lieu of our excel sheet. 

More importantly, we have been in contact with Mary Rubin and Adam Hunt over at the UCF Archives. We have been able to ask them some questions about how we should organize this collection, what we should look for to digitize, and some other archival tactics we should consider during the course of our project. We are going to meet with them next Thursday and hopefully get some much-needed advice! 

I think once we have the insight from Mary and Adam we will be able to approach this project more fervently; it has been difficult to navigate where to begin, what to look for, and how to approach organizing everything. With some expert advice, I will feel much better about the outcome of this project, and what we can deliver from it. When we present our projects at the end of our internship, I not only want to have pertinent information to share but a tangible outcome that we were able to create for the archive. Dr. French had mentioned that it had been difficult to get students out to the Frank Laumer collection due to its distance from UCF - and that the archive really needed some assistance in handling these documents. With this in mind, I really want to help establish something useful for the Foundation. 

With these scheduled visits to the site and the UCF Archive made, I have devoted the rest of my time to documenting my own experiences with the project in a diary - at the suggestion of our director, Patrick Swan. He recommended we document our experiences with the collection and ask ourselves reflective questions: what were our first impressions of the documents? How did it feel to crack open the files and peruse through the information? What have we learned from our initial encounters with the collection? How has our approach changed over time? 

My fancy diary, featuring Buzz (cat).

These questions have not only helped keep me grounded in the public history aspect of our project, but have also helped me with the weekly blog posts. Our approach has been ever-changing, and each encounter with the files produces new problems as much as it produces renewed enthusiasm. We are really getting to put our training into use - and getting to practice history.