Internship Time
Posted October 6, 2013 by Jill Silverberg
Tomorrow afternoon, I start my internship requirement for LIS 438, Introduction to Archival Methods and Services. For those of you who don’t know, each student enrolled in LIS 438 needs to complete a 60 hour internship project. While the list of potential internship sites was numerous, each student was told to select just three potential locations and from there, one of the three would eventually be chosen. Well, after waiting anxiously, two weeks ago I was finally given my placement; the Cambridge Historical Commission.
As someone very interested in history, I couldn’t be more happy with my placement. Tucked away in Cambridge, the Commission is an institution concerned with preserving and chronicling the development of the city. Although on the smaller side, the Commission is filled with photographs, registries of those who have lived in the city, and other items related to the city’s history. As for the people who work there, they seemed super excited to have another Simmons student working with them for the semester. Fortunately for me, I couldn’t have shown up at a better time. Currently, the Commission has two projects that need attending to. The first deals with going through a collection of photographs, make a finding aid and uploading the pictures to Flikr, making the photographs available to anyone. The other project is concerned with going through items and documents donated to the Commission by a former employee of a now defunct electronics corporation. What’s exciting about this project is that the woman who donated the collection is still alive! What does that mean? It means that if we have any questions, we simply can get in contact with her and ask whatever questions we might have. With a primary source just a phone call away, who knows what we might learn?
I cannot wait to get started at the Commission so expect updates throughout the semester. If I make any earth shattering discoveries while at the Commission I promise, GSLS will be the first to know.