Winter Break Shenanigans

Posted February 6, 2025 by Aurora Daniel

Ah to be back in classes! Before I get into what I’m up to this semester, I want to dedicate a blog post to my winter break shenanigans. Winter break is one of the few windows of time each year that my partner and I both have time off as he’s a middle school teacher and I’ve been in college most of our relationship. So we take advantage of that by typically going on a road trip south to Philadelphia or D.C. or a weekend getaway up to the White Mountains in New Hampshire. However, this year we decided to stay home and be tourists.

Ice sculpture from Boston’s First Night celebrations

A lot of that decision had to do with my own work schedule over winter break. I was one of the recipients of the Massachusetts State Historical Records Advisory Board (SHRAB)’s Archival Field Fellowship for 2025. Since I’m taking LIS-438 this semester I wanted to prioritize completing this over the break. That meant that as soon as I finished up my internship at the Boston City Archives I was heading straight into my fellowship. Yet, I wouldn’t want it any other way. The two projects themselves and their subject matter couldn’t be more different and so I found it exciting to pivot into the next opportunity.

I was placed at the Franklin Historical Museum in Franklin, Massachusetts. While there I processed their Municipal Anniversaries Collection, which was a series of documents, photographs, and ephemera related to the town’s and national anniversary celebrations. It was a really fun collection to work with and nice to get back to my museum roots. For anyone looking for internship opportunities based in Massachusetts it’s a great opportunity to get more hands-on archival experience!

Franklin Historical Museum

In addition to my fellowship I also worked a few shifts at Beatley. It was sort of fun to be in the library by myself (so quite!) and it made getting through the backlog of email and interlibrary loans so much easier. However, it did make me miss the reference interactions I would have either as patrons would walk up to the desk or phone in.

All of the mail I had to process by myself on my first day back (otherwise known as ILL mountain)

However, it wasn’t all work. My partner and I would go on short hikes, visited many of our favorite plant spots to beat the cold, windy days (I have to make a plug for the New England Botanic Garden at Tower Hill in Boylston, MA), worked on puzzles, and had plenty of downtime for books and video games. Although this year was a bit sleepier in terms of our leisure activities it was a welcome break. If we had planned a trip it would’ve just added onto the end of semester stress instead of helping me decompress. So I’m bright eyed and bushy tailed for another semester!