Our wonderful interns Casey and Chelsea have completed their internships and are headed back to school, but they left us with a vivid journal recounting their summer adventures in the Library. Stay tuned for future editions of "A View from the
Stacks" which will continue to appear on the blog during the next few weeks.
After a week’s vacation spent relaxing beach-side, week six of my library internship was spent easing back into my work and my winter wardrobe. After spending a day in a stylish loaner sweater, I’m comfortable saying the process of sorting archives was the easier transition.
We began our study of archiving by reintegrating the vertical files from the Women of the Chrysler Show with the rest of the Library’s massive collection of manila folders containing academic articles, exhibition flyers, news clippings and other information on artists and works relevant to art research. After dealing with a few finicky filing drawers and some alphabetizing doubts, Casey and I moved on to a couple large office boxes of newspaper clippings. For the rest of the week we learned about the nature of archival work as we sorted through years of art-world news comprising the hard work of long-time library volunteer, Gizella Pongracz.
We sorted the boxes first by subject and artist, and then by the relevance of their content to academic research in Yes,” “No,” and “Maybe,” piles. Though my education in academically useful material began on day one of my internship when I returned dust jackets to books (in case any included an important image), my doubts about archiving led to a massive “Maybe” pile. Almost every article had an important fact or unique picture, but without knowing what else was in an artist file or if anyone would be interested in reading fifteen articles on the same modern Chinese art exhibition, definite answers eluded me. At the end of the week I had made a rather large dent in the box, and read some really great articles. I have also learned a little about the purpose and importance of archival sorting.
- Chelsea Reinhardt 2010 Summer Library Intern
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