by Sam Steingraeber, CCDC student
One of the advantages of writing this post near the end of my tenure in the Curating Community Digital Collections (CCDC) program is that I can reflect on the experience as a whole, from the workshop in Madison, to the weekly trips to the Rock County Historical Society in Janseville, to working remotely in Milwaukee. One of the things that stuck out to me after thinking back on the CCDC program as a whole is the new opportunities that it allowed me.
This internship/fieldwork experience allowed me to try things that other internships in the past did not allow. My past internships were more about cataloging collections or items that were found in collections. I would spend my time as most people in the archives field start their careers, in basements cataloging hundreds of letters, photos or in my case beer labels onto a computer database. The work that I have done with the CCDC program has been completely different. For one, I haven’t been working in a basement at all, the Rock County Historical Society Archives (RCHS) has their reading room in a well-lit first floor. Jokes aside the work that I have done at the RCHS changed my mindset from just being an intern that is there to catalog for a summer. It has made me think as an archivist who is trying to create sustainable policies and practices for their archives to utilize in the future.
These new opportunities/experiences are something that I would not have experienced if I was not apart of the CCDC program. The information that was imparted onto us at the workshop in Madison was the first step in allowing students like myself the opportunity to do more than cataloging. The skills and language that I learned at this workshop has allowed me to do things such as organize and inventory a whole archives’ digital collection, as well as creating a workflow for how to accession and catalog new digital items, and it has also allowed me to influence digital collection policy. This program has given me the opportunity to be present at RCHS committee meeting where collection policy was being discussed, which was another new experience for myself.
While these new experiences were daunting and challenging, they were made easier with the information and insight given by Kristin Arnold and Cat Phan. These new experiences that I have had this summer I feel have prepared me for a career as an archivist both in the professional environment that I was a part of and the skills that I learned. The CCDC program allowed for new opportunities and experiences that I do not think I would have gotten elsewhere.
Visit Curating Community Digital Collections for more information about this project. This project is made possible by the Institute of Museum and Library Services, #RE-85-17-0127-17
