Directed Study

We are in our final week for the directed study at the Birmingham Black Radio Museum, and throughout this process I have learned to organize a collection, and prepare it for preservation. I also learned how to create metadata to find specific items in the collection. We respected the fonds as we went through this process. And finally we created a finding aid for the collection. Now that we have reached the end Mr. Friedmann has started asking questions about the organization of everything, and we explained to him that we did not rearrange anything but maintained the order that he had things in. He mentioned a flyer that we had in a particular folder that possibily should be somewhere else, however we have seen that flyer in two seperate places, so it was hard organizing this collection. We have many questions about dates in this collection, that unfortunately due to the time, will possibly have to go unanswered.

Gov. Docs. Tutorials

Government Documents Tutorials

This is the link to all the tutorials that I have done this semester as a GTA in Government Documents. I used Captivate and it gave me the blues most of the time, but overall I liked it. The first video has been altered and has not been posted to the site yet. Check them out!

Week 9

Time is still ticking but I think we will make it to the finish line. Everything is cataloged in a way that those who come behind us will understand. We are aware that the next crew could decide to go a totally different direction, which is fine, we have come to terms with that. At least we had the opportunity to help with this project and gain valuable experience.We had our pictures taken today by Bob to document what we have been doing, and also so he can show others that the project, his vision, is moving along.There are so many people that want to see this museum happen and hopefully it will. I remember earlier that Lydia and I wanted to do a display of the pictures or sheet music as a final display, but that may not work out for us. We have about seven boxes with folders of pictures, newspapers clippings, and other documents and we have started on the finding aid. We may change how we have it because there is not wireless Internet access at the station for us to check how one looks, or to look at the one we did in our Archives class. I know we will have it ready to go by next trip.

Week 8

So, we(Lydia and I) decided to stop at the 1970s as time is running out in this semester. We have placed the majority of the items in the file cabinet in archival materials, and the record transcriptions are now in archival folders and boxes. We may not get to catalog the transcriptions nor the interview tapes, which we have not even touched. I think we have accomplished much since we began, it seemed overwhelming at first but thankfully we figured it out. Having Dr. Weddle for Archives helped a lot, he taught us in a hands on approach, showing us how to create a finding aid and putting together a collection. So the class prepared us somewhat for this directed study, and this experience was a good one. I still want to work in Archives.

week 7

We have almost made it through the file cabinet, and as predicted we will not finish the project. We mentioned this to Mr. Friedmann this week when he asked about transferring the interview tapes onto more lasting medium. Even though,we will not finish this project maybe there will be more students to help with this. The truth about starting a museum is that it takes time, money and people.