This week the Roberson Project interns went on a research trip to Nashville. First we visited Fort Negley, which was built by the union army during the occupation of Nashville during the Civil War. Interestingly, after the war the area around the fort became a community for recently freed enslaved people during reconstruction, which is a part of the fort’s history which has been given much more focus in recent years. The park staff also practice sustainable groundskeeping by allowing goats to graze on the site, which is not very historically relevant, but interesting nonetheless. After that we went to the Tennessee state archives to see if we could find any more information about the Kennerley School or Belmont club. The next day I participated in Sewanee’s “SURF research frenzy,” where the Roberson interns presented posters we made about our projects. There were a lot of people at this event, and I spoke to a lot of other students and community members about what research we’ve done and what else we hope to achieve. Lastly we worked with a ground penetrating radar specialist from UTK to take some additional scans of the site, which we think will be more informative than our initial ones.
Internships Blog
Cataloging Archives vs. Cataloging Books
The National Beagle Club of America. (2022). In National Beagle Club of America Website. https://www.nationalbeagleclub.org/nbc.
Screenshot of the Online Collection Catalog, “Crossing the line.” By the National Sporting Library & Museum. July 10, 2023. https://nslm.soutronglobal.net/Portal/Default/en-US/RecordView/Index/24171.
I have learned two ways the NSLM goes about cataloging depending on what is being cataloged—one through the material housed in the archives and books for public viewing on the shelves.
I got the extraordinary opportunity to work on and create a new catalog for a large & wonderful donation of a collection of original materials from the start of the National Beagle Club of America headquarters in Aldie. The owners donated to the NSLM a six-figure gift to catalog and digitize the National Beagle Club of America collection. This meant that this project became a priority in the library. The first step before digitizing the material is to create a new catalog for the collection within the archives. This consisted of a Word document telling the viewer each individual donated material given by the National Beagle Club of America. It also shows the viewer where the donation was donated by, the date range of the material, the historical note, and a statement of what the collection consists of. Then each item is broken up into categories under specific headings provided with details of each section. Lastly, those categories are broken up further showing each item, with the box number of where it will be housed, the material name (stating if it is a book, scrapbook, minute book, record, scrapbook, or letter), and the date range.
There were several challenges that I faced throughout the process of cataloging this collection. I had to review each item to determine the date range, which required detective skills to read through the pages to find the date. I also had to make sure what was stated in the index was what was discussed in the body of the book. Another struggle I faced was trying to read the cursive handwriting of these individuals; since I had not adequately learned cursive in school, I struggled with being able to read it. The last challenge I faced throughout the cataloging process was figuring out what categories I was going to create and where each of those items would go.
The other form of cataloging is using a particular cataloging system to catalog books or partials. This is a process that I have learned in earlier weeks of my internship, although this time, I had full rein to do it on my own with some guidance. This required me to fill in the specific fields with the designated material stated in the book, such as the title, alternative title (if stated), author, date, publisher, location of publication, physical description (write out index if stated), and subject field. Then after filling out the fields, I had to create the specific barcode for the book and the identification number.
4th Week at the Roberson Project
This week we spent out time cataloging and bagging the cleaned artifacts. Each artifact or set of artifacts is placed into a bag with information about the site, which shovel test the artifact came from, excavation date, and a brief description. This process can be quite tedious, since dozens of bags have be labeled with only a line or two of information changing between bags, but we need to do our due diligence to make sure everything is accurate. It is important to catalog and bag artifacts in this way in order to make sure every piece of information about the artifact is on record and preserved. We also helped set up the St. Marks community center for the 4th of July, and had the rest of the day off afterwards, which was a nice break.
3rd Week at the Roberson Project
This week we focused on cleaning the artifacts found during the Kennerly school dig. Artifacts have to be carefully cleaned with brushes and water to remove as much dirt as possible without causing damage. Some artifacts, such as wood and fabric require a more careful cleaning process that doesn’t use water. After washing, artifacts are placed on labeled trays to dry. Once they’ve dried we can then organize and catalog the artifacts based on type and location found. This process is essential in order to make sure that artifacts and the history we can learn from them are preserved for current and future generations. We also spoke with Joel Kennerly, who had lived across from the site where the school used to be his whole childhood. He visited the site to help point out where exactly he remembers the buildings being, which helpful for our research. We also showed him some pictures of our artifacts and explained archaeological methods, since he had been wondering what exactly we were doing. This was a great opportunity for community outreach and really helped me think about how to explain our methods in terms the average person can understand.
Week 4
My first day of my fourth week at Carilion began with my second interview. I interviewed an employee of over forty year who has worked as in the Planning and Community Development department and as a consultant for a number of different departments and projects within Carilion. We spoke about projects she been been apart of and the many changes that she has seen in time with Carilion. After the interview, I transcribed the recording, edited the transcript, and began research for the next candidate.
The rest of the week, I scheduled two more interviews with long-time employees in cardiac surgery and began to do background research for questions in the interview.
In between researching, I was given collections of picture to archive in a binder. For the archiving process, I seperated the negatives and the pictures and put them into their protective folders, labeled each folder with the name of collection, and stored them in their protective binders. It is always really interesting seeing how different pictures from the late ‘90s are from those of today.
Week 3
My third week interning for Carilion picked up where it left off the week before. I began the week continuing to research more potential interview candidates.
On the last day of the week, I conducted my first interview with the manager of Guest and Volunteer services. We had a fantastic conversation for almost an hour. We got into the challenges her department faced while battling through COVID (such as personally having to assist with Health Checks for visitors entering the hospital), her previous time with the Roanoke Times, and how working at the hospital and a newspaper are more similar than many would think. The interview was an eye opening look into the less “glamorous” jobs that make the hospital run with the smoothness it does.
Following the interview, I spent the next 3 hours transcribing the audio into a 21 page word doc before heading home for the weekend.
The Process of Digitizing
Screenshot of Internet Archive “Marche per conoscere diversi cavalli d’Italia, e di altri paesi stranieri; no date.” Italian Manuscript. National Sporting Library & Museum, in the F. Ambrose Clark Rare Book Room. https://archive.org/details/marche-per-conoscere-diversi-cavalli-ditalia/page/n3/mode/2up
I got the opportunity to digitize my first book from the rare book room at the library. I had to learn to scan on the flatbed scanner and with software. This differed from what I learned when I had a digitized project last semester. When it came to laying the book on the scanner, it could only fit one page at a time, so with the second page, I had to rotate the page upright in the software. Within the software, I could preview the scanned page to make sure that the page was straight, which sometimes took a lot of trial and error. This is also when I take the dragging tool only to get the page in the final scan. Before pressing the scan button on the final scan, I had to create a new folder for each scanned book page to live.
After I scanned the whole book, it was time to upload it to the internet archive. This is where I had to take the skills I learned from working on the Patricia MacVeagh project with how to create the metadata. Unlike the other project, in this case, I had to write the author, publisher, date, identification number, book measurements, and where the institution housed the book.
The next day, I digitized another book from the rare book room. I had to approach this particular book differently than the last book due to its miniature size. I could still apply the knowledge I gained from digitizing my first book with this book. The miniature angler book came with challenges; even though it could fit the scanner’s length, ensuring the scanned pages were straight was fine. I struggled with it getting straight for the first couple of pages, but I eventually got a system down that straightened both sides of the page. Unlike the first digitizing project, I did not have to scan each page. However, the system, internet archive, like if each page is scanned individually, so when looking at the system, it looks like a flip book. Both digitizing projects allowed me to learn different skills and apply some previous knowledge of digitizing.
2nd Week
This week we began our archaeological dig at the site of the Kennerly school. The Roberson project organised a community dig, so we had several members of the surrounding community coming to help us out. This was a great experience because I got to learn more about how shovel tests are conducted as well as interact with the community some more. On some of the test pits we used a soil auger to bore down to the natural subsoil, so ithe professor taught me how to use that tool, which was cool. Unfortunately, it rained most of the week so we had to cancel or stop digging early on some days, but we were still able to finish up our shovel tests and get some interesting artifacts. It was great to get to know some more members of the community, and some even shared their experience of going to the Kennerly school which was helpful for our research. Digging outside in the Tennessee Summer is not easy, and i went home tired every day, but it was worth it to interact more with the community and get more hands on archaeological experience.
First Full Week at the Roberson Project
My first full week as an intern for the Roberson project was a big learning experience for me. It is interesting being an intern for The University of the South in Sewanee when I attend Roanoke, but I got comfortable fairly quickly. The Roberson Project is the University of the South’s public history project investigating black history in Sewanee, which is a deep and interesting story to look into.
One focus of the project is an archaeological dig at the site where a neighborhood elementary school, called the Kennerly school, used to stand in the former black part of town. We have been using ground penetrating radar in order to try to find the foundations of the school. This technology allows us to effectively see through the ground and find features underneath it, but it will take a while for the data to be processed. We also helped set up for the Juneteenth celebration at the local community center where i got to know some of the people who went to the Kennerly school. Overall this has been an exciting week and I am looking forward to working on this project some more!
First & Second Week
My first week at Carilion began quickly. When I first got there, I sat in on a meeting with the Marketing/Communication department that is working on the 125 year, history of the hospital project. Following this, I began familiarizing myself with how to conduct Oral History interviews, reading transcripts of Oral Histories conducted in Roanoke and reading a book ‘Century in Reflection’ about the first 100 years of Carilion’s history. This took up most of the first two days but on the third day, I began researching the first candidate I will be interviewing.
When the second week began, I was already becoming much more comfortable with the Oral History field and continued learning more about the process. In the morning, I learned to write an Into letter to send to the potential interviewee, requesting their participation in the study. After learning how to write an intro letter, I wrote one to my first candidate and we scheduled the interview for the following week. After getting confirmation, I continued to research her and wrote the questions that I would have to ask her when we met. In the afternoon, I joined 3 of the MarCom employees to tour a potential archive site for a potential Carilion exhibit project.
The next day, I joined another meeting with the department and listened as they discussed future plans and goals. Following the meeting, I sat down and reached out to my next interview candidate with an Intro letter. I quickly heard back that my second candidate would love to participate and began to research questions, however this candidate will be more challenging to find information on. Finally, to end my second week, I did my first practice interview with my supervisor.
This is bound to be a very fun and interesting internship. I have enjoyed learning about the oral history side of research and am extremely excited to continue researching and interviewing.