The Virginia Room at the Roanoke Public Library is the archives for the City of Roanoke. They collect not only items that pertain to the Roanoke Valley, but the whole state as well. As an intern, I have a lot of options to see what it really means to work in an archive.
I have spent the past few weeks getting my hands into a few different projects. For my first project I spent time mostly putting pictures into the digital database. These pictures were from the Virginia Insurance Rating Bureau. The pictures date back to 1949 of buildings owned by the city. Most of the photos are of firehouses or the airport. Some of these building looked familiar and others not so much. The process of getting these photos online is tedious to say the least. Once these photos were in the database I was able to move onto the next project.
My next project was to begin transcribing oral histories. This task is not only tedious, but also (to my surprise) really difficult. The only oral histories that I have been able to complete these first few weeks have defiantly tested my knowledge of southern colloquialisms. By doing this particular project I am also learning a lot about Roanoke. Many of these histories are from people that lived in the northeast section of Roanoke. The northeast was an African American majority, but now is mostly a parking lot. Slow and steady is defiantly the way to go for this project. Hopefully has I go forward these oral histories will become easier.
Giving my transcribing skills a break, I have started another project of deconstructing scrapbooks from the Raleigh Court Elementary School PTA. There are scrapbooks from the 1960s through to the 1990s. I am only in the beginning stages of this project, but I can’t wait to see where it takes me.
