Behind the Scenes

A Summer of Scanning, Editing, Uploading, and Researching

September 10, 2014 By Guest Author Leave a Comment

This week’s post is written by Vera Shulman ’15, a student assistant at Davidson College’s E.H. Little Library. She wrote this entry on August 22, 2014.

This summer I worked as a library information desk assistant. My days were split between staffing the desk, shifting the Library of Congress stacks in the basement, and completing various tasks in the Archives & Special Collections. My archives duties ranged from perusing local newspapers for filing (in which I was immersed in the excitement and ultimate disappointment of 2008’s college basketball championship) to transcribing oral interviews. I re-housed and filed massive decades-old maps (with help from student coworker Ellyson) and skimmed through Davidson’s 1914-1919 yearbooks and weekly newspapers for references to WWI.

Senior student profiles in the 1915 Quips and Cranks.

The latter task interested me thoroughly due to the very polite and dry humor. By modern standards, though, a slim but noticeable portion of that writing was insensitive to concerns with race and gender. During that time, Davidson College became preoccupied with supporting the national war effort with Liberty Loans and stamps and by training students in the freshly formed Student Army Training Corps (which following the war, turned into our current ROTC).

Page from the 1918 Quips and Cranks.

My favorite tasks, though, were the ones that played to my strengths in visual media. I had a whole set of these responsibilities that all boil down to scanning, editing, and uploading an image for use on the archives website. I processed Davidson’s 2010, 2011, and 2012 yearbooks (called Quips and Cranks); dozens of recent school newspapers (named The Davidsonian), and old editions of July-born author’s works.

Covers of the 2010, 2011, and 2012 editions of Quips and Cranks, available in the Davidson College Digital Repository.

Because the yearbooks are recent, working with Quips and Cranks allowed me to reminisce about friends and events (and grimace in the case of ex-boyfriends) and better associate formerly unknown peers’ faces with their names. The editing required for the yearbook scanning is very similar to the photo editing I do for leisure, so I actively enjoyed cropping and re-angling those pages. I didn’t form a solid connection with The Davidsonian because I used a closed scanner which didn’t allow me to browse as I scanned.

Trail of a bookworm.

The old editions of July-born author’s works are beautiful. The pages were thick and a few grazed on by literal book worms. Some of the covers were marbled in a way that seemed similar to a technique I’d used in primary school for my own book covers. Some illustrations were cartoon, in some the strokes were sparse, and others were both intricate and realistic.

Filed Under: Behind the Scenes, Digital collections, Guest Blogger, Student Publications

My Final Week as a Student Assistant

September 3, 2014 By Guest Author Leave a Comment

This week’s post is written by Emma Kenney ’15, a student assistant at Davidson College’s E.H. Little Library. She wrote this entry on August 22, 2014.

While working at the E. H. Little library for the summer, I had the opportunity to be involved in a variety of projects and departments. I was able to interact with patrons while working at the circulation desk, get further acquainted with the Library of Congress cataloging system while participating in a large shifting project, and, most relevant to this blog, I was lucky enough to be able to spend part of my time in the Archives & Special Collections.

The projects I worked on varied from week to week, so I will refrain from describing every task I performed. Instead, I will summarize my archival activity during my last week at the library as a student employee.

Throughout most of the summer, I have spent my allotted time in Archives working to digitize course syllabi so that these documents could be made available online. Having finally succeeded in un-stapling, scanning, re-stapling, saving .jpegs to a new folder, combining images into a single .pdf, and moving all .pdf’s to a separate folder every last syllabus in my box, I was finally ready to put these syllabi where they belonged: in an online database, where they could one day be accessed by anyone on campus who needs them. While I had been pleased and excited to see my stack labeled ‘finished’ grow steadily, it was even more enjoyable to see that the time and effort I had spent digitizing these documents had made it possible to change the accessibility of these syllabi. This how I spent my shift on my last Monday, working to upload and enter the metadata for as many syllabi as I could.

The following day I was given a list of items by the Archives staff. With new student orientation beginning and the start of classes around the corner, I was asked to locate and pull certain volumes from the Rare Book Room so that they could be put on display for the perusal of our new students. This list included, among other items, ancient cuneiform tablets, volumes of Diderot’s Encyclopedie, and an incunabula entitled Life of St. Thomas a Becket. This list lasted me through the next few days, and each item I pulled was fascinating and beautiful in its own way.

Life of St. Thomas a Becket, printed in Paris in 1495, and one of only six known copies in the world.

Life of St. Thomas a Becket, printed in Paris in 1495 – one of only six known copies in the world!

The incunable was lovely, and somewhat disconcerting. Given the age of the text (its printing date is listed as 1495), I was concerned that handling the volume would cause it to crumble and become ruined, and was therefore very wary of touching it, let alone moving it from its location on the shelf. But upon further inspection, the craftsmanship proved to be remarkable. I could see where the leaves had been sewn into the spine, and the thickness of the vellum encouraged me to be comfortable perusing the text. It is a beautiful volume, and one I was very glad to have been able to see and handle.

On the topic of beautiful volumes, Diderot’s Encyclopedie certainly outshines most texts I’ve interacted with. These first editions are lovely and quite sizable, dating to between 1751 and 1788. The encyclopedia volumes are paired with planche volumes, which are full of incredibly intricate printed illustrations. It is clear that the amount of effort that must have gone into engraving each plate was sizable, and the resulting prints are breathtaking.

Illustration of a porcupine from Diderot’s Encyclopedie.

As an Anthropology major, I was intrigued the most by the cuneiform tablets. Dating as far back as about 2350 B.C. with provenances located in the ancient Mesopotamian area, these artifacts are intricately carved and fascinating. While I have no way of understanding the exact meanings of the characters, simply being able to handle and examine these artifacts was such an educational experience. Short summaries of the inscriptions are available for each tablet for those who are interested in knowing roughly what has been recorded on the tablets, but a simple English translation could not compete with the beauty and intricacy of the carvings. Photographs could not do these tablets (nor any of the rare books) any justice, and these carved stones provided a fascinating comparison to the forms of writing that I interact with on a regular basis.

One of the Babylonian cuneiforms in Davidson's Special Collections. The label says, "From DREHEM. A record of the receipt of one heifer calf and other animals for the offerings. Dated about 2350 BC."

One of the Babylonian cuneiforms in Davidson’s Special Collections, pulled for use in Dr. Mark Sample’s DIG 350: History and Future of the Book class visit.

This final week in the Archives, between the culmination of my syllabus project and the explorations of the Rare Book Room, has been one ‘for the books.’ While all of the projects I have worked on have challenged and intrigued me in different ways, I would have to say that the projects of this final week have been the most exciting for me, providing a perfect end to a fantastic summer position.

Filed Under: Behind the Scenes, Guest Blogger

A Summer of Scripts ‘N Pranks

August 27, 2014 By Guest Author Leave a Comment

This week’s post is written by Ellyson Glance ’16, a student assistant at Davidson College’s E.H. Little Library.

For the bulk of my summer at the library, I found myself in a place to which I had barely ventured, save for the library tour during orientation and the rare instance where a library patron would ask me for directions while I was at the information desk: the Davidson College Archives & Special Collections.

During my time in the archives, I was responsible for various projects and tasks assigned to me by our brilliant and lively archives staff – consisting of Jan Blodgett, Sharon Byrd, and Caitlin Christian-Lamb. Every day I became more and more familiar with the storage, care, and organization of our archives, and never could I have imagined how immense their scope would be. Not only did I get the chance to handle artifacts from both the town and the college, but I also got the chance to actually do some research for the archivists through perusing the archival storage areas. Here in the archives, I could interact with the history of the college I love as well as pass on that information to others via my projects.

Transcriptions

One of my earliest, and possibly favorite, projects was the transcription of a lengthy interview with Dr. Charles Dockery, a former French professor at Davidson and the first African-American professor to teach at the college. I was transfixed by his stories and accounts of his time at Davidson as well as his childhood and upbringing, which shaped him into the kind, intellectually curious, and well-spoken man that I heard through my headphones. Aside from being interested solely in the unique and thoughtful subject of the interview, however, I found myself taking a shine to the act of transcribing itself. It appealed to the perfectionist in me, and I embraced the challenge of typing out every single word or utterance within the recording.

Scripts ‘N Pranks

The bulk of my work in archives, however, was in the form of digitization, digitization, digitization! This task, in essence, is scanning, organizing, and cataloging an archival item so that it can be easily accessed on the internet. In my case, I was digitizing the entire archival collection of Scripts ‘N Pranks – a student run joke magazine, spawning from the Davidsonian’s Yowl, and spanning from 1936 to 1965. The editorial staff of the magazine put out approximately four issues a year – though some years, such as the war years, there were fewer – with each issue operating loosely off of a theme demonstrated on the cover.

Cover of the May 1937 centennial issue.

The magazine itself consisted of humorous poems, short-stories, mini-plays, and cartoons, with the cover of each issue being hand drawn by the Art Director for that year. And, during its run, Scripts ‘N Pranks contained entries from the likes of novelist Vereen Bell and Sam Ryburn, an early editor for whom the Ryburn senior apartment building is named.

The magazines were filled with interesting and thematic student artwork, such as this rendering of celebrities for a political mini-play:

“Christmas Eve in the White House.”

But, some of my favorite drawings to look at in the magazine, particularly in earlier years, were the beautiful and richly colored advertisements that the editors would include – though that was, of course, after I got over the initial shock of having a student-run publication appear to be solely funded by cigarette companies.

“After a man’s heart…”

The majority of these magazines have now been uploaded onto the Davidson College Digital Repository, so that you can peruse, read, and enjoy these marvelous and historical relics yourself.

Filed Under: Behind the Scenes, Student Publications

Behind the Scenes: E.H. Little Library in the Summer

August 13, 2014 By Guest Author Leave a Comment

This week’s post is written by Meredith Pintler ’16, a student assistant at Davidson College’s E.H. Little Library.

When I spoke of my summer job at the library to my peers and friends, I often received the “Is the library really that busy during the summer?” question. What most people don’t realize is how much goes on behind the scenes, and I got the chance to experience that during the eight weeks that I worked at the library this summer. The average day involved me working for two hours at the circulation desk, two hours shifting the books in the basement of the library, two hours working in the Information Literacy Department, and two hours assisting in Archives & Special Collections. I would like to share some of the projects that I have worked on during my times in the archives.

Going into the summer, I really didn’t know what to expect from my job in the archives, as the only times that I had been up in the office were to visit the Rare Book Room, a treasure of the Davidson campus. By the end of the summer I had not only been in the Rare Book Room but had also spent a decent amount of time in the archives storage, the archives office, the Digitization Lab, and even the attic of Chambers (now I can check that off of the Davidson bucket list!). I was amazed to learn about all of the material that is kept by the archives and the work that the employees put into maintaining, storing, scanning, digitizing, filing, organizing, and sorting the items. The archives staff (Jan, Sharon, Caitlin, and Craig) know an incredible amount about the history of the college and the items stored in their department. I had many questions and learned a lot about the history of Davidson (from questions about paintings and how the college had acquired them to Davidson campus rules in the early 1900s to information about the first female and international students on campus).

Encyclopedia Articles

During my first few weeks in the archives, I spent time researching the history of different academic departments on campus. Using all of the old catalogs and a book of Davidson’s history, I was able to write a history of the Hispanic Studies, German Studies, French and Francophone Studies, Anthropology, Russian Studies, and Educational Studies departments. As a Hispanic Studies major myself, I was very interested to find out about the history of the department and to see how it has grown and developed since Spanish courses were first offered at Davidson in 1917. These articles, along with many other encyclopedia articles, are on the Davidson Encyclopedia page. The articles are public and available to provide more information on the history of Davidson College, including articles about buildings on campus, clubs and groups, academics, sports, college presidents, and much more.

Davidson students on a study abroad trip to Spain at the Alhambra in 1989.

Course Syllabi

As the semester begins and professors finalize and hand out their syllabi, many also hand in a copy to the Registrar’s office to be filed permanently. Starting in 2009, the Registrar’s office begun to collect these syllabi in digital formats. Syllabi before 2009 have only been saved in print form. This summer, several student staff members in the archives, including me, began to scan these syllabi so that they can be made available to Davidson faculty, students, and staff. After the project is complete, everyone with access to the database (all those with a Davidson login) will be able to view syllabi of courses offered over the past decade.

Student History

I, along with other students and archives staff members, searched through college records from 1920-1950 to find information about the first Jewish students at Davidson. Jan Blodgett, the College Archivist and Records Management Coordinator, was in search of the names of the first Jewish students to attend Davidson, previously unknown (although reflected in college statistics). In the end, we found records of seven Jewish students at Davidson in these years. To read more about these discoveries and Jan’s research, please see her blog.

Filed Under: Behind the Scenes, Staff, Student Life

My Role as a Student Assistant for the Davidson Archives: A Glimpse into Past Projects

July 30, 2014 By Guest Author Leave a Comment

This week’s post is written by Monica Nelson ’15, a student assistant at Davidson College’s E.H. Little Library.

For the past two months, I have been employed in the library as a student assistant. Before beginning my current position, I was unaware of the breadth of possibilities encompassed in library work. In addition to the circulation side of the library, I have had experience with the Systems part, as well as working in the Davidson archives department. While working on these projects, I have learned a lot about the history of Davidson unknown to me prior and have gained a deeper appreciation for the rich and unique history of the college. Below I will outline some of the projects that I have worked on through my past two months at the library.

While I entered the job with some base knowledge of Excel and a meticulous eye for detail, I have gained a deeper understanding of Excel, a background in the functionality of websites, a newfound knowledge and appreciation for Microsoft Access, and an introduction to the workings of Photoshop. As you can see, my job as a student assistant for the archives is something new every day.

Timeline:

The college timeline is in the process of an update in order to be more interactive and to highlight events that are integral to the Davidson community and identity. My work on the timeline has included researching events through the Davidson Encyclopedia to add to the events already present on the timeline. I have added links to these encyclopedia pages as well as relevant images and captions to enhance the experience of viewing the timeline. Through my work in the timeline and Davidson Encyclopedia, I gained my first experience of working with HTML and the functionality of websites.

A screenshot of an event on the college history timeline.

College Letter Collection:

The college letter collection contains letters written by people from Davidson, many of which have been transcribed and annotated by Davidson College students. This project represented a transition from letters written only by students, to those by students and community members. My job was to incorporate the students’ work of transcription, annotation, and works cited into a post that included the Finding Aid with information regarding the letter(s), the original letters in scanned form, and an attribution statement which acknowledges the student(s) who worked on the specific letter(s). Once all the information had been integrated, I also had to make sure that the landing pages worked correctly, and this was checked through the links which are present on the posts. Each of the pages also followed a certain layout, so ensuring that all the pages followed the same standardized formatting was also one of my tasks.

First page of a letter by Robert Hall Morrison, Jr. (Class of 1868).

Postcard Collection into Omeka:

The archives have hundreds of postcards that are associated with Davidson College. Another task I completed was digitizing these postcards so they could be viewed easily via the internet. Using the scans of the images, I uploaded the postcards along with relevant information including title, subject, description, and rights onto a site which holds the postcard collection. This project included working with a spreadsheet of information, as well as the networked “scans” folder (which contains the scanned postcards), and the Omeka platform (where the postcards collection will be housed and available).

One of the postcards added to Omeka, titled "Old Well, Davidson College, Established 1837." It is a picture of the Davidson well next to a tree and two stone benches to the right of it with the chambers building in the distant background covered by a few trees

One of the postcards I added to Omeka, titled “Old Well, Davidson College, Established 1837.”

Summer of Monuments:

A short archival project I completed was called the Summer of Monuments. Wikimedia Commons began a contest called the Summer of Monuments, using the National Registry of Historical Places, which includes four sites related to Davidson College – Eumenean Hall, Philanthropic Hall, the Historic District of Main Street, and the Chairman Blake House. While an image for Philanthropic Hall was already present, my job for this task was to utilize the archives photograph database in order to find relevant images to place on the website for the remaining three historic places. Once I had located some images and received approval from the College Archivist and Records Management Coordinator, Jan Blodgett, for their use, I familiarized myself with the uploading procedures of Wikimedia Commons and placed the selected images on the website, after formatting them though Adobe Photoshop. Once approved by Wikimedia Commons, these images joined the other historic places on the Summer of Monuments page.

Photograph of the Davidson Historic District, now found in the Wikimedia Commons Summer of Monuments project.

Alumni Citations:

My current project is making the alumni citations available through a database. These awards include the Young Alumni Service Award, the John W. Kuykendall Award for Community Service, the Distinguished Alumni Award, and the Alumni Service Award. In order to complete this project, I am learning learning how to use Microsoft Access and its various tools (tables, queries, and reports), as well as the continued use of Microsoft Excel spreadsheets. The final product will be a searchable database which will contain all those who were granted an award, as well as their citation (if present), which will accentuate the great work done by Davidson alumni.

As you can see, my work as an assistant in the archives has emphasized new skills, while building on past knowledge. The work I am doing is assisting in making the College Archives more accessible to a digitally-savvy generation, since all of what I have done can be found on the internet. I hope you will join me in experiencing Davidson’s distinctive history and check out some of the interesting work being done here!

Filed Under: Behind the Scenes, Staff, Student Life

A Computer for Davidson

July 9, 2014 By cachristianlamb Leave a Comment

The archives and special collections staff have previously written here in Around the D about our enthusiasm for and collaborations with the college’s budding Digital Studies initiative. At the end of 2013, Davidson was awarded an $800,000 Andrew W. Mellon Foundation grant in order to “create a curricular model of digital studies that can be replicated by other small liberal arts colleges.” According to the 2014 – 2015 College Catalog, Digital Studies at Davidson “gives students an opportunity to pursue coursework and research related to the digital tools, cultures, and practices that permeate everyday life” by focusing on three areas: digital creativity, digital culture, and digital methodology.

As we prepare to work with several digital studies and digitally-inflected courses this upcoming semester, we’d like to share a peek into the history of academic computing at Davidson. One of our volunteers in the archives, Loretta Wertheimer (mother of history professor John Wertheimer), came across this October 11, 1962 memorandum from President David Grier Martin (Class of 1932) to all faculty members as she worked on President Martin’s papers:

President Grier Martin's 1962 memorandum

President D. Grier Martin’s 1962 memorandum on acquiring an IBM 1620 for academic use.

President Martin’s closing remark, “that computers will inevitably influence thinking in many fields and therefore it is highly desirable that Davidson students and faculty should have first hand experience with one,” seems particularly apt. We’re looking forward to another semester of the Davidson community experimenting and learning using our now numerous computers – just as we have been for over 50 years!

Filed Under: Behind the Scenes, Curriculum

Takeaways from the Society of North Carolina Archivists Annual Conference

April 16, 2014 By cachristianlamb Leave a Comment

Professional development is integral to all of the library staff here at Davidson College, so with that in mind, the Discovery Systems team sent three of its members to the Society of North Carolina Archivists (SNCA) annual conference last week – myself, Jan Blodgett, and Susan Kerr. While we all often attend meetings, conferences, and other trainings, we usually reserve our discussion of takeways, thoughts, and interesting ideas to in-person weekly departmental meetings. We thought that my first SNCA meeting would be a great opportunity to compare and contrast what the Davidson attendees got out of the meeting. So, first up: my takeaways!

To start off the morning, Jan moderated the “Publishing and Managing Digital Collections without CONTENTdm” session, which I presented at. The session was a great opportunity to talk about our ongoing development and roll-out of our institutional repository, as well as to hear about how two other institutions are dealing with increasingly larger and larger digital collections.

Moderator and presenters at the “Publishing and Managing Digital Collections without CONTENTdm” session. From left to right: Jan Blodgett, Caitlin Christian-Lamb, Chelcie Rowell (Wake Forest University), and Molly Bragg (Duke University). Photo via Craig Fansler (Wake Forest University); see his post on SNCA here. Molly Bragg also wrote a post about this session – read that here.

One of the sessions that made the biggest impact on me was “North Carolina and the Digital Public Library of America.” I’ve long been fascinated by the DPLA, and hearing about contributing to the DPLA from the point of view of the staff of a service hub (the North Carolina Digital Heritage Center) and from a contributing institution (Wake Forest University) definitely inspired me to think about whether an agile development cycle like the one employed at Wake Forest might work for Davidson. We currently have contributed 404 items to the DPLA, but this is a great time to plan what our next contributions and digitization projects will be.

Another one of my favorite parts of the day was the plenary luncheon presentation by Sarah E. Koonts, Director of the North Carolina Division of Archives and Records. Koonts filled in SNCA members on trends from archives around the U.S., with a focus on advocacy and outreach. Throughout the day of the SNCA conference, I was liveblogging as part of my participation in Day of DH, a digital humanities community-building project. I wrote a bit more on my blog there about what I got out of the plenary, but my main takeaway is that archival advocacy is incredibly important to the field, yet often hard to teach in graduate programs.

When I asked Susan about what she felt the biggest takeaways from SNCA were, she emphasized the serendipitous nature of discovering new tools and methods when at professional gatherings. In particular, she’s been playing around with Jason Ronallo’s (North Carolina State University) CSV-to-EAD conversion application, Stead, and freeformatter.com‘s CSV-to-XML convertor since SNCA.

Jan also got a lot out of attending SNCA this year – in her own words:

I’ve never stopped to count but I’ve probably been to 30+ SNCA meetings during my time at Davidson. Over these years I’ve gained much support, information, professional growth and new ideas from SNCA and this meeting was no exception. My official duties in relation to this springs’ SNCA meeting included being a part of the nominating committee and moderating a panel. Unofficially, it was a time to reconnect with colleagues, chat at poster sessions, and gather ideas for new projects.

After a presentation by archivists at UNC Greensboro, highest on my “let’s do” list is getting our scrapbooks digitized. We have scanned individual images but have yet to tackle the trickier process of scanning whole pages. My first thoughts were of our student scrapbooks – and following UNC-G’s example, I began mentally counting all the scrapbooks from student organizations and campus departments. The numbers could be a bit daunting but bringing Davidson history online through the scrapbooks is an exciting prospect.

A few of the scrapbooks that Jan referred to – plenty of material to work with!

We each left the SNCA conference with a different set of takeaways… now to get to work figuring out what we can implement!

Filed Under: Behind the Scenes, Staff

A Week in the Life of An Archivist

January 29, 2014 By cachristianlamb Leave a Comment

Astute readers may have noticed a new name join Jan (the College Archivist and Records Management Coordinator) and Sharon (the Special Collections Outreach Librarian) here on Around the D – mine, as a matter of fact! I joined the staff of E.H. Little Library as the Associate Archivist back in October, and inspired by my old graduate school colleague Stephanie Bennett‘s recent post on what archival processing is all about, I decided to write about what I do on a day-to-day basis. So, notes and highlights on what each day of the first week of classes for the Spring 2014 semester held for the Associate Archivist of Davidson College:

MONDAY (January 13)

Generally, the first thing I do when I get into the office each morning is make a cup of tea and catch up with my inbox. On Monday mornings, there’s usually several dozen unread emails – in part because I subscribe to an assortment of professional listservs.

Post-email-checking, I updated the Archives & Special Collections Twitter, and then went to a Discovery Systems departmental meeting on student workers (possible projects, how many summer students, etc.). I spent the rest of the morning preparing for a class visit to the archives later in the day (including selecting documents and setting up their display with Jan), and working on the Around the D entry to post on Wednesday morning. Sharon and I nailed down a few details related the illumination live demonstration event (set for January 28th, from 11 AM to 12 PM).

After taking a late lunch, I drafted a short news blurb related to the blog topic for the library’s homepage and updated the Archives & Special Collections Facebook. Then Jan and I hosted the first archives class visit of the semester, Dr. Anelise Shrout‘s HIS 458: American Environments to 1893.

HIS 458 students checking out campus maps.

After the class ended, Jan, Dr. Shrout, and I discussed ideas for digital exhibits, future projects, and the next archives class visit, then cleaned up and re-filed material from the class. Once back in my office, I Tweeted again, read emails, and pondered a workshop application before heading out for the day.

TUESDAY (January 14)

I started off my day with a walk to the campus coffeehouse, followed by email (both the checking of and the sending of), and reviewing rights usage statements for our institutional repository in preparation for a meeting. I dropped into Jan’s adjacent office (as is my wont) to chat about basketball schedules and how to best tie archival sports material with current events, in order to market the archives to the college community.

Jan and I then headed across the hall to our weekly Discovery Systems departmental meeting. This week’s topic: rights statements. After the shorter-than-expected meeting, I went back to work on the blog entry (editing and resizing images, background research, and transcribing notes from the interview that the blog is based on), followed by the second coffee run of the day.

On Tuesdays and Thursdays, I cover the Archives & Special Collections desk/ office during lunch, which means that I’m the first line of contact for any users. On this particular Tuesday, there were no visitors to the archives while I was there, so I spent most of that time working on an email reference question.

After lunch, I finished writing the blog post, delivered a draft to the subject of the blog for any factual corrections, and then scheduled the post to be published overnight. I spent the last hour of the day working on a bibliography for potential future research project.

WEDNESDAY (January 15)

This morning followed a similar pattern as Monday and Tuesday – caffeine, emails, listserv reading, preparation for a meeting followed by that meeting. In this case, the meeting was with the Library Director to discuss that potential future research project. I then hightailed it back upstairs to my office, to discuss the project with Jan (and also rehash our Monday conversation by brainstorming possible Southern Conference-related future blog posts, as Davidson is moving to the Atlantic 10 Conference in Fall 2014), and to do a bit of research for several now-ongoing projects.

After lunch, I covered the Archives & Special Collections desk, answered a reference question, and did more research. I finished off the day by beginning to process a small collection of letters from two brothers who briefly attended Davidson in the 1870s.

The “processing corner” of my office.

THURSDAY (January 16)

I began the day by posting an announcement on the internal campus news site (first time ever!), and with my standard email and listserv checking. Since I didn’t have any meetings scheduled until the afternoon, I spent most of the morning alternating between research proposal preparation (including bibliography formatting and some metadata cleanup in Zotero), catching up on professional news, and preparing for that afternoon’s meeting.

After an early lunch, I covered the Archives & Special Collections desk and made a few minor updates to the Archives & Special Collections landing page. I sent a bunch of emails, and then scheduled a phone meeting with a fellow Simmons GSLIS alum. The rest of the afternoon was dedicated to a meeting with the Assistant Director for Discovery Systems, the College Archivist, and the Special Collections Outreach Librarian to discuss goals, followed by some more project research and quick email check before heading out the door at around 5:15 PM.

FRIDAY (January 17)

The morning was occupied by checking email, Twitter, and listservs, followed by an attempt to clean off my desk and a solid hour or so of research project reading. I then decided to (finally) install the driver for my desk scanner (a HP Scanjet 8200), scan the caption for a photo from next month’s Smithsonian Magazine, and then Tweet about it.

Henry Mouzon’s “An Accurate Map of North and South Carolina…” (1775), as featured in February 2014’s issue of Smithsonian Magazine (“Courtesy of the Davidson College Archives,” naturally!)

After lunch, I answered a reference question and sent several emails, before diving back into processing the student letter collection I began to work with on Wednesday.

So, that’s it: a week in the life of this archivist! As you can see from this sample, the majority of my time isn’t taken up with what many consider the heart of the archival profession – processing collections. Rather, I spend quite a bit of time on outreach (both on social media and face-to-face on campus), research, and reference. Some of these foci change from day to day or week to week, and I expect that my processing time will increase (particularly during times when much of the community is off the campus). For now though, if you’d like to know what this archivist is up to, poke your head into my office on the second floor of E.H. Little Library!

Caitlin Christian-Lamb next to a sign that says her name with an arrow pointing to her

Follow this sign to my office!

Filed Under: Behind the Scenes, Staff

The Art of Illumination: Interview with Clara Nguyen

January 15, 2014 By Guest Author Leave a Comment

The latest display in the Smith Rare Book Room is “The Art of Illumination: Past and Present,” which will be on view from today (January 15) through February 14. The display focuses on illuminations throughout time, illustrated by examples from the library’s special collections and two new pieces by Clara Nguyen, the Collections Assistant for Government Information here at E.H. Little Library. Clara previously served as the Interim Assistant Curator of the Van Every/ Smith Galleries, and holds a B.A. in Art History (with a studio concentration) from East Carolina University and a M.A. in Art History from the George Washington University.

Clara first became interested in illuminations through an internship at the Ellen Frank Illumination Arts Foundation (EFIAF), where she worked on the Book of Judith. Formed in 2004, EFIAF aims to “revitalize passion for and public awareness of the art of illumination, in part through education and training at the unique Illumination Atelier.” Similarly, when I interviewed Clara last week, she emphasized both the ancient and modern aspects of illumination: “I try to use natural materials because I’m trying to keep in the tradition of illumination.” She uses many of the same materials as the older works on display, such as: papyrus (typically used for practice pieces), vellum (reserved exclusively for final pieces), 23 K leaf, egg tempera, Indian ink, fish glue, bole (Armenian red clay and water), rabbit glue, and garlic glue. Don’t expect Clara’s work to look like a medieval manuscript, though – she says that she “likes taking physical images and then making them abstract;” much of her work is inspired by nature, including one of her pieces in the Rare Book Room display, which is based on an outing on the Davidson cross country trail.

Two views of “The Vines”
“Amongst the birds
they writhe
breathing with the clouds
but on the ground
they lie –
forgotten”

Part of what drew Clara to illuminations was how the materials used force the artistic process: “It’s a fickle medium. You can mold it to where you want it to go… to a degree.” When asked about the creative process, she cited an example her mentor, Dr. Anne Collins Goodyear, gave when describing how ideas are developed: “A man (or woman) is walking and thinking. He waits at the bus stop for his bus to come along, still contemplating but not fully focused on his thoughts. The bus arrives and it is when he takes his first step onto the bus that the ‘idea/inspiration’ strikes him. It is in this in-between state of things that all the pieces finally click and solidify. I feel that my initial creative process occurs in this way. In other words, my mind is quietly thinking with all these ideas and one final element usually ties it all together. In my pieces, the tying element is usually based in nature and occasionally, a man-made element.” One idea formed in such a way inspired a piece in our display: “I was driving one day and saw a smokestack and thought, “Huh… I want that in there, I just don’t know how I want it yet.”

The piece inspired by the smokestack:
“The wheels
spin
and like smoke
obliterate
the -”

After the seed for the idea has been planted, Clara can then turn to implementing and shaping it: “Once I have an idea, I make a few sketches to lay out the general shapes. I transfer these shapes onto the papyrus/vellum using a very light pencil. Thereafter follows the fun part of the process: I begin an additive process of painting, drawing with quill and Indian ink, and leafing. Like most contemporary illuminators, I work using a 5-diopter glass lens which increases the viewed object size to 225%.”

For those interested in seeing Clara’s process in person, she will be giving an informal live demonstration of illumination techniques on January 28th, from 11:00 AM to 12:00 PM, in the Library’s Davidsoniana Room (second floor of E.H. Little Library). Feel free to stay for the hour, or stop by for a few minutes. Light refreshments will be served, and questions and comments are welcomed! As Clara said during our interview, “It’s a lot of fun seeing the connections people make and what they see.”

Filed Under: Behind the Scenes, Manuscript Collection, Staff

Physical to Digital and Back to Physical Again: 3D Scanning and Printing

November 13, 2013 By cachristianlamb Leave a Comment

Davidson recently unveiled a new makerspace, Studio M, which will provide a wealth of opportunities for students and the college community to experiment with new technologies. After attending the open house two weeks ago, we began to think about archival collaborations with the makerspace – how can we leverage these new resources with those already existing in the library?

The cuneiform collection has already been scanned and added to the Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (CDLI), but what if the college’s oldest objects were 3D scanned and printed in a more durable, lend-able form? The Archives & Special Collections team rolled up our sleeves and began to brainstorm about items from the college’s collections that could use a good scanning, for either preservation or use (or both). The Smithsonian Institution’s 3D digitization work provides inspiration what the affordances of this kind of digital inquiry could be:
One of the first collections we thought of was that of Gordon Clift Horton (class of 1942) – Horton was the engine behind the first Annual Student Exhibition, and he went on to study interior design at Parsons School of Design (now Parsons the New School for Design). When his mother, Florence Clift Horton, passed away in 1975, she willed her estate to Davidson College, and several of Gordon Horton’s collections can still be found on campus. Horton’s collection of jade figurines could be an interesting scanning project…

A jade Budai from the Horton collection

Student medals and badges also provide a unique 3D digitization opportunity – these medals were created for the Eumenean and Philanthropic Literary Societies, and each comes imbued with stories of previous generations of Davidson students. A literary society badge could be scanned, and the resulting 3D model could be altered to reflect the name of a current student organization, providing a physical manifestation of the past of Davidson’s student groups for those in the present.

A tray of Eu and Phi medals from the 19th century

A Eumenean Society badge, which belonged to Joel Mable (class of 1864)

While these are just ideas at the present, we’ll have more news to share in a few months. Watch this space to see which of these visions becomes a reality!

Filed Under: Behind the Scenes, Digital collections, Staff

A Summer of Scanning, Editing, Uploading, and Researching

My Final Week as a Student Assistant

A Summer of Scripts ‘N Pranks

Behind the Scenes: E.H. Little Library in the Summer

My Role as a Student Assistant for the Davidson Archives: A Glimpse into Past Projects

A Computer for Davidson

Takeaways from the Society of North Carolina Archivists Annual Conference

A Week in the Life of An Archivist

The Art of Illumination: Interview with Clara Nguyen

Physical to Digital and Back to Physical Again: 3D Scanning and Printing

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