During the past couple of weeks, we have done a lot more hands-on work at my internship! Last Wednesday, I was able to finally finish reading and taking notes on all of the material in the collection. This was definitely a lot of work, but I am happy that I took my time instead of just opening a box and doing a quick scan of the first couple of items. I have now began the process of writing the finding aids and descriptions for the collections.

Something that I wanted to highlight was all the little gadgets and tools that help archivists preserve items that can be upwards of almost 200 years old. Shown below is an image of a item called a “book pillow”, which is basically a miniature bean bag that you can place old book on. By doing thing, the book pillow is able to cradle the book and make sure that the spine is not being damaged from hitting the table.

Other items I have been using is a miniature spatula, which is used to get under pages instead of you having to try to scrap them off of the table. I have also now began using white cotton gloves when handling photographs or other delicate items that could be damaged by the oils of my hands.