My wonderful intern Maci

This blog is from my wonderful intern Maci. Brand new to archives, she did a wonderful job with the complex challenges of the Madison collection. 

 I had no prior experience working in archives or a historical library prior to my internship at the Clarke and with Marian. I had never even taken Marian’s class to have an inkling of what it could be like. I worked with other interns and volunteers to begin inventorying the Madison collection, which was 170 cubic feet of physical material (not considering digital materials). We were able to successfully inventory and withdraw duplicates, copies, and materials found elsewhere. Zoe, another intern, and I also processed and encoded part of the CMU Athletics Collection, specifically the swimming team material from the 1950-1980. I assisted Marian with other minor tasks as the semester went on, including inventorying a CMU Scrapbook Collection, sleeving postcards. At the very end of the semester, the group of us started pulling smaller series from Madison to get a sense of how the summer processor would work through all the material. I loved my experience at the Clarke so much. I originally had wanted to go into museum collections in the future and now have pivoted and want to go to library school for grad school and become an archivist. I had anticipated enjoying interning at the Clarke, as someone who loves meticulous tasks and hyper organization, but this was something entirely different and new. I’m excited for my future in archives, and cannot wait to continue work on the Madison collection this summer as an archives processing assistant!