Today I began my practicum work at the National World War II Museum's archives. I'm actually quite familiar with this place--I spent some time here for an Intro. to Archives class last May, and then quite a bit of time from this past February through April to research and write my thesis for LIS 695. It was a content analysis of a collection of War Department manuals they own. I like the mixed archives-museum environment here, where curators, archivists and digital asset managers occupy the same set of offices and work together on a great many projects. They also have a lot of funding, so they can engage in a deep level of granularity in creating access to and describing their document and photograph collections.
I'm working under the Senior Archivist, Lindsey Barnes, who has assigned me some initial tasks for the first few weeks. My first task is to create item-level records for collections of personal correspondences of three or four World War II soldiers. There is a push by the Museum's directors to create access to all paper materials at their digital collections at www.ww2online.org. Having the descriptions of each item at least is the fastest route to public access of the collection; digitization efforts will follow. It is worth noting that it isn't common for an archives to be able to engage in this level of description--they rarely have the time, money, or staff to describe all of the items in their archives at that level. The museum is well-situated as an institution collecting objects and documents relating to one of the most celebrated events in American history, and thus has the financial backing of many celebrities and businesspeople. This money allows for a robust staff of cataloguers, but the popularity of World War II draws many a volunteer and intern as well.
