Video!!!!

Life Goal

I graduated!



The ceremony was nice. No long speeches but it still took 2 hours to read everyone's name.

Week Ten, Day 15- November 30

Today, for the last time at the museum, we finished making the finding aid for the collection. Since we had already collected all the information in the spreadsheet, it was very easy to just take the information from the metadata to make the finding aid for researchers. We had worked on it some the last day we had been there, but we were able to finish a finding aid for the 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. Since we were not able to get the 1980s and 1990s cataloged, someone else will have to make the finding aid. I hope the finding aids will be useful for people wanted to search the collection.

I have really enjoyed my time working at the BBRM and I think all the things I have experienced will help me in my future life as a librarian. I think the most important thing I learned was the importance of organizing materials in the most logical way. If the materials aren't organized well, researchers would have a harder time using teh collection adn might not find the information they need.

Week Nine, Day Fourteen- November 16

Oh, the last day of the directed study before Thanksgiving! So, today we had a rather productive day and we finished all the 1970s pictures and started and finished the 1970s papers and documents. I really think that practice makes perfect and we are just getting so much faster at all the cataloging. We seem to be having the same problem of pictures not being organized in the best way, but hopefully someone will be able to go back and fix this problem. I just can't believe we were able to work as fast as we did today. Maybe its because we are so ready for Thanksgiving! It is kinda sad that it took this long to get into a good rhythm, but better late than never!

Week Eight, Day Thirteen- November 13

Today we were able to finish the pictures for the 1960s. The pictures for this decade took up one whole filing box! I was really surprised we were able to finish today because there were just so many pictures to catalog. As we worked, I began to notice pictures that should have been grouped together because they were of the same event, but we had failed to place them together. I'm thinking that if we have time, we might be able to go back and put the pictures in a better order and just rework the spread sheet, but I doubt we will have the time. It really surprises me that this happened because we spent so much time at the beginning of the project trying to put the pictures in the most logical order. I think the reason behind the mix up is that two people have been working on everything at the same time. When you are able to work on your own, you get to handle each picture and you would be able to make connections that are just not made when two people are handing the pictures.
I think in the future, anyone who works on the collection should just work on one decade at a time on their own. This way they would get to know the decade and could make connections between different pictures.

We were also able to finish the paper work for the 1960s today. It didn't take us that long because we have found a good system of getting through all the paper work. While I type the information into the spread sheet, Latoya gets all the papers in the next folder in the best order and reads over everything. She is then able to give me a brief overview of the information so that I don't have to read everything to find out what should be included in the spread sheet. I think working with a partner works for papers and documents but not so much for pictures.

Week Eight, Day Twelve- November 9

So today we began working on the 1960s material. I can't believe how many head shots are in the collection for this decade. We spent the day working on just photos and hopefully we will be able to finish them the next day we come. The photos in this collection had more information written on the back, I'm guessing because more of these people are still around and Bob has been able to speak with them about their experience in the black radio industry. I think as the collection develops there will be more information added to these materials as more people find out about the project and are able to add any knowledge they possess. I really do hope that anyone who works on this project in the future is able to talk with the people in the photos and get all the information they have about this time in Birmingham history because it would be a real shame to lose what they know.

Week Seven, Day Eleven- November 2

Today we were able to finish up processing the 1950s collection. Most of the documents of the 1950s are newspaper articles which I really enjoyed reading as we processed them. Several of the articles were about racial issues in Birmingham and how people tried to shut down several of the black radio stations. There were also several instructional manuals for various radio devices from the 1950s. We processed them along with the rest of the materials, but I am having a hard time thinking of reasons that someone might want to look at them in the future. Well, maybe someone could use them if they were trying to repair an old piece of equipment. There are also several radio devices that Bob would like us to catalog and the instruction manuals might go to them. I definitely think we will need Bob's help in trying to figure out the name of each device.

As I looked back on some of the metadata that we worked on previously, I noticed that I did not include the newspaper article title for some of the articles. This was a huge mistake and I will need to go back and fix it the next time because what good is this description "WBCO newspaper article from Nov. 11, 1958"? Nothing, that's what.