This internship post was written by Nicole Font, a 2022 graduate of the Archives and Public History MA Program.
This semester I had the opportunity to intern in the Archival Processing Unit of the New-York Historical Society (N-YHS). Broadly speaking, the mission of N-YHS is to collect, preserve, and interpret materials relevant to the history of New York City and State. Stemming from this institutional aim, the primary goal of the Archival Processing Unit is to describe these collections in a discoverable and accessible way. Throughout this internship, this mission was at the forefront of my project, which centered on one of the most historically significant events occurring today — the coronavirus pandemic.
This is one of the drawings included in this collection. It was submitted by 11-year-old Crystal.
The main project I worked on during my time at N-YHS was processing the Teen Coronavirus Diaries collection. This digital collection consists of diary entries, images, videos, and slideshow presentations submitted by 162 teenagers who shared their thoughts, feelings, and experiences during the first few months of quarantine.
My primary duties involved accessioning each record into ArchivesSpace, generating (my first) finding aid, and creating an access copy of these responses. I used ArchivesSpace a lot throughout this internship, and my supervisor demonstrated how to perform various tasks using it — even ones that were not related to my work. Due to these lessons and this internship as a whole, I’ve discovered I am interested in working with digital collections, digital asset management systems, and digitization projects. Digital archives is not something I was interested in when I started this program, but now I want to learn more about this side of archiving.
Even though this internship was remote, I was still able to gain practical archival experience. I got a glimpse of how archives work at an institution like N-YHS, learned lessons about myself as a professional, and discovered new areas of interest that I look forward to exploring.
The finding aid for the Teen Coronavirus Diaries collection can be found here.