Week 3

1) What I have accomplished throughout the week:

Preservation
I received a summary of the Women's Library preservation program by the program's director, who described the differences between conservation and preservation, as well as the progress made by the program throughout the past few years. I also continued my work marking annotations in donated journals with acid free paper, and worked on preserving pamphlets. This included dry cleaning, removing rusty staples, and sewing sheets together. This was the first week that I was able to work on my own.

Librarianship
This week I received an overview of the library classification systems as well as more briefing on the NHM library processes. I learned the process of coordinating books to be scanned for the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) project, and processed a cart for this purpose. This included pulling the books from the shelf, searching for the item in the library catalog, adding the item into the BHL database, and creating a list of items within the database that are ready to be scanned. I also created a list within the BHL database of problem items that are unable to be scanned due to fragile paper, uncut pages, or narrow margins. I also continued my work on re-labeling the Darwin collection books with acid free paper. Finally, I also continued my work describing and cataloging items from the stacks for the library's Challenger collection. The items I described included both manuscripts, notebooks, drawings, and books.

Archiving
I continued my work on Nan Berger papers, finishing the listing of items in both boxes, and stripping materials of metal (including staples, paper clips, etc.). I created a spreadsheet of these listed items and organized them according to their natural order, including categories such as employment, publications, manuscripts, trips oversees, and death.

2) What intersections I have seen between my job duties:

I have again seen connections between my internships, most obviously between the archiving and librarianship internships. Both of these jobs included describing manuscript materials and cataloging them. Also, I have noticed that while describing the manauscripts in my librarianship internship I have not been asked to remove rusty staples and paper clips, nor been provided with the supplies to do so. This is a major difference between the two projects- a major focus of the archiving project is preservation of physical contents, while this is not a strong focus in my librarianship project. At the librarianship internship I have been asked to take note of the condition the items are in, in order to inform staff of any future preservation efforts that might be needed. My preservation internship has provided me with insight into what needs preservation treatment and what doesn't, making this task easier.