RICHES Internship Blog Post #5

This week working at RICHES, I have continued to work on my metadata. During our weekly meeting this week, when it was my turn to discuss what I had been working on, I said I had just been working on my metadata. This is because I still do not have access to teams and programs that I need to be able to work on the digital exhibit and a large portion of the internship. I have been extremely excited about this exhibit and been very upset because I have not been able to do any work on it since I am unable to access the necessary program with a great deal of the information I needed to be able to work on the exhibit. I was instructed to submit a ticket to IT last Friday during our Bending Towards Justice meeting. I never heard back from IT. I told this to everyone in our meeting on RICHES meeting on Tuesday. Dr. Lester and a few of the other RICHES staff members are going to work to try to figure out how to fix this issue so I can access the information. In the meantime, Tiffany and I had reached out to Dr. Gordon since I will be working with her on the legal history of voting rights and voter suppression against African Americans, using Tiffany’s OneDrive to store the documents and articles so I can view them in the meantime. I am looking forward to beginning the work on the exhibit with Dr. Gordon since it relates to my thesis and is very applicable to the events that we are experiencing right now.

As I continue to work with the metadata, it can be challenging at times, but I am learning an entire new way to do metadata in which the date is predominantly pictures. It also helps me to learn more about Florida history and has been quite interesting. It is also beneficial on a general level and specifically for my thesis, since my thesis also looks at local history and much if not all of the metadata we are creating is based on pieces that were donated and have relevance to local history. These donated items and pieces of history often link Florida with other parts of the United States. This is possible by seeing if there are written documents that have been donated from other parts of the United States, or perhaps those who have donated the collection or are mentioned in then might have links to other collections and museums around the country. It is interesting to see how local history can be connected in various ways throughout the country. I am working on the metadata for the May Museum Folder in the RICHES digital OneDrive folder and I have been finding it very interesting learning about the different connections from Weeki Wachee, Florida to Colorado Springs, Colorado; John May had exotic and rare bug museums in both locations. As an individual who is not originally from Florida, it is quite interesting to learn more. As I continue to progress, I plan to add pictures of what the metadata looks like and perhaps the original photos we are using the create the metadata, as long as it is fine with all of the RICHES staff, as well as Dr. Lester and Dr. French.