This week at APS I worked for 12 hours, putting me to a total of 47 hours. Next week I’m working 19-20 hours, to make up for missing a day a few weeks ago. That being said, the original plan was to work 14 hours a week, for ten weeks. This is something I still may end up doing, but I may try to do extra hours across the weeks to get it down to 9 weeks.
On Thursday I started my day morning off doing transcription work of the Loyalist Ladies Letter Book. I transcribed about 8 pages. Later I was given an introduction to surveying a collection. The collection I’ll be working on relates to Israel Shreve and his descendants. I believe this collection was donated by his family. I was given a guide to read on how to survey the collection and spend the afternoon checking against the listed guide that all the objects were there. At the end of the day, there was the annual reading of the Declaration of Independence and a staff gathering. I spent some time socializing with other interns, staff members, and a friend I used to work at Eastern State Penitentiary with.
On Friday I again started my day with transcription. I did about 13 pages, and have around 42 pages done so far of the book. I wonder if I’ll be able to transcribe the whole book before I’m done. I continued surveying the collection and making notes in a spread sheet. There are other items I didn’t get to yet that weren’t in label folders because I want to ask about how we should be labeling/foldering them. I was told to preserve the original order of all the documents, so I’ve left them how I found them.
Next week I have a meeting to go over the transcriptions I’ve done so far. I also asked about the different method APS is using that Bayard and Sabrina mentioned, but there wasn’t enough time to go over this so Sabrina and I should be discussing it on Monday. She told me it’s something they’re doing with the Charles Thomas Jackson Papers, and that it’s her, Joe, and Bayard working with it. I’m excited to hear about how they are handling this collection differently. I’ll be posting my literature review soon, and in my post next week I’ll connect that writing to what I learn about the Charles Thomas Jackson processing procedure.