This blog post was written by Emma Crews, an intern in the Library’s Special Collections unit from the Department of English in Spring 2024.
My semester-long project with the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga (UTC)’s Special Collections department involved creating a finding aid for a collection of photographs and text objects relating to the Chattanooga Fire Department (CFD), as well as digitizing the items. Though I had prior experience with working in libraries, before this semester I never had much chance to interact with its sister discipline of archives; as such, when I first started I was uncertain of what to actually expect with my internship, even though I knew intellectually that I would be creating a finding aid. However, working with Special Collections has given me a deep appreciation for the day-to-day work of an archivist. I have come to love the research, digitization, attention to detail, and use of controlled vocabularies necessary for my work; it was a wonderful experience that I greatly value the opportunity to have taken. Not only did I learn vital skills and programs for my future work, due to the nature of the collection I also learned a bit more about Chattanooga and her history.
As stated earlier, during the semester I digitized most of the 74-item Chattanooga Fire Department photographs and records collection and created a finding aid for it. More specifically, I first devised titles for each item following the archival description standard Describing Archives: A Content Standard (DACS) and the controlled vocabulary Getty Art and Architecture Thesaurus (AAT) and tried to determine their creation dates. Finding the date expression for the items created the opportunity for some of my favorite triumphs but also some challenges; though sometimes I was able to use context clues to figure out when a photograph was taken, such as by hotel signs or theater marquees, many times there was simply not enough information in the photograph or on the Internet to determine its date. When that occurred, the only thing to do was to try and make sure that the item’s metadata contained the most accurate and relevant information I could find. After creating such information and inputting it into ArchivesSpace, I then digitized most of the collection using a flatbed scanner and edited the scans in Photoshop. That was time-consuming, but it allowed me to spend time with each item individually. I also created some notes giving background on the collection and the CFD. Finally, I created item-level metadata for each item, such as writing a description, identifying the creator, location, or person depicted in the photograph, and measuring the item’s dimensions. All of the categories of metadata were created using several different controlled vocabularies, such as Library of Congress Subject Headings. Once again, that part of the project required much research, and I was not always successful in finding the information I sought, but it was always a good feeling to identify a person as being an old Fire Chief, for example, or that the photograph was taken on Market Street close to eighty years ago.
Though my internship was of course different from my previous library work as well as my English Literary Studies coursework, I do think they informed my work somewhat; for example, the other part of my internship was to staff the reference desk and assist any patrons. Special Collections uses the same program for book circulation as was in my old library, which helped me streamline that aspect of the internship. Meanwhile, my major emphasizes the power of both personal research and the scholarship of previous scholars; this informed my approach to my research as I attempted to build upon what information had already been collected by the original curators of the collection, both by the Chattanooga History Collections and by its first compilers. I am proud of the work I have achieved over the semester, and I appreciate having more professional knowledge of archives and the work it takes to create and run them; when I started my internship, for a while I entertained the idea of trying to complete two finding aids rather than one. Now I know that would have been ill-advised with the size of the collection I was working with as well as my hours; additionally, I was able to spend plenty of time getting to know the collection thoroughly and make sure my work was complete. I now have a greater appreciation for the many hours of work it takes to preserve and identify each item in an archive, as well as the dedication it takes to research each vital part of each item. I am very thankful to my supervisor and the rest of the Special Collections staff for their guidance throughout my internship as well as their patience.