Tuesday, April 27, 2010

Today was the last day of my internship.

I spent most of it working on a fun project--someone from England emailed us to offer more information about some images shot by Cushman in London in the 1960s, and I worked on verifying the information using Google and Google Earth. I'm particularly interested in London because I spent a semester there as an undergraduate in 2005. I loved seeing how the photographs taken by Cushman compared to more recent images. This was one of my favorite comparisons. In 1961, Cushman took these pictures of St. John's church in Smith Square that had been ruined by bombing and was not yet repaired:

The original can be found on the Indiana University Cushman site, here.

If you look carefully in the image above, you can see weeds growing through the church steps. The original can be found on the Indiana University Cushman site, here.

The church has since been restored as a concert hall. Here is an image of the church from Google Earth:


Since the trees are kind of in the way in that picture, here is another recent photograph of the building: http://www.essential-architecture.com/IMAGES/St_Johns_Concert_Hall.jpg

And here is the website for the church/concert hall: http://www.sjss.org.uk/

I also worked on some permission-to-publish forms.

Monday, April 26, 2010

I worked on more permission to publish forms today. One of the most interesting ones was for someone working for a Supreme Court Justice.

Tuesday, April 20, 2010

Today I worked on permission to publish forms for Cushman images and sent another patron information on the publication fees for Counts images. One of the permission to publish forms I worked on was one for some photographs of San Francisco taken by Cushman. This wasn't one of the images requested, but it was also taken in San Francisco at the same time as some of those that were on the form, and I enjoyed it:


You can find the original image on the Indiana University Cushman site, here.

Wednesday, April 14, 2010

I spent most of the day pulling and scanning sports negatives for the ongoing sports exhibit project. I also entered some more items into the accessions database.

Tuesday, April 13, 2010

Brad was out sick, so I didn't get to go back to the off-site storage facility today.

Instead, I worked on filling an order for images of the Forest Quad dorm. The requester had selected particular images, so I just had to pull the negatives and scan them. Once the images were scanned, Dina placed them on a website where the patron could download them.

I then entered some more items from the memorabilia cabinet into the accessions database.

Monday, April 12, 2010

Today we went to an off-site storage facility to prepare some of the films belonging to the University Archives for transfer to the ALF (the Auxiliary Library Facility). The off-site storage facility is actually in a converted bowling alley:


It's a very strange space. It's also used by Indiana University's Elizabeth Sage Historic Costume Collection, so there are mannequins strewn around the hallway leading to the film storage room. Some of them are whole, but there was also a garbage can full of arms and hands near the door. The room in which the films are stored is similar to a warehouse--a very large and open space filled with rows and rows of films in cases.

I worked on going through some of the films from WTIU, the Indiana University television station. Brad called the films I was going through "quads," although he wasn't sure why they were called that. After some Googling I thought maybe they were quadruplex videotape, but I'm not sure about that.

In any case, they were very large reels of film in cases, and I spent the day going through them and creating a list of the films. I looked at the labels on the cases and copied down any information about the content of the video and its date of creation. I then stuck a barcode next to this information on the sheet and an identical barcode on the case.

Most of the films I went through were on "Microcomputers," but there were also a significant number on "English Composition" and other miscellaneous topics. Most of them were from the 1970s.

Brad was also going through films, and he ran across some very odd labels. My favorite was the one that was apparently of an earthworm dissection.

Wednesday, April 7, 2010

I found out today that someone interested in Tad Shideler had left a comment on my blog last week, so I responded to that person with the information we have about him. Hopefully they will be able to assist us in locating living relatives of Shideler who might have photographs of him.

We also worked on gathering some information on a particular person for a visitor who is coming in at the end of the week. We pulled the clippings files, reference files, and photographs related to this person, and we printed out copies of some of the related finding aids.

We also located some negatives of the men's swimming team in the 1960s for an alum, and I scanned these images.

***

One of the most interesting requests we dealt with today allowed us to use the "Pering Letter." The requester needed an image of the first Bloomington courthouse, and the only image we have of it is a watercolor included in an interesting letter written by Cornelius Pering in Bloomington, Indiana to S. Edwards, Esq. in Somerset, England on August 27th, 1833. The letter is long and detailed--a double-spaced transcript of the letter runs to 19 pages--with lots of fascinating information about the United States in 1833 and Pering's impressions of it.

Near the beginning of the letter, Pering writes of the United States, "The more I see and know of its government, customs, manners and people, the more am I convinced that it will one day be (if it is not at present) the most powerful, the most prosperous, and the most happy community in the World. Some parts of it, it is true, particularly here in the West, look rude and uncivilized to those accustomed to the splendour of European cities; but if we do not see the magnificence, we look in vain for the sights of wretchedness, the squalid misery, and hopeless destitution which every where excite the commiserations of the sympathetic... Sixteen years ago the spot on which I am now writing was Indian Hunting Ground, an almost pathless Wilderness, an illimitable Forest, now the frontier settlements are four hundred miles west of this place."

Later parts of the letter include more detailed information, but those were some of his general first impressions.

Here is an image of the letter:


One of the most fascinating features of the letter is the watercolor views of Bloomington and other locations in the United States in the center. You can also see that the paper has been written on both horizontally and vertically in order to include as much information in as small a space as possible (an approach Brad indicated was necessitated by the high cost of sending mail to England from the United States at the time). This certainly conserves space, but it makes the letter a bit difficult to read. You can see a close-up of some of the writing here:


And here is a close-up of the watercolors in the center of the letter (clicking on the image will allow you to see a slightly bigger version):


The image at the top includes the first courthouse. Pering writes that "The upper view is in the center of this town, the middle building is the Court House where all the judicial business is transacted. On the left of it is the jail; on the right the Clerk's office and County Library. The white weather-boarded house on the right forms the angle of the street."

The center image includes the first buildings of Indiana University. Pering writes that "The New College is the center picture, which is not yet finished in the interior, the building on the left is the one at present occupied. It will remind you more of Mr. Rister's Factory than the princely halls of Oxford and Cambridge, but I have no doubt as good scholars will be turned out from that humble Edifice as from the more celebrated seats of learning in England. The President and Professors are men of great talent and would do honor to any University in the World... the admission fees are only $15 a year, which it is expected, will be soon altogether dispensed with, as the College is richly endowed by the State."

The whole transcript looks really interesting... I'm hoping to get a chance to read through the whole thing this weekend.