Collected Item: “Alex Hinely Internship Portfolio”
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Alex Hinely, Intern Portfolio
What sort of object is this: text story, photograph, video, audio interview, screenshot, drawing, meme, etc.?
Portfolio
Tell us a story; share your experience. Describe what the object or story you've uploaded says about the pandemic, and/or why what you've submitted is important to you.
As a second-year graduate student in the History MA program at Arizona State University, I found myself enrolling in the HST 580: Professional Experience course after viewing an online announcement outlining the unique experience of a remote internship. With prior experience as a digital archivist with the National Archives and Records Administration, the Smithsonian Institute, and the California Digital Newspaper Collection, in addition to years spent as an undergraduate research assistant at the UCLA Center for Korean Studies digitizing reels of microfilm, I initially believed this internship to be hours of busywork without much substance. I was quickly proven wrong, however. Unlike the previous archives mentioned, A Journal of the Plague Year is a living and breathing archive, recording stories as they occur. This constant fluctuation resulting from live submissions created a dynamic, and sometimes turbulent, workspace that required interns to possess flexibility, problem-solving, and innovation skills.
Far from my initial understanding of the internship, the archive provided curatorial interns with a wide-ranging set of skills applicable in any professional environment. Using Omeka-S, Otter.ai, and Slack, interns learned to enhance accessibility to historical documents by curating and transcribing crowdsourced items into a searchable resource. Curatorial interns carefully handled thousands of photographs, articles, and recordings, while assisting with branding, legal compliance, and writing for diverse platforms. Through archival collaborations with international universities and institutions, interns were able to advance their communication skills to convey necessary, time-sensitive, and fluctuating information concerning the live curation of items.
This interactive and innovative internship challenged my understanding of public history and pushed me to appreciate the archival process in a new light. As calls for submissions urged individuals to share their everyday experiences with the COVID-19 pandemic, I recognized the importance of documenting daily happenings and confronting historical silences. As a result, A Journal of the Plague Year reignited my determination to support rural K-12 students and ensure that their stories are documented alongside their urban and suburban counterparts. While I have no immediate plans to become a public historian, I have learned an innumerable amount of skills that will surely advance my career in the educational sector.
Far from my initial understanding of the internship, the archive provided curatorial interns with a wide-ranging set of skills applicable in any professional environment. Using Omeka-S, Otter.ai, and Slack, interns learned to enhance accessibility to historical documents by curating and transcribing crowdsourced items into a searchable resource. Curatorial interns carefully handled thousands of photographs, articles, and recordings, while assisting with branding, legal compliance, and writing for diverse platforms. Through archival collaborations with international universities and institutions, interns were able to advance their communication skills to convey necessary, time-sensitive, and fluctuating information concerning the live curation of items.
This interactive and innovative internship challenged my understanding of public history and pushed me to appreciate the archival process in a new light. As calls for submissions urged individuals to share their everyday experiences with the COVID-19 pandemic, I recognized the importance of documenting daily happenings and confronting historical silences. As a result, A Journal of the Plague Year reignited my determination to support rural K-12 students and ensure that their stories are documented alongside their urban and suburban counterparts. While I have no immediate plans to become a public historian, I have learned an innumerable amount of skills that will surely advance my career in the educational sector.
Who originally created this object? (If you created this object, such as photo, then put "self" here.)
Alex Hinely
Give this story a date.
2020-08-23