M.I.A. Film Internship Post #1 Week 1

My internship will be fulfilled at the University Archives at Thomas Blvd. with Miriam Meislik. For my first (and possibly only) task, I've been handed over the films from the collection of William J. Gaughan. The collection contains print records, photographic negatives, photographic prints, architectural drawings and blue prints, maps, and ephemera, along with 24 motion picture films. Here is a bit from the collection's finding aid abstract:

"...chronicle operations and institutional history of the Homestead Steel Works, a mill owned by The Carnegie Steel Company and later the U.S. Steel Corporation. An employee of the Homestead Works for 36 years, William J. Gaughan, assembled the collection."

The finding aid is written to the item level and has short descriptions for most films including title, producer, copyright, size, and other details such as color and optical audio.

My first task was to locate all of the films and group them together in the archive's media room. This ended up taking longer than originally thought as most of the films were scattered among hundreds of others in a 6 shelf area. Alas, they were all found and accounted for.
Along with verifying the films' existence and giving a quick detail observation, looking over the collection's finding aid has spent the two alloted hours for this week.

Next week I will begin the main task at hand, which is to give a preservation report for the collection.

Comments

rjz said…
I forgot to mention that the film I will be looking at are primarily 16mm.
May 29, 2009 at 3:25 PM
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