Journal 1

09/03/13       10:00am-4:00pm      6 hours

I had a feeling that I was going to have fun at this internship when I picked up a random folder today and a photograph of Johann Spurzheim’s skull fell out. While I was initially confused as to why they would keep a photograph of Johann Spurzheim’s skull in the archive, I learned that Spurzheim was the pre-eminent phrenologist of his day. Apparently, the archive likes the phrenologists as much as the psychiatrists and the psychoanalysts.

The first hour of my internship today was attempting to get my hospital ID and receiving the quick tour of the floor and parts of the hospital I may have to go to.  Then my supervisor showed me the archives and special collections area, complete with a small processing room. My job that day was to go through the boxes in the miscellaneous collection that I would be processing and get a feel for the materials, rehousing and putting things in correct preservation envelopes if necessary. That’s when I found the photograph of Spurzheim’s skull.  In the process I realized that the materials were randomly organized alphabetically; they were not explained in the inventory list other than “Miscellaneous A-K” in some cases. I started trying to track down accession years so we could assign item numbers. I also waited to hear from my supervisor when PastPerfect would be properly set up for me to start entering things into it. By the end of the day, I had gone through three of the five boxes.