HIS 5944 (1/30-2/5/2021)

 

This week continued to run administrative tasks with some interviews sprinkled into the week. I have been attempting to catch up with providing the collection with consent forms from myself and the interviewees which takes some time. In addition, I must fill out sheets that include data about the interview which can be difficult as interviews begin to pile up. However, the internship has taught me endurance when faced with a large task and to work at it slowly. The light will eventually be at the end of the tunnel. While tedious, the quality of the interviews has continued to be high quality for university students. Most students seem comfortable with discussing the COVID-19 pandemic’s effects on their lives.

When I conduct an interview, typically, I remind them that it is public, and I may ask questions they have already heard before during the interview. Lately, due to my commitment to empathy, I have begun incorporating other warnings or reminders. I often ask the student or faculty member that if they ever feel uncomfortable with a question, they can move on which I think is acceptable. Empathy is always a good thing to have in oral history and with such a topic that is fresh in their minds that sparks tragedy. I was blessed to not have any significant tragedies during the pandemic, but from hearing so many dark moments, the interviewees may have already coped with it. Oral history can be a dangerous practice when you skew people into having to relive a certain dark time. I cannot fathom how Holocaust survivors conduct oral histories and not crack under the stress of having to relive and remind themselves of the horrors they have seen.

I’d like to talk about aspects that seem to be less accentuated during these interviews as notes on what the collection does not seem to have. One aspect is the dorm life that seems missing as students seemed content with the university’s response regarding management of dormitories. Another is the faculty which I have not conducted an interview yet as setting appointments can be difficult. These aspects seem less accentuated from the interviews I have seen. However, it is nice to know that students were not too worried about housing in the long list of troublesome events within the pandemic.

 Some of my tasks at the internship included helping move archival documents or furniture into a new storage room. A physical task was unexpected for me yet it seemed important to be able to move objects from one place to another in archiving. I did not expect it to be so difficult for me. It certainly has taught me that archival relocation takes longer than what I had thought. I am thankful that there was a dolly to move the cabinets to a new room as my arms would have collapsed. While humorous, the physical task of moving has also taught me the tendency of moving collections to different places. The new room that we were assigned to move the equipment to was only given within the last year which the Special Collections and University Archives seemingly did not have. It makes me wonder if digitization will have that same troubles of requiring physical space for collections.