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Bentley Historical Library
One of my non-SI friends asked me what I do at the Bentley. The Bentley is a repository that holds Michigan historical collections and the University's records, therefore there are 2 departments within the Bentley. I work for the Michigan Historical Collection, and I process incoming records/papers. Processing seems easy, but it's not at first. For my first collection, I had so many questions on what I should do: what should I keep? what should I discard? how do I arrange the records/papers? how do i write up a finding aid? My supervisor, Tom Powers, must have been annoyed with the barrage of questions especially ones that were nitpicky. And when I question myself about little details, I felt very inadequate at my job. Now that I've been there for a year, I feel more confident about what I'm doing and I'm processing collections quickly.
Since processing is the only thing I've done at the Bentley, I feel that I don't have the full archivist's experience. I should have been more proactive about getting more reference work under my belt. So, for future archives students, I recommend that you do a year of processing and a year of reference. Doing both will make you more marketable.
Posted by rmarquez at November 13, 2006 04:16 PM
