Artifact 4 | MPA Practicum Paper
Project Description: The purpose of this project was to write a reflection paper on the practicum experience regarding the original goals and objectives.
My practicum took place in the Modern Political Archives located in the Baker Center at the University of Tennessee. I was assigned to work on the Estes Kefauver Film Project. The purpose of this project was to identify the films in the collection, catalog the films’ physical characteristics and assess the films’ physical condition. This information was then used to prioritize digitization, which makes access and retrieval possible. I also rehoused the collection by replacing the old film cans and winding the film onto new two-inch acid-free cores, as seen in the images below.
To catalog the films, I used AVCC. AVCC is an open-source database management system designed specifically for audiovisual collections.
I will use what I have learned during this practicum hopefully in my future jobs. The benefit of having the skills and knowledge of how to catalog and re-house audiovisual materials allows archivists the ability to archive their materials in-house, which provides benefits for the collection’s users. Working directly with the Modern Political Archivist provided me with additional metadata about the films making it easier to accurately identify each film.