Introduction to my Practicum

My practicum is working with a part of The Ohio State University Archives that specifically serves the Byrd Polar Research Center. I will be completing 100 working hours on-site in the University Archives building and will then spend 50 hours creating a project binder that showcases the work I did and the knowledge I gained.

My time will be mostly spent working on digitizing objects and artifacts that were part of the Richard E. Byrd explorations to Antarctica. This will consist of sorting/pulling artifacts, taking digital photographs of the objects, uploading them onto a workstation, manipulating/correcting/editing the photographs, uploading the digital content to the Web, and creating metadata and tags for all objects.

Practicum Goals:

• To obtain practical, hands-on working experience in a university archives environment
• To better understand the creation and maintenance of digital archival collections

Practicum Objectives:

• Learn the process of digital archiving from the creation of the digital object to its publication
• Understand the metadata concepts of digital objects
• Learn the technical aspects behind creating digital objects and publishing them onto the Internet
• Learn how to utilize different software and equipment specifically designed for the digital archiving field