This Spring semester, the Instruction and Outreach team here at Hornbake were fortunate to work with 3 undergraduate interns from the College Park Scholars Justice and Legal Thought program. All sophomores in the program, Juli Magud, Sophia Marlin and Evelyn Reidy completed 90 hours of training, research and exhibition preparation in order to complete their Scholars capstone projects. Juli and Sophia collaborated on “Treatment of Vulnerable Populations Throughout Maryland History: Children, Prisoners and Mental Illness” and Evelyn curated “Don’t Eat Grapes: The United Farm Workers and the Delano Grape Strike and Boycott”. They took the time to write some reflections about the experience below:
Juli
Interning for the Special Collections University Archives was an incredible experience that I will always be grateful for. During this experience, I got to learn about what it means to be an archivist, how important preservation and proper handling is, and how many gaps are present in history. Before this internship, I knew very little about the archives at our university and how easily accessible they are. I definitely expected the internship to be exciting, but I was really struck by how much I learned about UMD’s history and how exhilarating it is to have this knowledge. Preparing an exhibit proved to be a much more difficult task than I expected, as I noticed how intricate the details in each project are. I also found it difficult to find what I was looking for, but this research helped me develop very important skills when it comes to keyword searches and picking out parts of materials that are important. Getting to work alongside a fellow intern for my exhibit was also really fun. We were able to mesh together some of our interests to come up with a topic that we both found fascinating. In our exhibit, we discussed the treatment of different populations in Maryland, including prisoners, children, and those deemed “mentally disabled.” We found intersections throughout the topics and created an exhibit that showcased a darker side of Maryland’s history. Overall, I am grateful for this experience and plan to use my knowledge in my future path. I hope to pursue a PhD in criminal justice, and this experience has provided me with immense knowledge of research skills as well as taught me a lot about the history of Maryland’s prison system. I would like to thank my fellow interns, Sophia and Evelyn, for making this experience really enjoyable. I would also like to thank Scotty Beland and Elinor Berger for their constant guidance and support throughout the creation of this exhibit.
Sophia
For my capstone project, I decided to utilize my major in public policy and tie it into my exhibit. My exhibit centered on vulnerable populations and their treatment in Maryland. For instance, we centered on children, prisoners, and individuals in mental institutions, and their treatment by the State of Maryland. I truly enjoyed this experience and loved how it was self-paced, mixed with group work at times. My co-creator Juli and I enjoyed getting to explore the full range of the archives and learning how to go through the system. At first, we were unsure about certain materials that we wanted to include in the exhibit, but as we progressed our excitement at seeing all of our materials from different collecting areas come together truly kept us going. This internship has been one of the most rewarding experiences in my academic career thus far, as it taught me that, slowly but surely, the pieces will come together to tell a full story. While my academic career is slowly dwindling, these moments in time are snippets in the exhibit which is my life. My favorite part of this internship has been getting to look at documents that haven’t been touched for decades. I was told throughout my internship that an individual could look at a photo, or document and interpret something completely different than their counterpart. Once we completed setting up our exhibit, I felt my hard work was put to good use. I now have an immense amount of information regarding labor conditions in Maryland, and I hope to put this information to good use while pursuing a career in law.
Evelyn
In the fall, SCUA is putting together an Environmental Justice exhibit in the Hornbake Gallery. My task was to curate an exhibit about the United Farm Workers to serve as an introduction to environmental justice. I looked at the farm workers movement through the lens of environmental issues and social justice issues. Before starting this exhibit, I knew very little about the history of the United Farm Workers. Therefore, I had to start my process with secondary source research on the topic. This was a skill I already had. Where I got to develop new skills was in my primary source research. Once I had completed secondary research, I had the background knowledge necessary to know what terms to search in the archives. I learned how to look through the archives’ database and request items using Aeon. I learned how the stacks were organized and how to properly pull and denote items in use. Going through primary materials such as the items in the archives is a very different form of research than I have previously used for academic papers in my classes. I was looking for what pictures and items would visually depict my argument; items or articles that would have been great evidence if I was writing a paper on the United Farm Workers lacked the power to be compelling in an exhibit. Curating an exhibit was both a new and familiar experience. I had not thought about the outlining and argument building process behind an exhibit before. Crafting an argument with a strong thesis and an organizational structure is a skill I had prior to this internship. I am a History major so my classes have taught me how to do this. The skill I had to develop in this internship was how to build an argument in such a different format. Anyone can view this exhibit in whatever order they want, so these items had to make sense together in any order. Additionally, I had to think about what was visually appealing. I do not expect people to stop and read every item and caption. While that viewing process would definitely enhance an audience’s understanding of my exhibit, I wanted even a casual viewer to grasp what I hoped to convey in my exhibit. In all, this internship experience was enjoyable and beneficial. I honed previous research skills and gained new ones. As a History major, I got to have hands-on experience in a potential career path and gain insight into my professional interests. I want to thank my supervisors Elinor Berger and Scotty Beland for their guidance and encouragement in this internship and my Scholars professor Dr. DeCamillis for setting up this opportunity.
If you would like to talk to us about using our collections for your own research or to support your instruction, please let us know. We often work with faculty and look forward to the opportunity to get to know you and your students.
Special Collections & University Archives 