Museum Studies Intern at the University Library System - Fall 2016
For my internship this semester, I worked in the Special Collections Department at Hillman Library to help to facilitate the online accessibility of the Walter and Martha Leuba Collection. The Leuba collection is composed of several hundred original woodcuts, wood engravings, metal cuts, and linoleum cuts, as well as thousands of books. As an art history major, I took on the task of compiling metadata about the woodblock prints, engravings, and lithographs within the collection. The metadata I collected, including the medium of each print, the dimensions, and some biographical information about the artists, will be used to update the archival finding aid. After examining each print, I rehoused the prints into acid-free folders to send them out for digitization, and they will eventually be available for viewing online. I also wrote two blog posts about some of the prints I worked with on the Special Collections Department Tumblr blog, http://pittspecialcollections.tumblr.com. This internship gave me the opportunity to learn more about the archiving side of art history, and I developed some problem solving skills in trying to locate the prints in the library and in trying to keep the prints organized once I found them; in addition to learning how to use an Excel spreadsheet, I taught myself to devise an efficient system of notes in order to keep track of what I was finding, changing, and missing within the collection. The project is not anywhere near done; I picked up where someone else left off and someone will pick up after me, but as a result of our efforts, the collection of prints will eventually be accessible online with images and information about each piece.