My culminating practicum site was with Cleveland State University in the Michael Schwartz Library's Special Collections where I worked with the Head of Special Collections, Bill Barrow, on a variety of digital initiatives within the library and in partnership with other CSU departments and Cleveland area institutions. My faculty advisor for my practicum was Dr. Catherine L. Smith, Assistant Professor at the School of Information (iSchool), Kent State University.
Focusing on digital libraries proved to be particularly timely as my ability to report to the physical library was interrupted in early March due to COVID-19. I was lucky enough to be able to continue work on the Roldo Bartimole newspaper clippings metadata project for Cleveland Memory enabling me to complete my 150 hours and continue to contribute to the work of Cleveland State University libraries.
This is based on my original online portfolio, as created for LIS 60092: Master’s Internship in Library and Information Science.
Cleveland Memory
Cleveland Memory is an interdisciplinary digital cultural heritage project featuring digitized photographs, texts, oral histories, and other resources and materials all focusing on the history of Cleveland and Northeast Ohio.
Based on the ContentDM platform, Cleveland Memory is fully searchable, utilizing extensive metadata to ensure a smooth browsing experience using Library of Congress Authorities and the Getty Art and Architecture Thesaurus for standardization.
During my practicum, I created descriptive metadata entries for Cleveland Memory including Cleveland Press photos and my largest undertaking, the Roldo Bartimole newspaper columns collection, consisting of around 1,000 newspaper clippings. To read more about Bartimole, a powerhouse of Cleveland journalism, go to Roldo Bartimole: Point of View.
I was also involved in supporting a metadata crowdsourcing project, putting together a Best Practices guide for volunteers to follow to ensure quality metadata submissions to the Cleveland Memory project.
S.S. Canadiana Articles
In addition to creating metadata for the Cleveland Press photos of the S.S. Canadiana for Cleveland Memory, I conducted research on the history of the cruise ship and wrote two articles tailored to the particular needs of two public history projects.
The first article was an entry for the Encyclopedia of Cleveland History of Case Western Reserve University. This project emphasizes clean, accessible, and fact-forward entries on the history of Cleveland.
The second article was written for Cleveland Historical, a project of the Center for Public History + Digital Humanities at Cleveland State University. This project encourages engaging, dynamic content about specific locations in Cleveland. This allowed for me to really dive into the crazy stories surrounding the S.S. Canadiana and the events that lead to it sinking near Collision Bend in the Cuyahoga River.
Ohio Outdoor Sculpture
Born out of the Save Outdoor Sculpture! project in the 1990s, a Heritage Preservation project, Ohio Outdoor Sculpture (OOS) is a database of over 1,400 publicly accessible outdoor sculptures. with images, historical data and condition information provided through Omeka. To read more visit: About OOS.
As part of my practicum, I researched counties not yet represented by OOS and contributed several entries to the database to help round out their coverage of Ohio sculptures.
CSU Research Guides
My first project with Special Collections was to create content for and update the department's online local history research guide on the LibGuides platform. This involved transferring valuable content from the old Cleveland Digital Library format to a research guide with high traffic. This enabled me to understand the ins and outs of LibGuides and help support public history researchers.
Collections Care
In addition to the digital side of special collections, I was able to assist in conservation and collection care. This included rehousing of paintings and prints as well as the opportunity to attend a conservation demonstration for treating and rehousing curled and folded photographs and documents.