The Archives offers volunteer and internship opportunities to students who want to learn about the archives profession, working with historic materials, and what goes into ‘processing’ a collection. Our training gives students on-the-job experience that they can use either in their research or in other archives job opportunities.
This semester, we not only have five students working on collections, we also have the Archives & Manuscripts class working on collections for their final course project. In total, we should have around 12 collections processed and available for research by the end of the Spring term. That’s a whole lot of acid free boxes and folders.
One of our students is doing a practicum as part of her coursework in library science at the University of Illinois. Julie Neville has been working with the materials of the Department of Geology-Geography. During her work, Julie has discovered some amazing treasures. She’s discovered leaflets from 1908 of the Geographical Museum that was operated by the department, course information from as early as the 1940s, and photographs of former faculty and staff.
Julie has also uncovered a treasure trove of materials pertaining to the famed Geography Trippers field course. The Geography Trippers materials go as far back as the early 1930s, and includes files that document the history of the group, the coursework they performed while they traveled across the country, membership lists over the many decades the Trippers were in operation and notes written by Tripper members during their many journeys. Julie has identified several scrapbooks made by the Geography Trippers of their travels and has even found old 16mm color film reels that date back to the 1930s that document their travels. In the end, Julie will create two unique collections of materials for both the Department of Geology-Geography and for the Geography Trippers.
We love to give our students hands-on experience with ISU history. Those thinking about an internship for the Fall semester, can let us know by sending an email to archives@ilstu.edu
