January 15, 2020 (Wednesday), 9:00-4:00pm:

Hours completed: 6

Total hours completed: 152.25

My last day on-site! I arrived early in order to get the recording equipment ready to my interview with Fr. Carlson. Luckily, he was running late, which gave me some extra time to review my plans for the interview and some strategies for asking indirect questions that would elicit longer answers suitable for taking clips from, should it be necessary. An example would be “What is the story regarding this object?” instead of “Can you tell me more about this?” The former is more likely to result in a usable soundbite than the latter, which would likely start with “Yes, it….” To eliminate answers with yes/no starters, I needed to be more direct in my questioning while also being indirect enough to elicit a longer response--”What’s the story?” fits that profile.

Fortunately, Fr. Carlson was also well-prepared for the interview and satisfied to largely talk unaided by my prompting, meaning that while the prep worked to soothe some of my nerves, it was less necessary for the actual event itself. The only times I was really needed was in instances where I knew the transcript would suffer if I didn’t make references aloud to what we were discussing, or by having him explain things that I perhaps already knew, but didn’t know if the listener would, such as references to more uncommon fables. After an introduction to the project and how it began, we looked over some of the most notable objects in the collection, including an Ogilby collection of English fables, one of the prizes of the rare books collection that got moved to the Carlson Fable Collection, and we spent some time talking about the provenance, origin, and significance of the items. The hope was that eventually, the interviews could be used to extract more provenance/origin/subject metadata as well as to promote the collection through use of soundbites (3 hours).

The Ogilby fable book.

After lunch, I returned to the Rare Books Room, where Dave was meeting with Veronica, the sacristan from St. John's Church. She had come to pick up one of the artifacts from the St. John’s Church collection for use at a mass, but while she was there, Dave thought it valuable for her to preview and approve the SJC exhibition labels. She was very satisfied with the wording of some of the more difficult-to-explain components (the bread/wine/Body/Blood of Christ issue discussed previously), which was an important (if unplanned!) approval to get (1 hour).

After she departed, Dave and I received some visiting researchers in the Rare Books Room, and I assisted with a tour of the notable items in the collection (1 hour). Finally, Dave and I had a meeting to look back over the internship as a whole and tie up any loose ends (1.5 hours). I had compiled a list of items for his benefit that included where I had left off in certain larger projects, such as where the resources for my exhibit labels were located should they need to be changed, and then I confirmed with him that he had the evaluation form and would complete it soon. Overall, I think we were both very satisfied with the internship experience, and I hope to visit the department again soon!