My duties in the Davidson College Archives & Special Collections include supervising student workers, and this summer we had a bevy of them – five total! I’ve been in supervisory roles before – I was in charge of an office as an undergrad, and I had an intern work under me for a summer when I served as the archivist of the Nichols House Museum. However, this summer was my first experience with student workers in an academic library/ archives setting, and my first time supervising so many at once.
All in all, I think the summer ended up being incredibly productive, and our student workers were all amazing! I learned a lot by working with them this summer – it was challenging (in a good way) for me to train a new corps of students, and although I tried to balance out work I knew would most likely be tedious (scanning for hours) with some more exciting or creative projects, I’m aware that some of the tasks might not have been enjoyable. However, these five women handled every assignment with good grace, and I enjoyed getting to know all of them (as did the rest of the archives staff!). All of our students did some digitization work (primarily scanning, uploading, and entering metadata for student publications), although each had a variety of projects and assignments.
Here’s a roundup of the blogs the students wrote to summarize their experiences:
Monica Nelson (class of 2015) – My Role as a Student Assistant for the Davidson Archives: A Glimpse into Past Projects
Meredith Pintler (class of 2016) – Behind the Scenes: E.H. Little Library in the Summer
Ellyson Glance (class of 2016) – A Summer of Scripts ‘N Pranks
Emma Kenney (class of 2015) – My Final Week as a Student Assistant
Vera Shulman (class of 2015) – A Summer of Scanning, Editing, Uploading, and Researching