Working with a team of two other interns, this project involved several aspects of archival processing. We worked to catalogue, digitize, and conserve a portion of a large colleciton of late 19th century and early 20th century ship archival documents, including coasting manifests, passenger manifests, waybills, and receipts.

 

We first catalogued each document, inputing central information into a spreadsheet including dates, watermarks, and names of companies and people. To do this, we had to decipher handwritten, and often faded, text.

​

Each document was then treated as necessary. This depended per item, but could include surface cleaning with soot sponges, local humidification (after solubility testing), and tear repair using wheat starch paste, methyl cellulose, and Japanese paper.

​

We then digitized the documents using a scanner or a digital camera, uploading the images, and properly filing them.

​

A central aspect of this project was the importance of team based work with my co-interns, pre-program conservation students Kelly Liu and Kate Arett. We collaborated extensively to assist with paleography, ensure consistent work, and share knowledge from our past experiences. Another part of this was working as a unique type of "team" with the three previous years of interns who worked on the project. We constantly were referencing their work and the materials they compiled to inform our ongoing work. This taught us a great deal about the importance of accurate records-keeping, thorough workflow documentation, and clean file management.