While it won’t officially summer until June 21st, it sure has felt like summer as of late. And summer quarter at Wright State started today. I’m looking forward to this summer. I’m not signed up for any lectures or seminars. Instead, I am starting my internship at the Wright State University Special Collections & Archives. I started today.
I spent the first part of my 5 hour shift getting acquainted with the reference desk in the reading room. The last part of my shift was the exciting part. I started processing a collection! Is it weird that I like processing collections? I don’t know. I think I like to organize things, so maybe that’s why it appeals to me.
I was given some of the boxes containing the George “J.R.” Wedekind Aviation Collection, to start assessing. Wedekind was one of the organizers of the Dayton Air Show who helped to turn it into a major event. So far I have found a lot of aviation magazines, books and pamphlets, numerous VHS tapes of air shows and other aviation-related titles, some slides, and Wright Brothers materials. I think I’ve only looked through half of the collection. I’m curious to see what the other half contains.
I think this is going to be a great summer. No studying, I get to put a nice dent in my 300 hours internship ( I can only work at the archives 10 hours/week, but in this 10 week summer term, that will be 1/3rd of it completed), and I’m thinking about getting back to my art roots with some charcoal drawing and photography at Cox Arboretum. Life is good!
bstanze 
I don’t think it’s weird at all! Processing manuscript collections is probably my favorite part of my job, actually. I was a WSU public history student a few years back, did my internship at WSU as well. They gave me the Miami Valley School collection to process. Sounds like a good summer – a break from school is always welcome 🙂