June 27, 2023, 8:15am-12:00pm, 12:20pm-3:05pm
My name is Apolonia Behm. I am an intern at the Cushing Memorial Library and Archive, and my supervisors names are Jeremy Brett and John Bondurant.
Today is the last day of my internship at Cushing Memorial Library and Archive! By the end of the day, I had completed my 120 hours that I need for my practicum experience. If I was not moving to a new city tomorrow, I would stay and continue my internship for the rest of the summer! I have truly loved my time here and I will miss it as well as all of the wonderful people I have had the opportunity to work with. This morning I edited and finalized the scope and content for the Cherokee Freedmen Collection. I wanted to be sure that everything was as good as I could make it. If you look at the images below, I provided screenshots of the scope and content. Hopefully, it provides Texas A&M's users with a better understanding of the Cherokee Freedmen Collection.
I completed the scope and content and uploaded it to Texas A&M's Access to Memory finding aid system. I then looked through the finding aid to see what else needed to be completed. Texas A&M University and Cushing Library does not have any other material or collections about the Cherokee Freedom. I took some time to look online at other institutions that may have collections, documentation, or articles about the Cherokee Freedmen to help with the research. Other institutions include the Five Civilized Tribes Museum, the Center for Study of Indian Territory, the United States Bureau of Indian Affairs, the Oklahoma Historical Society, and so many others. After I determined that I had completed everything on the finding aid, I went and told Jeremy that I was done. Jeremy expressed that he was impressed with the work that I have completed for Cushing Library and encouraged me to apply to work at Cushing Library after I have completed my library science degree, and to include both himself and my other supervisor John as references for future jobs.
Before I left for the day, Jeremy asked if I wanted to see anything housed in the Cushing Library stacks. I knew that there was a lot of material housed at Cushing Library, but I did not know it was such a treasure trove! I had correctly assumed that the stacks contained a lot of Texas A&M memorabilia, and as an Aggie, it was absolutely amazing, but there was so much more. William Shakespeare's Second Folio published in 1632 was one of the first items Jeremy showed me, and I have never been more in awe of an item before in my life. It was such a beautiful piece of history and literature that I have ever seen. From the binding, to the spine, to each individual page, it was truly a work of art. Jeremy even pointed out a small typo on one of the pages that occurred because of the fact that each letter had to be laid out individually and backwards to be printed on the page. Jeremy is the science fiction curator and he had mentioned before that his first edition of Gulliver's Travels cost around $40,000, so I asked him how much Shakespeare's Second Folio is worth and he stated that it would cost anywhere from $200,000 to $300,000! He also showed me a book called the Agrippa that was published in 1533 written in Latin. It is a book on magic and the occult and was intended to just be informational and a matter of fact, but ended up being banned by the Catholic Church. This specific copy is one of a kind because on the very last page, has the name Beezzlebub signed in blood.
My time at Cushing Library has truly been a one of a kind experience and I have learned many skills that I can take with me going forward in my career.
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