For my first post, I guess I'll just talk about where I'm doing my senior project, what I've been doing here for the first couple of days, and some pros and cons of this project that I've noticed so far.
For my senior project I'm working at the Cleveland Memory Project (if anyone's curious, here's the website: http://www.clevelandmemory.org/), which is at the Cleveland State University's Michael Schwartz Library. The Cleveland Memory Project is an effort to preserve Cleveland's history through things like photographs, newspaper clippings, audio recordings, etc. and to digitize all these resources so that they are available online to the public.
So in 1936 and 1937 Cleveland hosted this huge festival called the Great Lakes Exposition (which legitimately sounds like it was awsome--something like a super jumbo cross between a county fair, a diving show, Disney's Epcot, a technology exhibit, and pretty much any other awsome thing you could think of; it would be so much fun if we could have one of those again!). This happened during the Great Depression, so the whole point behind hosting the Great Lakes Expo was to brighten people's lives, improve Cleveland's reputation (Cleveland had such high unemployment & so many other problems at the time that it had a pretty bad rep around the country!), and to bring some money to the city--all three of which the Expo succeeded at wonderfully.
The reason I'm telling you this is that the Cleveland Memory Project obtained some photos of the Great Lakes Expo, and what I've been working on for the past few days is digitizing these photos. ("Digitizing" is the more glamorous word for "scanning into a computer"). I'm nearly done with the scanning by now, and then I will get to identify what is going on in each photo & categorize the photos by subject, so it's not all "busy work"!
So the stuff I'm doing right now obviously isn't super enthralling, but it's alright, especially since I've learned about the Great Lakes Expo and have gotten an appreciation for all that goes on "behind the scenes" at libraries. The people are also all very nice. Plus, (due to crazy transportation shenanigans), I end up walking all over downtown & riding the rapid a lot, which I'm having a lot of fun doing. So, overall, though there isn't a ton of glamour to it, my senior project is going nicely.
Hope everyone is having fun! :)
Maya
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Hey Maya! So it sounds like you have a great attitude and are staying positive, which is great. Even though your project may not be glamorous, it sounds like you are really helping out the library and your work will last for a long time. Plus it's really cool to get to see what life was at a time that was so long ago, yet shares so many parallels to today. Also, if you think Cleveland should have another Great Lakes Expo, I encourage you to work on following through with that! Maybe talk to Leadership Cleveland (you could probably get the number of that guy who spoke to us at the beginning of the year) and see if they'd be interested. It sounds like a great idea and I couldn't think of a better person to help get it started!
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