This week Matt and I worked on our respective projects off campus, so I spent this week getting through some of the metadata descriptions for the 1947 scrapbook! I got through the first 4-5 pages. Some of the backs of the earlier pages in the book are blank, so I need to ask Matt or Geoff how I should log and describe those. I know that’ll be the case with the 1952 book as well since about 20 or so of the pages at the end of that book are completely blank. I always want to make sure I’m detailed enough so I’m not sure if just saying the page is blank will cut it, lol! But you never know with historical work since some things are more straightforward than I think they are.
Page 3 of the book has some newspaper cutouts about a football game, and I definitely had to do some googling about football terminology so it would make a bit more sense. I know nothing about sports and the last time I watched football was during the Superbowl only so I could see Taylor Swift on the TV, so I wanted to know the significance of what the newspaper was talking about other than the fact that The Orlando High School Tigers won the game! From what I gathered looking at the page, the win was secured by a player named Jimmy Hickman, who was a halfback player for the team. According to Collins Dictionary, a Halfback is “an attacking player who stands behind the front line and runs with the ball.” I never expected to have to research football for this project but I actually had lots of fun looking into it especially since Pat and her friends probably had so much fun watching these games.
Another project I took on this week was making a presentation about the Howard Project for the Modeling and Simulation Institute! One of their summer camps this year is “Into the Barbieverse” themed, which is perfect for me since I LOVE barbie! I met one of the organizers of the camp, Abbie Easter, in my “laser scanning America’s history” course with Dr. Robkin this past fall semester and more recently ran into her at the record store, where she told me all about the summer programs at the MSI. She asked if I wanted to volunteer for a few days and even make a presentation for the kids about what we’re doing with the History department, so I started a draft and sent that over to her. I’m a perfectionist when it comes to PowerPoint, so all of the slides are very barbie themed. I’m excited to talk about the Howard Project to the kids!!
-Kelsey R.