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Special Collections & Archives was pleased to host another Library Science graduate student from UNC Greensboro this spring break as part of their Alternative Spring Break program. This year, our hard-working student was Grace Schermerhorn. Grace is pursuing her Master of Library and Information Science degree online while also working in the public library systems in both Buncombe and McDowell counties. She hopes to one day work in a museum or Special Collections focusing on North Carolina or Appalachia. We were thrilled to be her first choice for an internship site to help her work towards that goal!

Across the week she was a great help, sorting and identifying University archives materials and creating finding aids for record group collections. We also had to ship two pallets of materials to an external vendor for digitization, and she gamely helped weigh, stack, restack, and stuff 33 cartons of audio reels to be sent away.

In her own words:

Despite having a degree in Literature and being a long-time lover of libraries, it had never entered my mind to pursue a career in the library field until I came across an article about women pack horse librarians during the Great Depression while I was completing graduate coursework in Appalachian Studies at Appalachian State. After that epiphany, I jumped into my MLIS at UNCG and got two part-time jobs in public libraries, as well as an internship with the IMLS.

I’m still in my first year at UNCG but I found myself being drawn towards archives and special collections. I’m currently taking an archiving class but I knew that I needed real world experience to really understand whether Archives and Special Collections would be a good fit for me long-term. Being able to put the theories and concepts I learned in class into practice processing collections, updating and creating finding aids, and condensing files was priceless. I not only enjoyed working with Archivists’ Toolkit and organizing and sorting files but even getting to help prep and load pallets of reel-to-reel records to be digitized was a fun learning experience. Even with theoretical knowledge, I think Archives can be intimidating for those still learning but I felt so comfortable asking questions and I learned so much.

I now feel confident that a career in Archives would be a great fit for me. If I had any advice to give to other graduate students considering an Alternative Spring Break experience I would definitely tell them that as difficult as it may seem to forfeit your spring break in order to work, it is a priceless experience. I’d also tell them that they can’t imagine how satisfying it is to find homes for documents that are out of place!

If you want to read more about those pack horse librarians like I did, the Smithsonian Magazine (among many others) has written about them. Thank you for spending your time away from class and work (and your puppers!) with us, Grace, it was a pleasure spending our spring break with you!