August 4
Today was the big day with our big presentation/open house of all the "treasures" we interns have found this summer! It was a lot less stressful than I thought it would be since no one particularly important showed up. No Librarian, no Congresspeople, very little press. In fact, the only press people I'm aware of were this very cute young intern reporter from The Washington Post and one very old, not-taking-any-notes man from the Associated Press. Besides these two "outsiders," the rest of the people who came by were Library personnel. There was quite a turnout, though, with hundreds of people milling around and checking out the items over the course of two hours.
I've included some pictures to give everyone a feel of what it was like. Basically, it was like an open house with each division's interns revealing their finds. Thom, my fellow Recorded Sound intern, said he now knows what it feels like to work as a vendor at a conference. Luckily for me, Thom was more than willing to stay behind the table and answer questions and play DJ. He was very thrilled to play DJ, actually. We let people listen to our CDs if they want.
Overall, it was a fine time, although I was very annoyed to be grouped at the same table with the Motion Picture interns of MBRS. I realize we are all under the same division, but those two units represent 9 of the 21 total interns so why do we have to share a table? The two interns from the Copyright Office had a whole table to themselves, as did the three interns from Manuscripts and the three from Prints & Photographs. If any thought was put into the logistics of sticking 9 people behind one table... well, right, there was no thought put into it.
The cute Washington Post reporter wrote a story that made the front page of the Style section of the Post. It's here. (If you need an account to access the story, you can find one at BugMeNot.) He mentioned some of the more interesting finds - which includes one of our political, post-9/11 CDs, which I got him to listen to when he was at my table. Yes, I spent the whole time trying to get the cute reporter to talk to me. There were some really neat, apparently previously undiscovered manuscripts - one from Tom Wolfe when he was in college, one from Noel Coward... There were some photographs that were neat, including one of Henry Ford in an automobile race in Grosse Pointe, MI, in 1901, and some of the home video footage provided by the motion picture division was interesting, notably the footage of Michael Jordan playing basketball at age 13 and some clips of Marilyn Monroe. These last couple are mentioned in the article.
I'm glad it's all over because I was a little stressed about the whole event. The most popular questions were along the lines of "What's so special about this?" and the truth is, I don't know... we just needed to find stuff... But, I BS'd my way through it. Overall, it felt like a final project for a class... except now we still have to go back to class for a week.
This is a close-up of our Recorded Sound treasures. That's Thom in the back.
This is the whole MBRS table, with Recorded Sound on the right of the picture and Motion Picture on the left. That's Thom again behind the table and Nancy, one of my supervisors, on the far right.
This is an even better view of the space we were given... as you can see now that we were placed between the Motion Picture people (with an eye-catching TV) and the prints & photographs people (with an eye-catching TV). Here, we have an interested party listening to something with the headphones. Oh and that's the cute Washington Post reporter interviewing the Motion Picture people.
And, finally, here's the reporter (his name is Dan... he's from Buffalo) talking to Thom. Yes, I am a bit of a stalker. I did eventually butt my way into the conversation, too, and hey, he actually mentioned the item I showed him in the article so what do you know? Oh, by the way, all these pictures were taken at the very end of the day so that's why it doesn't look that crowded there. It wasn't anymore, but the event was officially over by this time.
I've included some pictures to give everyone a feel of what it was like. Basically, it was like an open house with each division's interns revealing their finds. Thom, my fellow Recorded Sound intern, said he now knows what it feels like to work as a vendor at a conference. Luckily for me, Thom was more than willing to stay behind the table and answer questions and play DJ. He was very thrilled to play DJ, actually. We let people listen to our CDs if they want.
Overall, it was a fine time, although I was very annoyed to be grouped at the same table with the Motion Picture interns of MBRS. I realize we are all under the same division, but those two units represent 9 of the 21 total interns so why do we have to share a table? The two interns from the Copyright Office had a whole table to themselves, as did the three interns from Manuscripts and the three from Prints & Photographs. If any thought was put into the logistics of sticking 9 people behind one table... well, right, there was no thought put into it.
The cute Washington Post reporter wrote a story that made the front page of the Style section of the Post. It's here. (If you need an account to access the story, you can find one at BugMeNot.) He mentioned some of the more interesting finds - which includes one of our political, post-9/11 CDs, which I got him to listen to when he was at my table. Yes, I spent the whole time trying to get the cute reporter to talk to me. There were some really neat, apparently previously undiscovered manuscripts - one from Tom Wolfe when he was in college, one from Noel Coward... There were some photographs that were neat, including one of Henry Ford in an automobile race in Grosse Pointe, MI, in 1901, and some of the home video footage provided by the motion picture division was interesting, notably the footage of Michael Jordan playing basketball at age 13 and some clips of Marilyn Monroe. These last couple are mentioned in the article.
I'm glad it's all over because I was a little stressed about the whole event. The most popular questions were along the lines of "What's so special about this?" and the truth is, I don't know... we just needed to find stuff... But, I BS'd my way through it. Overall, it felt like a final project for a class... except now we still have to go back to class for a week.
This is a close-up of our Recorded Sound treasures. That's Thom in the back.
This is the whole MBRS table, with Recorded Sound on the right of the picture and Motion Picture on the left. That's Thom again behind the table and Nancy, one of my supervisors, on the far right.
This is an even better view of the space we were given... as you can see now that we were placed between the Motion Picture people (with an eye-catching TV) and the prints & photographs people (with an eye-catching TV). Here, we have an interested party listening to something with the headphones. Oh and that's the cute Washington Post reporter interviewing the Motion Picture people.
And, finally, here's the reporter (his name is Dan... he's from Buffalo) talking to Thom. Yes, I am a bit of a stalker. I did eventually butt my way into the conversation, too, and hey, he actually mentioned the item I showed him in the article so what do you know? Oh, by the way, all these pictures were taken at the very end of the day so that's why it doesn't look that crowded there. It wasn't anymore, but the event was officially over by this time.
posted by Cheri W. | 9:37 PM
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