Meet Our Summer Interns

During the summer of 2024, the Records Management Division hosted two student interns who worked on various aspects of collections management, digitization, and access projects. With great excitement, we welcomed Eliza Compton and Meghan Zimmerman as our City Summer Youth Employees for an eight-week immersive experience to explore career options, develop skills, and gain hands on experience in information management. Both interns worked on projects that offered skill development in their areas of interest.

Our summer interns at work. Eliza Compton (left) is shown scanning images from the BAR Photographs Collection while Meghan Zimmerman (right) is editing a collection's finding aid.

Eliza Compton, a 2024 graduate of Academic Magnet High School, put her interests in architecture and historic preservation to immediate use digitizing visual images from archival Board of Architectural Review (BAR) application files. Eliza continued the work started by Ashlyn Pause (our spring College of Charleston intern) digitizing images for addition to the Lowcountry Digital Library (LCDL). The collection contains photographs, sketches, and notes created or utilized by City BAR staff or submitted by applicants as part of the decision process.

Eliza took to the project instinctively and completed the scanning, assignment of metadata, and review of 60 folders of address files. The project required great attention to detail, an understanding of architectural terms, and the ability to make independent decisions. LCDL staff are in the process of uploading the files to the site. In the coming weeks, check out Eliza’s contribution to local historic preservation scholarship on the Board of Architectural Review Photographs Collection on the LCDL. We'll post again when the files she worked on start going live!

Scenes from a digitization project: 1) A box showing the files Eliza has scanned (green sticky notes to track). 2) A folder of Broad Street images awaiting scanning. All Eliza knows at this point is that the images are from Broad Street, but she has no other details). 3) A view of the different types of images and records in a folder. 4) A view of 0 Broad Street and a view of a detail of 0 Broad Street. At this point in the process, Eliza is now reviewing each photo and determining how to best describe what she sees on each image or record. 5) A screenshot of an LCDL metadata spreadsheet. Eliza filled out an extensive spreadsheet for every folder of images she scanned. Now we know so much about what is in each folder! 6) A screenshot of an image uploaded to LCDL with attached metadata. The images are now searchable in a way that was not possible when they were only grouped in a folder by street name.

Eliza’s work in the digital archives space was ultimately a public facing project. She took records that were internally processed and organized and made them directly available to the public. While Records Management Division staff knew what the boxes contained, the records were all but unknown to the public with the exception of the finding aid that indexes the collection at a high level. Eliza’s work provides access to thousands of images of Charleston properties, many depicting structures before they were restored or that no longer stand. Providing access to archival municipal records is a primary mission of the Records Management Division, and Eliza’s work stands as a significant contribution to Charleston’s historic preservation scholarship.

Blog readers might recognize Meghan Zimmerman as a volunteer from the 2023-2024 academic year, and we were fortunate to have her continue with the Records Management Division as our second summer youth employee. Meghan is a rising senior at Wando High School with an interest in international relations and law. Meghan’s summer project involved archival processing projects. She took records that were slightly disorganized and only internally accessible and brought intellectual order to them through their physical arrangement and preparation of finding aids. The records are housed in boxes at the Records Center, but finding aids are accessible to staff and the public on the Records Management Division’s web page. Researchers can consult finding aids online and make an appointment to view a collection in person.

Archival processing is an essential behind-the-scenes part of making primary source materials accessible to researchers and requires the ability to quickly synthesize and categorize boxes of records. It is the physical task of placing materials of historical importance into containers for long term preservation and the intellectual work of producing an inventory of those materials that can be accessed by researchers. Processing helps information professionals gain organizational control over a collection of records transferred from the originating office and makes it easier for patrons to know what kinds of materials are available to them. While this might sound straightforward, those processing collections must be comfortable making judgment calls. Meghan confidently made decisions regarding housing of materials, description, how new materials fit in with existing materials, and preservation. Meghan worked on two significant collections: the City Hall Art Collection Administrative Records and the Office of Downtown Revitalization’s records on the development of Charleston Place. Meghan will share all the details in her upcoming blog post about her summer experience in an upcoming post!

One of the collections Meghan worked on contained the administrative records of the City Hall Art Collection. These records included research files on the art pieces displayed throughout City Hall, registrar and loan records, correspondence, and other municipal documentation. Meghan rehoused the records in acid free folders, determined an intellectual order that would make the collection accessible to staff, and prepared finding aids. The image on the left is from the Elizabeth O'Neill Verner Etchings Research and Correspondence file. On the right, Meghan is pictured reviewing the order of records in a box and doublechecking this against the inventory list she has prepared.

We wish Eliza and Meghan great success. Eliza is starting her first year of the five-year Bachelor of Architecture Program in the School of Architecture at the University of Tennessee. We are excited to see where the next five years take her and proud to have played a small role in furthering her education and career goals. We wish Meghan the best of luck with the college application process and her senior year of high school, and we look forward to welcoming her back as a volunteer this fall! We cannot thank them enough for their hard work and respect for the archival process. Both young adults are incredibly intelligent, thoughtful, and conscientious. During their time with the Records Management Division, both Eliza and Meghan became part of our team, and the work they produced is meaningful and directly benefits City staff and the public.