The Preserving History Digital Collection is comprised of student work resulting from the Preserving History (HIS 4944) course at UF includes focused work in historical archives.

Historians rely heavily on documents, maps, photographs, and audio-visual recordings to conduct research. The role of an archivist is to select and preserve these materials so that they are accessible. Archivists, usually people trained in history or literature, but increasingly now in politics or science, act as record-keepers of the present and past. The course is an internship in the world of archives. It introduces students to the purpose and uses of archives and gives practical background in archives as a profession. Students are responsible for a group project and one or more individual projects during the semester, arranging and describing the contents of a collection.

This collection documents and provides access to the student work as contributions to archives and scholarly communication.

Selected Materials Included:

• Course syllabus
  • Application for new interns
  • Example Wikipedia assignment
• Types of Student Projects
  • Finding Aids
  • Transcriptions
  • Teaching Guides
  • Metadata: Abstracts, annotations, and other types of rich description that make digitized materials usable and findable for scholars (many items are already digitized and need this)
  • Wikipedia entries, and other promotional and contextual writing
  • Digitization
  • Exhibits
• Final Student Projects
  • Allison Ernest and Joshua D. Holtzman created the finding aid and digitized sketches for the World War II Sketches in the Arthur L. Funk Papers Digital Collection
  • Caitlin Logroño created item information and transcribed the log book, A Steamboat Trip on the Ocklawaha (1874)
  • Caitlin Nelson scanned and transcribed materials from a memoir on Schooling in a Lumber Mill Town (1937)
  • Leigh V. Stephens created item information and transcribed the Joel W. Jones Memoir: A New Yorker in the Seminole War
  • Michelle Vega transcribed and co-wrote the introductory text with James Cusick for the Diary of Louis P. Henop aboard the U.S.S. San Jacinto
  • Kelly R. Barber created the finding aid and item information and scanned materials from World War I Veteran Arthur Hogan
  • Jacob Crescent created the item information and scanned a 1866 Naval Sketchbook
  • Raquell Russell created the item information, digitized, and created a finding aid for the Peninsular Telephone Company Records
  • Melissa Klatzkow created the item information and scanned photos of a Ponce de Leon Pageant
  • Kapri Crowley created the item information and scanned images for the Tamiami Trail Blazers (1923)
• Potential upcoming student projects may relate to these archival collections:
  • Zora Neale Hurston
  • Stetson Kennedy
  • Pioneer Days in Florida (many collections)
• News announcements regarding student projects (sent following standard promotional plan)
• Related
  • The "Lone Arranger" on Nicole Milano's work with UF Special & Area Studies Collections and current career as an archivist