Category Archives: Internship

New Archives Intern: Marissa Nadeau

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Today’s post is an introduction from Marissa Nadeau, our newest intern here in the Archives. She will be working on the upcoming exhibit, Open Wide: 500 Years of Dentistry in Art.

Marissa Nadeau is from the town of Brookfield, Connecticut, and has lived along the East Coast her entire life. Transferring from a university down in South Carolina to one in Connecticut, Marissa ended up receiving her Bachelor of Arts from New York University, majoring in Art History with a double minor in Italian and Creative Writing (2016). During her time in NYC, Marissa interned in galleries and non-profits throughout the Chelsea neighborhood, most notably C24 Gallery and The Kitchen; she helped expand their social media platforms and fell in love with curatorial work by getting the chance to work closely with the team’s curator and contemporary artists. Marissa had the opportunity to study in Florence, Italy, for a semester (2015), which allowed her to adopt a global perspective of museums and the art market.

Marissa uprooted her East Coast ties and moved to San Francisco to follow her passion of pursuing curatorial work, and is currently a Masters candidate in the University of San Francisco’s Museum Studies program. She co-curated Modern Myth: South Asian Modern and Contemporary Works on Paper at the school’s Thacher Gallery in 2017, and has been interning with the Bay Area’s FOR-SITE Foundation since January 2018.

Marissa is excited for her newest role as a Curatorial Intern at the UCSF Archives & Special Collections and she looks forward to gaining a better understanding of archival best practices, while putting her theoretical knowledge to the test. She will be assisting with research, design, and installation of the upcoming exhibit, Open Wide: 500 Years of Dentistry in Art, opening this summer in the Library.

New Archives Intern: Lauren Wolters

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Lauren Wolters

Lauren Wolters is a rising junior undergraduate student at Skidmore College. She is double majoring in History and Psychology and is interested in learning the basics of archival theory and practice. Being a history major, Lauren is fascinated by old artifacts and is excited to have the unique opportunity to work with collections that are not always available to the public eye. Currently, she has been assisting by taking inventory of a collection of photographs and organizing a digital list of metadata. Eventually, she will be transitioning to aid on a project relating to the Langley Porter Psychiatric Institute Records. This project is perfectly tailored towards both of her interests as it combines her two majors.

Lauren was born and raised in San Francisco, CA. She plays volleyball at Skidmore College and enjoys photography as a hobby. Lauren is enjoying working in the library with the archivists and looks forward to learning even more about the archives.

New Faces in Archives: Fall 2017

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Starting this fall we will be hosting two new volunteers: Edith Martinez and Seth Cotterell.

Edith Martinez

Edith will be working with Kelsi Evans and assisting with processing collections in the NHPRC grant, Evolution of San Francisco’s Response to a Public Health Crisis: Providing Access to New AIDS History Collections, an expansion of the AIDS History Project.

She is a graduate student at Wayne State University concentrating in Archival Administration. Edith graduated from San Jose State University with a BA in History. While at SJSU, she volunteered at History San Jose where she got interested in archives. Previously she interned with the Santa Clara County Archives and helped with the Santa Clara County Fair photo project. Currently she works at the Redwood City Public Library as a Library Assistant and enjoys helping patrons. Edith was born and raised in Santa Clara, in her spare time she enjoys gardening, baking, and trying new cuisines.

Seth Cotterell

Seth completed a Masters Degree in Library and Information Science from San Jose State University in 2011, but has been working in another career field ever since. He’s excited to get back into a field that aligns with his passions and is eager to refresh and enhance his on-the-job understanding of archival standards and best practices, learn new archives management systems, and utilize other archives technologies. He will assist the archives staff with collection processing, cataloging, digitization, outreach, and other projects.

Originally from Boise, Idaho, where he earned undergraduate degrees in English Literature and Business Management, Seth moved to San Francisco in 2001. Hobbies include reading, stop motion animation, and nature walks. He lives with his husband and one fur baby.

Intern Report: Archive Your Pride Event Planning

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This is a guest post by Anida Hodzic, UCSF Archives Intern.

Being an intern is hard work, especially at the UCSF Archives and Special Collections. During my summer internship, I was assigned the difficult task of helping my supervisor (Kelsi Evans) prepare for the Archive Your Pride Button Making Pop Up at the UCSF Makers Lab. To begin, we searched for images that would work on a button. I know what you’re thinking, that seems easy enough…The difficulty came in the amount of amazing images, posters, pamphlets, and other ephemera we came across.

My collage of some of the images from the collections.

UCSF digital collections on Calisphere, including the AIDS History Project Ephemera Collection and the Bobby Campbell Diary, were full of relatable and interesting content. We also went down to the vault and sifted through some un-digitized material. After we selected the images, we tried to make a few sample buttons. One of my fellow interns and I spent about an hour in the Makers Lab trying to make buttons without reading the directions. Thus we made a simple task complicated and confusing. Once we finally figured out that following directions was a good thing, the pride buttons came pouring out of the button maker.

The event the next day was worth all of our hard work. The turn out was awesome and people loved our images, glitter, and stickers. It was great fun to see everyone support Pride, the Archives, the Makers Lab, and each other’s creativity. The buttons were cool, the atmosphere warm, and my summer internship was fun and successful.

New UCSF Center for AIDS Prevention Studies (CAPS) Digital Collection

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This is a post by Kelsi Evans, Project Archivist, and Lynda Letona, Archives Intern.

We’ve started work on our NHPRC grant project, “Evolution of San Francisco’s Response to a Public Health Crisis: Providing Access to New AIDS History Collections.” Throughout the project, we’ll be posting regular updates on Brought to Light.

We’d like to highlight the new digital collection of the UCSF Center for AIDS Prevention Studies (CAPS). CAPS was established in 1986 to educate scientists and stimulate new research projects that impact the practice, theory, and policy of HIV/AIDS prevention and keep pace with the changing epidemic. The scope of CAPS has evolved over the decades to include global projects, the development of prevention interventions, and collaborative work among researchers in fields including biomedicine, psychology, epidemiology, behavioral science, policy, clinical medicine, and other disciplines. The digital collection includes selected conference and research project materials, correspondence, publications, and ephemera.

Correspondence in the digital collection includes a 1994 letter from the American Psychiatric Association Commission on AIDS and the American Psychological Association Committee on Psychology and AIDS to Dr. David Kessler, Commissioner of the FDA. The letter expresses concerns about home sample collection (HSC) testing kits for HIV, including the range of reactions that people testing HIV positive or negative might experience. Such reactions, the letter argues, could result in severe states of anxiety and depression, increased suicidal thoughts and behavior, and increased high risk behavior for HIV transmission. The authors write, “We believe that face-to-face HIV counseling remains the procedure of choice and that HSC kit testing should be utilized only when the former is unavailable or unacceptable to the consumer,” since in-person counseling allows for more adequate assessment and management of psychological responses to testing.

The digital collection also includes issues of the Women Organized to Respond to Life-threatening Diseases (WORLD) newsletter. This publication includes powerful stories, including “Fighting Two Diseases” from issue number 12. Here, a woman writes about her experience of battling drug addiction in her youth and later HIV. She shares her great appreciation of going to a Kaiser educator who cared about her and helped her through difficult times. She writes that in spite of all the fear and devastation the diagnosis brought her, she has managed to experience many wonderful things and learned to remain focused on the good in life.

You can view the CAPS digital collection on Calisphere at calisphere.org/collections/26898/. To research the CAPS records in person, please make an appointment with us.

New Intern: Lynda Letona

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UCSF Archives is pleased to welcome our new intern, Lynda Letona. Lynda will assist with processing collections in the NHPRC grant, Evolution of San Francisco’s Response to a Public Health Crisis: Providing Access to New AIDS History Collections, an expansion of the AIDS History Project.

Lynda was born in Guatemala, raised in LA, and schooled in the Midwest. She received her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Notre Dame, MA in English from the University of South Dakota, and BA in English with a minor in Spanish from Mount Marty College. Lynda has worked in education as a college and university English instructor, and as editor, library aide, and administrative assistant for the nonprofit sector. She has collaborated with librarians across the nation to conduct research workshops for students to inform their writing and her own; by doing so, she gained an appreciation for the research method, leading her to pursue her Master’s in Library Information Science at the University of North Texas, North California Cohort. Lynda is enthusiastic about participating in the AIDS History Project as an archives intern at UCSF.

Intern Report: Creating an Exhibit

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This is a guest post by Caitlin Toomey, UCSF Archives Intern

Caitlin ToomeyHello, readers! My name is Caitlin Toomey and I was fortunate to be an intern at the UCSF Archives and Special Collections during spring semester. I am currently in the process of receiving my master’s degree in museum studies at USF. Since high school, I have either worked or interned at multiple museums and galleries throughout California, but my time at UCSF stood out as a unique and valuable experience.

While an intern, I was responsible for many different tasks and worked on a number of exciting exhibits. What stood out to me about this internship was the amount of skills I was able to gain and perform throughout the process. For the majority of my internship, I focused on the current exhibit on display in the Library, “DO THE BEST FOR OUR SOLDIERS:” University of California Medical Service in World War I. It was during this time that I completed many different duties.

I began by researching specific subjects, such as the influenza outbreak in 1918 and how troops were entertained on the front, which would be used in the exhibition as stand alone displays. I also wrote the labels with other curators for the exhibit. This was a valuable experience because I mostly have a background in education and collections, so working on more curatorial skills was very helpful. Additionally, collaboratively writing labels can be a challenging but educational experience, and as a result helped me with my writing skills.

WWI exhibit case, “Finding Time to Unwind,” on display in the UCSF Library.

Along with assisting in curation, I was also able to work on exhibit design and collections management for “DO THE BEST FOR OUR SOLDIERS”. I most enjoyed this part of the process because I was able to pick out artifacts for a number of the displays. Looking through the UCSF Archives and Special Collections storage was absolutely fascinating. The collection has so much to explore and discover on the shelves and stacks that I was never at a loss when looking for objects to display. I was also lucky enough to select and help place objects for a number of other special exhibits during my tenure, such as the UCSF Alumni Weekend artifact display of unique health science artifacts and the UCSF Cornerstone demolition series.

WWI-era U.S. Army Medical Department medicine kit used in the exhibit. From the UCSF Archives Artifact Collection, item 218.

Overall, I can look back on my time at the UCSF Archives and Special Collections as a very positive and educational experience. Not many internships give the opportunity to play a large role in exhibitions, as well as learn many different skills that will become valuable for a successful career. I know that I will take with me the many lessons I learned during these past few months. This was a wholly gratifying internship and I will cherish it throughout my career.

New Archives Intern: Maopeli Ali

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We’re happy to welcome new intern Maopeli Ali to Archives & Special Collections. Born and raised in San Francisco, Maopeli is currently a sophomore at Kenyon College in Ohio where he is pursuing a major in biology with a minor in Latin. At Kenyon, he also participates in club rugby and is a member of the Delta Tau Delta fraternity. Maopeli is a seasoned intern; he has previously worked at various institutions in the Bay Area, including an architecture firm, the Geology Department of the California Academy of Science, and the Children’s Hospital Oakland Research Institute (CHORI). Maopeli is very ambitious, and is proud to be a First Generation to College student. He plans to attend graduate school after completing his undergraduate studies to pursue a Criminal Justice Master Degree in Forensic Science. His career goal is to become a forensics investigator for the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

Portrait of Maopeli Ali with San Francisco in the background.

New Archives intern Maopeli Ali

Maopeli comes to us as part of the Children’s Hospital Oakland Research Institute Summer Research Program. “This program is designed to provide an opportunity for High School and Undergraduate students to immerse themselves in the world of basic and/or clinical research for three months during the summer. The program pairs students with one or two CHORI principal investigators who serve as mentors, guiding the students through the design and testing of their own hypotheses and methodology development. At the end of the summer, students present their research to their peers just as any professional researcher would do.” As a CHORI intern, Maopeli is mentored by Dr. Aimee Medeiros from the UCSF Department of Anthropology, History, and Social Medicine and Polina Ilieva, Head of Archives & Special Collections.

Maopeli will be working on digitizing medical records using our newly-implemented scanning lab purchased with funds from UCSF’s RAP Shared Instrument program. He will then have the opportunity to work with some of this data to formulate a research question which can be addressed by the records.

The Archives are a new experience for Maopeli, whose previous work has mostly focused on biology. He is excited to work in this context, and explore ways in which this study can both help the archives and increase awareness within the health sciences fields about the wealth of historical medical data which is available in the archives and records of large health science universities like UCSF.

New Faces in Archives: Caitlin Toomey

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Caitlin Toomey

Caitlin Toomey

This spring semester, the UCSF Archives & Special Collections is hosting an intern from the University of San Francisco (USF) Museum Studies Masters Program. Born and raised in California, Caitlin Toomey has spent her life working towards her goal of becoming a museum professional.  While in high school, she began her museum career by volunteering at a local art gallery after school and on the weekends. Caitlin’s biggest adventure started when she left home to pursue a Bachelor’s degree in history and anthropology from UCLA. It was at UCLA that Caitlin truly began to explore her passions for history, art, and museum education by interning at both the Hammer Museum and the Fowler Museum in Los Angeles. Caitlin finished up her degree in Southern California and returned back home to Sacramento. Instead of jumping right into graduate school, Caitlin took some time to explore her interests in museum education by becoming a museum assistant at the Wells Fargo History Museum and an intern at the Crocker Art Museum. At these institutions, Caitlin not only worked with the public by giving tours and interacting with visitors, but she also was integral in policy and program development.

Her time at the Wells Fargo Museum and the Crocker gave Caitlin a clear understanding of what she is passionate about and fueled her desire to pursue a graduate degree in museum studies; therefore, Caitlin entered the Masters Degree program at the University of San Francisco for the 2016 school year.  During her first semester, Caitlin co-curated the Thatcher Gallery exhibition “The Depravities of War: Sandow Birk and the Art of Social Critique” as part of the Fall Semester Curatorial Practicum lead by Associate Professor Catherine Lusheck.  Her newest role of intern at the UCSF Archives & Special Collections is an exciting next step and Caitlin is looking forward to the challenge and prospect of gaining new skills and experiences within the museum field.

Caitlin will be working in the archives through May 2017 and will be assisting with research, design, and installation of the upcoming exhibit, “University of California Medical Service in World War I.” She will also help with collection processing, cataloging, digitization, and exhibit curation.

Exploring the Bio Files

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This is a guest post by Joshua Dela Cruz, UCSF Archives Intern.

For the past few months, I have been working as an amateur archivist. My duties in the UCSF Archives and Special Collections have ranged from everything from processing projects to moving heavy boxes filled with books and manuscript collections.

An example of one of my projects is to help inventory the bio files. For this project, I look through a large collection of biographical files of people who have been affiliated with UCSF. These people range from professors, students, physicians and researchers to donors and people who helped build the physical school itself. As I search through what appears to be a never ending collection, I record each person’s name, birth and death dates, profession, notable facts, and their affiliation to the school.

Bio file drawer in the UCSF Archives and Special Collections.

One of the bio file drawers in the UCSF Archives and Special Collections.

The purpose of this project is for the UCSF archivists to have a digital record of the enormous collection of profiles. Additionally, in the long run, they will be able to display the information on an online database where the general public can access it. The project helps the archivists easily locate biographical information and the unique archival material inside the folders.

Bio file of Ichitaro Katsuki, UC School of Medicine graduate, 1896.

Bio file of Ichitaro Katsuki, 1896 UC School of Medicine graduate.

This project has been especially interesting to me because I’m considering a career in the medical field. Half of the bio files project includes reading about the lives of the people, many of them physicians, and their achievements. As a result, I found myself learning about the history of medicine, UCSF, and the school’s amazing physicians and students. Oftentimes, I would read entire biographies or even search more information about the people and work that fascinated me.

Bio file of Benjamin Gross.

Bio file of Benjamin Gross.

Although the work can be repetitive and meticulous, I have enjoyed my time as an intern. After learning about and working behind the scenes of an archive, I have gained a great appreciation for the profession and the people. It has been a very enlightening experience for me, especially in regards to my possible career paths in the future, and I am thankful for the archivists who welcomed and guided me these past few months.