By Regan Jackson, IARA Intern, August 2025
This is my first internship, and it has acted as a great introduction to the many aspects that make up archival work. I have always been interested in social history, which is a field that focuses on ordinary people. Working with personal letters and documents has given me hands-on experience in this field and I have loved it. I quickly learned that archival work is a bit more complicated than you might expect, but after a while the importance of this career was easy to understand.
After learning the basics of processing, I got to work on my main project. I was given a few boxes of teacher pension letters from the 1920s and 1930s. I was nervous to get started processing. Although I realized right after starting, that in the mix of these routine correspondences was an occasional fun and dramatic read. I continue to prove my theory that reading about history is fun because people from the past were just as sassy and petty as they are today.
When I was not processing, I focused on tasks that helped prepare the archives for their move to a new building in 2026. I mainly helped with barcoding, which involved adding labels to every box and volume so that they would be ready for the move. I also spent time in the conservation lab, where I learned to create spacers for boxes and book cards that will be also used for barcoding volumes. I got to use the lab’s resources in another project to wrap large and heavy Masonite boards that had aerial maps of a planned toll road pasted over them. When the boards are placed in order the aerials track the entirety of the toll road. While that was an especially big project it was also a fun change of pace. Measuring sheets of paper to stack between the boards to protect the images was surprisingly fun and gave me more time to observe what was happening in the lab.
One of my favorite moments from this internship involved a recent trip downtown where I was able to tour the administrative side of the Indiana State Museum [image below]. I was allowed access to their storage areas where artifacts and display pieces are kept. I never realized how many items a museum could hold. It was an amazing experience and one that helped me realize more possible career paths. Another great experience that I loved was a mending workshop that I took in the conservation lab [image left]. I met quite a few people who had interests in conservation and archiving and had a fun time playing around with the mending tools. As I am finishing up my internship, I can say that I have learned a lot and feel more confident in myself and my future career possibilities.
