Name: Lucy Pauker

Pronouns: they/them

Hometown: the world :+)

What is your favorite summer activity? Or your favourite Halifax activity?

Halifax is arguably at its best during the summer, and to fully experience all that good stuff you have to be outside. I love driving to a nearby lake, laying on some grass, picking off ticks, and having fires.

What internship are you affiliated with?

I am the Archives Intern at the Dalhousie University Archives at the Killam.

What brought you to the MI program at Dal?

I originally attended a similar program at McGill, but wanted to return to this province and my community. Nova Scotia feels like a long-term home for me, and Dalhousie seemed like a great way to solidify those bonds and offer the connections to facilitate a career in the information sector in this province.

What drew you to the internship opportunity at the Dal Libraries?

The archives internship was an exciting opportunity for me to gain experience working for a large, institutional archive. My previous experience has been with small, predominantly art organizations whereas Dalhousie’s Archive offered insight into the organization, structure, and day-to-day operations of working on a larger scale. This internship has allowed me to use software and digitization equipment that I have not had access to at smaller institutions.

What’s your educational background?

I have a B.F.A. from Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, and a Graduate Certificate in Digital Archive Management from McGill University.

What projects have you worked on so far during your internship?

I’ve had the privilege of working on a wide range of projects with a wider range of media at the archive. I have described Ron O’dor’s collection of squid VHS tapes, which ranged from footage of scallops in space to giant squid recordings and interviews on Japanese television. I also had the opportunity this past year to describe the Solar Audio collection, an exciting fonds consisting of audio reels from a range of local and international musicians. During this time, I furthered my understanding of the organization system of the archives by physically arranging Eyelevel Artist Run Center’s collection of catalogues. The catalogues spanned the 1970s to the mid-2000s and offered an interesting visual timeline of the arts in Halifax.

This summer I have several projects to dip into that include: describing and arranging anthropologist James H. Morrison’s collection. Morrison’s collection of materials is largely from several oral history projects he worked on in the Jos Plateau region of Nigeria in the 1970s. I am also experimenting with web archiving, something that has been of interest to me since I first explored the Internet Archive during my undergrad. On the horizon are several larger digitization projects that will entail digitizing three-dimensional materials from the Dalhousie Women’s Association’s collection of puppets from the 1940s-50s and a 2006 time capsule from Eyelevel. Digitizing three-dimensional material requires a different setup than is typical for two-dimensional items. I’m looking forward to speaking with some experts and developing workflows and strategies to be of use for future 3D digitization projects.

A perennial task that I love in the archive is the reference desk, where researchers and all matter of interested people visit to ask questions related to the true crime documentary they are working on, their thesis on Kipling, genealogy, etc. Never a DUL moment in the Dalhousie University Library system ;+)