What brought you to the MLIS program at Dal?
I’ve always known that I wanted to do something with history and/or technology professionally, but wasn’t sure how to go about it until I worked a summer doing historical digitization — and it fit my interests perfectly! I checked out the program after my best friend Laura (also currently in the program) recommended it. Dalhousie’s School of Information Management has a great reputation and is in my hometown, so coming here was an easy choice.
What drew you to the internship at the Dal Libraries?
- During orientation, I listened to the current Archives intern talk a little about their projects, and could not have been more interested – it was right up my alley. I knew that I desperately wanted to work with history, and was interested in getting my hands on some more digitization projects, so the job description for the Archives internship was extremely exciting for me. I looked through some of Dal’s existing online fonds, talked one of the current interns working there, and knew it was a perfect job. It’s great to be able to get hands-on, real world experience while in school!
What’s your educational background?
I completed my first degree at King’s/Dalhousie as well, and have a BA with a double major in History and Political Science.
What you have you been doing during your internship?
During the 2016/17 school year I processed a massive collection of CKDU’s reels, as well as moving the physical collections to make room for more. I’ve also been processing and digitizing the Bill Lynch Shows fonds, working with FRED (Forensic Recovery of Evidence Device) to conduct forensic imaging of some of the born digital collections in our holdings (including floppy disks, CDs, and USBs), and writing documentation to describe the process for various digitization processes. I’ve also done scanning of photograph collections and oversize documents (blueprints, posters, et cetera), as well as answering on-site and email reference queries. I’ve been collaborating with other Dal Libraries interns to research and organize information pertaining to Dalhousie’s 200th anniversary initiatives and I’m also looking into finding diverse collections to process (women, people of colour, minorities) to avoid only showing one perspective of history
Fun and interesting facts about you:
In my spare time, I’m passionate about dog rescue and volunteer at a local rescue (Home to Stay) — this has included driving to Montreal to pick dogs up who are about to be euthanized there. I also love this city and all of its food, so I’m always down to talk local restaurant recommendations! Finally, I’ve previously worked in technology public relations in San Francisco, which is where I get my interest in tech and the value of women in tech.
In 2015, Dr. Makani and Dr. Martine Durier-Copp were awarded a SSHRC Knowledge Synthesis Grant to conduct research into new ways of learning, particularly how higher education Canadians will need 
The collection chosen to be our guinea pig was a recent donation of work from esteemed Canadian ecologist and environmental scientist, Bill Freedman, who taught and conducted research at Dalhousie from 1979 to 2015. The fonds is a hybrid of analogue and digital materials dating from 1988 to 2015. Digital media carriers include: 1 computer system unit, 5 laptops, 2 external hard drives, 7 USB flash drives, 5 zip disks, 57 CDs, 6 DVDs, 67 5.25 inch floppy disks and 228 3.5 inch floppy disks. This is more digital material than the archives is likely to acquire in future accessions, but the Freedman collection acted as a good test case because it provided us with a comprehensive variety of digital formats to work with.