The past month of my internship has flown by quickly, and I continue to enjoy what I’m learning.

Another of Dr. Brennan’s questions related to how connected to the project and the department I feel as a “virtual intern.”  I am so fortunate to be working on this Hidden in Plain Sight module on Steroscopes and Stereograph Cards with Jennifer and Nate.  They have let me create my own project, and they have been there with guidance and suggestions throughout the project.  I feel very connected to the Education Division of the RRCHNM, and I am so glad that I have had this wonderful opportunity.

I’ve spent most of the last month writing and editing drafts of the Stereoscope/Stereograph Card module.  Jennifer, Nate, and I have been meeting weekly, and both of them have sent me a lot of valuable feedback.  They are fabulous editors, and their wise suggestions and challenging questions have made the module so much better!  I did conduct some additional research after seeing an image of Carl Sandburg and a friend with a stereoscope and stereograph cards on the Newberry Library’s Instagram site.  It turns out that the famous poet was a stereograph card canvasser for Underwood & Underwood.  The stereograph card sales helped to pay for Sandburg’s college tuition and kept him employed as he wrote his early poetry.  That was a very fun find for all of us.

One new digital history skill that I have learned is how to make thumbnail images for the Hidden in Plain Sight course site.  Nate took the time to send me very detailed instructions and illustrations about how to create the thumbnails, and I was able to create fourteen of them for the module.  I sent copies of the thumbnails to Nate and Jennifer the night before our last meeting, and I added the thumbnails to the latest draft of the module.  During our meeting, we discussed the thumbnails and different options for some of the images.   I so enjoyed discussing ideas for the images and reviewing the latest draft with them.

At this point, I’m doing final edits on the module images and descriptions.  I’m also revising my Connections Essay for the end of the module.  Once I have completed the module, the next step is add it to the Hidden in Plain Sight course site.  I look forward to learning about the back end of Drupal, the content management platform, and I can’t wait to see the Stereoscope/Stereograph Card module on the course site!

Now that the Stereoscope/Stereograph Card module is almost complete, we’ve been discussing possible projects for me to work on over the next month.  There is a lot going on in the Education Division, and I want to learn as much as I can.