Recruitment

On Monday, 11/11/19, the Georgia Southern University History Department's Public History Internship Fair will take place. I've been so fortunate with my interns--and I need more to keep the Project going, so please cross your fingers for me. We are making enormous progress on the Digital Commons archive, and are garnering new followers on Instagram. I am also so pleased to note that my current MA intern, Lauren Della Piazza-Hartke, has settled on using GIS data to map the movements of books related to the Belgian and English colleges and professed houses, and those printed in English. We will have more to report on that effort as her work progresses. It will be the first time that we are analyzing the data in this way, and we'll certainly learn a great deal from this. I've wanted to do it from the beginning, but have not had the time. That's another reminder of how important having assistants can be!

Since I first hired an intern just over a year ago, the Project has become much richer and deeper. I recruited on the fly in the beginning: I had no experience in running a collaborative project or employing student assistants. Both in 2017 and 2018, I was exhausted, having just returned from a conference I helped organize. I showed up at the Internship Fair with my laptop, and displayed some photos and the spreadsheet. Somehow, I convinced some of the best students we have to work on this incipient endeavor, and I don't want to rest on those laurels. This year, I've designed a tri-fold presentation board, complete with photos of students, books, and social media posts, with eye-catching glittery frames and big gold lettering. I'm sure it would fit in at a seventh-grade science fair, but it's better than last year, and I consider it part of my learning curve. Within a few weeks, I will learn whether or not I have any students for the coming spring, summer, and fall terms.