I’m grateful for having been hosted by Allied Vaughn for my archives practicum. It was full of valuable experiences and enriching lessons that I’ll rely on as I continue to work with archives and content management. Allied Vaughn is a corporate archives located in Livonia, MI. They handle media preservation and content management work for the automotive industry and other corporate accounts. I used to work as a graphic designer at ad agencies for auto companies, so I applied to Allied Vaugh because I had basic institutional knowledge for some of their clients.

 

The various types of projects that I worked on showed me the entire process of identifying historic records through making them accessible to researchers and the public. Some steps included selecting records, digitizing, ingesting files into a digital asset management (DAM) system, adding metadata, and indexing.

 

An engaging project that I dedicated most of my time to during my practicum was targeting historically significant photos from a donation of materials related to an automotive company’s proving grounds and testing lab in Arizona. The photos were from the 1930s through the 1990s with the bulk of them being from the 1950s through the 1980s. Before diving into the files, I did some research about the proving grounds, the testing lab, and the automotive company’s executives, in order to have a better idea if I was selecting images with historical value and those that would be of interest to researchers.

 

Along with a classmate, we worked through a hard drive containing around 20,000 digitized images in 900 folders that took up 800GB of space, and selected photos that would be useful to researchers. These included photos of classic vehicles, engines, auto parts, buildings and other structures, and company executives. I also selected images of vehicle tests and testing equipment in case the company ever needs to show them during litigation related to vehicle safety.

 

In a lecture, Professor Kim Schroeder told us that the late Tom Featherstone, an audiovisual archivist at the Reuther Library, would explain to students that archivists get paid to throw stuff out. This was his way of communicating that an archives is not a warehouse and that weeding is required for the important stuff to be uncovered and used. I kept this lesson in mind as I was flipping through the 20,000 images. Most of the photos were either duplicates or did not show anything historically significant, like the hundreds of photos of retirement parties and birthday cakes. While nothing was thrown out, only the images with the most historical value were selected to be uploaded to a DAM for researchers.

 

Another project that I worked on was digitizing vehicle product photos from the early 2000s and making them accessible to researchers in a DAM system. I batched the photo transparencies into sets and recorded metadata on a spreadsheet. Then, I scanned each photo and saved them as high-resolution image files. I uploaded the files in bulk to their DAM, which used Adobe Experience Manager Assets software, and added the metadata in bulk. Lastly, I added indexing terms to the image assets using an automotive-focused taxonomy so that they could be more easily discovered by researchers.

 

Combining my past experience at ad agencies with what I learned during my practicum, I have seen the entire lifecycle of visual communications. When I worked at ad agencies, I created advertisements, photos, and graphics. During this practicum, I learned how to preserve these same types of records and make them accessible. I’m now familiar with all of the stages of a visual record from the initial creative spark to a final produced version, and then preserving it and making it accessible for future generations. I even searched their DAM and found some ads that I created in the early 2000s in the system! So, I have been both an original content creator and a historical content saver.

 

A highlight of the practicum was a tour of an automotive company’s design archive. The staff gave us an overview of the archive, including its history. They showed us some of the stacks and their digitization lab, and we met with members of their research team. The archive has a space dedicated to curated exhibitions about vehicle design history. Some of the historical materials for the displays are selected from the DAM system that I worked with. The tour also piqued my interest in possibly doing graphic design work for exhibitions.

 

My archives skills were limited going into this practicum, but after this experience I can turn loosely organized photos in a box or files on a hard drive into digital assets that are discoverable by a researcher and the public.