Public History Internship 2025: UCF Veterans History Project

 Hello, all! In my last post I mentioned that I would soon have the opportunity, alongside my peers in the Veterans History Project, to not only visit the Orange County Regional History Center, but to also investigate some of the behind-the-scenes work and thought processes behind organizing and curating exhibits, as well as the archiving methodology and intentions for the artifacts collected by the museum. This Tuesday, the Veterans History Project engaged in such a wonderful opportunity offered to us, and it was everything I had hoped for an more! Thanks to the time, effort, and kindness of the experts working, interning, and volunteering at the History Center we had the opportunity to engage with pieces of historical artifacts from various time periods, including but not limited to World War I, World War II, the Gulf Wars, and many other conflicts. The link between all of the pieces the History Center is able to present us with is their connections to Orange County residents, th...

Greetings all, and welcome to the fifth week of this fall semester! Now that the trials of the first month are out of the way, my focus lies with accurately cataloging the interviews selected by my project manager. This multi-step process was thoroughly explained during our zoom meetings, and my team lead Jayden Flores put together a concise guide detailing each document, file, and action needed to complete the process. With each interview there is an audio recording, a text transcription of the discussion, and often an mp4 formatted video. My task this week has been to help sort and complete the logs of information about one particular interview with William Smith, including information regarding the participant himself, so that any specific topics may be easily found and referenced as needed.  Thus far I have completed work for an AV log and an abstract of the interview, though this is only a portion of the records needed. The AV (audio-visual) log provides metadata, contact info...

As we approach the end of the first month of the semester, things have started to pick up. Though it is not directly related to my work here with the Veterans History Project, I would be remiss not to share that I have been granted the amazing opportunity to work with the remarkable UCF PRINT team for my Computer Science Senior Design course! People, Religion, Information Networks, and Travel – Migration in the Early Modern World, as the acronym stands for, is a digital humanities project operating within the UCF History Department that works to trace communication networks and analyze how they have shaped migration in the Atlantic World. My team has been tasked with, broadly, enhancing the existing visualization tools to help create a smooth and comprehensive user experience within the PRINT Portal. Users will have access to a database with digital copies of manuscripts, as well as the connections they form through the recipients and their travels. As the PRINT website states (link be...

The third week of this fall internship begins, and the building anticipation I harbored proved to be for very good reason. This week I was finally able to arrange a meeting with the program coordinator for the Department of History at UCF, Jessie Oldham. Jessie has sprawling roots in the UCF History Department, and is deeply involved in many of the department's events, programs, and projects -- including, but not limited to, her role as the project manager for the Veterans History Project here at the university. Her enthusiasm for discovering, preserving, and recording our public history is electrifying and very contagious. Meeting with her was exciting and the information provided on my role here as an intern gave me so much to look forward to in the upcoming week, and the months that lie ahead. Along with the plethora of volunteer opportunities and elective events that the Public History Center offers that I now have privilege to, this project truly has so much to offer. For my o...