LIS 648: Week Four

This week's big lesson was learning about microfilm.

Tom, microfilm extraordinaire for the Knox County Archive, took me down to his studio housed in the basement of the archives. There are separate rooms for the filming process and the development process, and I was walked through the entirety of it. Starting from actually setting up the microfilm camera and taking the films of documents to actually developing and duplicating the film to get it ready for public access.

This was completely new to me, so I learned a ton. I feel pretty comfortable with the filming process, but I would not trust myself with all those chemicals just yet!

As with most of my shifts at the archive, I spent a lot of my time at the reference desk with Doris and other archive employees. I began helping pull records, copying and organizing records for patrons, and certifying documents this week!