I’m starting to rethink joysephine.com once again. It’s had many incarnations over the past decade: A blog of silly things that didn’t matter, an online portfolio of arts and crafts projects, a blog of arts and crafts projects with tutorials, and for the last year or so, a static “coming soon” image without any content.

For the past two years, I was in school at UNC studying library science, concentrating in archives and record management. For roughly three years before that, I was finally finishing up my undergrad at Appalachian State University (’03 college drop-out, guilty as charged). With a Bachelor of Arts in History and a long background of genealogy research, I thoroughly enjoyed learning about archives for my own personal reasons, but after taking so many courses, I’m not convinced that I would want to be an archivist for a living. I thrive on helping people, and although archivists do help others, there is much more behind-the-scenes processing and fewer patrons with which to engage. When I originally decided that I wanted to go to library school back in 2009, I had public libraries in mind and although my ideas changed a little during the entire schooling process, I have returned to my original career ideas. I’m currently a library assistant (soon to be a librarian) in the public system, and I plan on being there for a long time to come.

Throughout my studies, I learned of many archivists’ tools for online collections management, description, access, and other field buzzwords. I have explored many and tinkered with a few. I consider myself far above average when it comes to technology use and understanding; however, I am also far from the IT expert that the installation of many of these tools requires. WordPress is not the most ideal platform for a project of this sort, but I am also not running a professional archive. As a hobby project, this is more of a public history and cultural heritage endeavor, giving others access to the expansive collection of genealogical materials I have built over the past ten years. WordPress may serve this function of my site just fine. However, I will try to find easy ways to incorporate important features like correct metadata and decent description to make these materials more useable and accessible for others.

The plan: Over the next few weeks, I’ll be tinkering with the site and playing with different add-ons, trying to build a webpage that will successfully showcase my collection of historical materials. I will eventually create finding aids for the physical materials that I have, allowing other genealogy researchers to know what I possess and make requests for digitization, but first I will start digitizing materials for which I have already received requests. I will continue to periodically update, including postings of photos, letters, land documents, wills, and a wide variety of ephemera and memorabilia. Although it is a tiny infant site right now, I have a vision for growth and becoming a source of information for other genealogists.

While I am working out the kinks I have disabled the ability to create an account, thus limiting robots or spam comments while I am building. If you would like for me to create an account for you before I get that up and running, or if you have any other questions, shoot me an email at joy [@] joysephine [dot] com.

I think this will be fun. Stay tuned!

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