Our Spring Intern Ryan recently completed his internship at MAB. Today, we talk with Ryan about his experience at the Archives, challenges he faced, and how the Archives fits into his future goals. Thank you Ryan for all your hard work!

Moravian Archives (MAB): What did you particularly enjoy about your project or time at the archives?

Ryan Rissmiller (RR): I enjoyed getting to know everybody at the Archives and seeing what an archivist does. This helped spark my interest in archiving. I also enjoyed learning the cataloging processes and reading the letters between Moravian Church members.

MAB: What was the project you worked on while at MAB?

RR: My project was scanning and cataloging the Portrait Collection of the Moravian Archives. This collection contains portraits of various individuals related to the Moravian Church. Firstly, I would scan the front and back of the photographs with the EPSON scanner to accepted standards. There were some instances where the pictures were too large to be scanned with the EPSON, so these would be flagged to be scanned by a larger-format scanner.

After scanning all the photos, I moved on to the cataloging part of the process in Augias. I was tasked with improving the current catalog descriptions and fixing any mistakes like grammatical errors. Previously, a description would identify the individual in the photograph with no context about the details of the image. I improved the descriptions to provide details of the image, such as what type of portrait it was. For example, an improved description will now state, “Bust-length photo of John Jacob Kummer.” A bust-length photo is a portrait of someone from their shoulders up. There were also full-length and informal portraits of people, as well as photographic negatives, all of which are now catalog to provide these details. When it came to mistakes, it was either simply fixing spelling errors or making sure there were no unneeded spaces.

Finally, the correspondence I read and cataloged was interesting. This process included reading the letters, determining the language, and providing the city, dates, senders, and addressees. All the information would be recorded in an Excel file that will later be uploaded to Augias for access. The letters were written in either English or German and in old handwriting, which is hard to read if you are not familiar with it. Having a reference sheet for the letters in both languages helped to make deciphering the correspondence easier.

MAB: Was there a challenge you faced with your project? How did you overcome this challenge? Were there specific resources you used?

RR: A challenging part of my project was providing descriptions for the photos and reading the letters. I was unsure of whether my descriptions were good enough or if I should write something more descriptive. The letters were hard to read because I had never seen that kind of writing before, and it was hard to determine at first what was written and the language. I overcame the description by trying to be as descriptive as possible. Reading the letters became easier as I read them and recognized the signatures. Ms. Trainor and Tom were valuable resources in helping to decipher the handwriting.

MAB: How do you think your project benefits the mission of the Moravian Archives?

RR: My project benefits the Moravian Archives because the scanning and cataloging of all the collections of photographs that I did will be helpful to researchers in the future. The catalog will help researchers quickly find the necessary photographs, and the description will indicate who it is.

MAB: What aspects of your internship do you see benefiting your future endeavors?

RR: All aspects of my internship will benefit me in the future because I am considering becoming a researcher or an archivist, and the internship increased my interest in this field. Plus, the skills I learned from it will help me get employment with museums and other institutions if I choose to pursue that career path.

MAB: Is there anything in your project that provides an image that would be beneficial to help provide context?

Image: “John Jacob Kummer,” PhotPortraits K.015, Moravian Archives Bethlehem