Field Study with Niels Bohr Library & Archives

In January of this year, I was excited to begin a field study internship with the Niels Bohr Library & Archives (NBLA). As part of my degree coursework for the University of Maryland’s Master of Library and Information Science (MLIS) program, I chose to complete a Field Study in Information Service which is an internship experience in a library, archive, museum, or other information organization under the supervision of an information professional. NBLA has welcomed a number of interns over the years as field study students and I was happy to be the most recent addition to the team. Now that my semester-long assignment with the Niels Bohr Library & Archives (NBLA) team has reached its natural end, I’d like to reflect on the experience and share what I did!

The focus of my field study project was a recently acquired Inside Science collection of audiovisual (AV) materials. Inside Science was an editorially independent nonprofit science news service run by the American Institute of Physics (the parent organization of NBLA) from 1999 to 2022. Inside Science produced breaking news stories, features, essays, op-eds, documentaries, animations, and news videos. The previous collection was acquired in 2014 from AIP and contains materials from 1999 to 2011 (two manuscript boxes and seven records boxes). The collection that I have helped to process contains materials from a similar time frame until the finale of the program in 2022. At the start of my assignment, I quickly familiarized myself with the Inside Science collection by learning more about using NBLA’s collections , locating Inside Science content on AIP’s website , and seeing what more could be found about Inside Science across public platforms.

Since my field study project plan was clearly detailed, with systems and storage in place, I was able to jump right into the collections processing, with a focus on creating an item-level inventory and conducting a preservation assessment. I began with materials from Discoveries and Breakthroughs Inside Science (DBIS) , a series of reports involving breakthroughs and discoveries in science designed to inform all viewers, not only those with scientific knowledge. DBIS was a syndicated science and engineering news service which produced scientifically accurate, monthly, 90-second news segments centered on topics in engineering, science, technology, and mathematics (STEM) for local television newscasts. Over the next couple of months, I worked my way through boxes and boxes of Betacam video tapes with DBIS content, along with any additional materials that were mixed in.

What are Betacam video tapes, one might ask? Betacam tapes were created by Sony Corporation and derived from their patented designs, like the US-3735939-A patent filed in 1971. Unlike the consumer-grade VHS or Betamax cassette tapes, Betacam tapes support high-definition video and audio recording, making them. popular with professional videographers. NBLA has quite a few of them in a variety of formats—Betacam, Betacam SP, and Digital Betacam cassette tapes. The Inside Science collection alone contains dozens of them!

I think that I lucked out in finding this opportunity to support audiovisual collections with a brilliant team of information workers. Since I have some experience in multimedia work, I enjoy interacting with professional video production materials and reviewing the trails of notations that go along with them. The informational immersion is great. The main aspect of the field study that I have enjoyed is the hands-on practices of inventorying and assessing collection materials. I greatly appreciate quiet, methodical work and I prefer tasks that allow me to interact with physical collections and systems of digital preservation. Over the course of the semester, I inventoried and assessed nearly 300 unique AV items while exploring updates to the collection’s finding aid and drafting content for NBLA’s social media platforms.

Now, with the semester behind us, I am preparing for my farewells. And I must say that it has been a pleasure to work with the librarians and archivists at the Niels Bohr Library & Archives. It has been a privilege to observe and interact with a well-organized, technologically savvy Library & Archives team, joining in or observing discussions about topics in library sciences, physical sciences, history, and preservation.

Although my field study has come to an end, I am excited to learn what the NBLA team continues to reveal from the Emilio Segrè Visual Archives , the Oral History Interviews (OHI) , and the rest of the Digital Repository to AIP History and the archival records of AIP and its Member Societies , as well as its unique book collections. And I will continue to enjoy the collections of Inside Science , as well.