Day Twenty-four, 915-1115, Total Time = 150 Hours

LAST DAY! All I have to do today is present my project to the people of the Cleveland Memory Project. As it turns out there were three other practicum students that presented today as well. The other students practicum topics were; The Cleveland Browns, the good years, Breweries of Cleveland, and Cleveland Housing. All the presentations were very interesting and I liked listening to what other people were doing. I think that my presentation went well and people seemed interested in what I was doing. I was here for two hours and the meeting took up all of these final hours. I am glad that I had my practicum at CSU. I have had a good experience here and learned many good useful skills.

Day Twenty-three, 915-1600, Total Time = 148 Hours 0 Minutes

I am very close to finishing at the start of today. With that in mind I was able to move quickly through the day and before I knew it the day was over. I finished the metadata and I wanted to be sure that I had created good rich metadata. This took the next couple hours but I feel that it was worth it because I want to produce a good, usable product. After I finished going through the metadata I wrote the text for the front page for the web exhibit for my project. I included possible titles, a short paragraph, and prospective photos to use.

Day Twenty-two, 915-1640, 141 Hours 15 Minutes

There are not too many records to go, I finished 58 today. Half way through the day I emailed Kif to see how my metadata was doing and how many records I had completed. She emailed back that there were 83 live and 24 more in the queue, at that time. After the email I finished 31 more files, that gives me 138 with the target of 150. By the end of today I had finished going through the Cleveland Press photos and I am right on track for the target number. However I will have more because I still have the Bruce Young collection to add metadata. I scanned more photos than I needed and as I was going through doing the metadata I skipped some photos that looked similar to others that I had already done. If there is time I would like to add metadata to these as well. At the end of the day I talked with Bill and he asked how my hours were coming along and it looks as if I will be right on track.

Day Twenty-one, 915-1630, Total Time = 133 Hours 50 Minutes

I was able to find a good rhythm to my metadata today. I completed forty records. I did this because I quit over thinking the subject terms. I went with my initial instinct for the photos and the contextual clues provided by the captions of the photo on their reverse. I think that one of my major problems from the previous week was that I was trying to hard to make the metadata perfect. After letting go of my over thinking I was able to complete more records in one day. I reviewed the records from the other days to make sure that I had not lost any integrity of the records and I feel that I did not. I talked with Bill again today about my progress and it seems that I will be able to finish the project on time.

Day Twenty, 930-1615, Total Time = 126 Hours 35 Minutes

I started the day by talking with Bill about the progress of my project and he had some questions about other metadata platforms. I told him that I had experience using dSpace from another class and he grilled me on the program. I told him that I thought it was a good platform but it had some problems with usability, but overall it was a good program to use. After talking with Bill I started back in with my metadata. I was able to get through 23 records but I need to pick up the pace, without lowering the integrity of my metadata, if I am going to finish the project. In my metadata I added a "see also" element to link the Akron project in Cleve. Memory. directly to Summit Memory. Since Akron is in Summit I feel there needs to be a direct link to Summit Memory instead of the user looking through Ohio Heritage North East. The Multi Site Server is useful but I want users to be able to link directly to the Summit Memory. While doing this "see also" I thought of looking up the direct search URL, i.e. Firestone, and putting that URL in the "see also", but that creates a very long link. I emailed Bill to get his input and he suggested tiny URL and he emailed Kif to get her input as well. Kif felt that I could use the tiny URL, the www.summitmemory.org, or the long URL and it would not make much difference. I looked through the Summit Memory site and found that some pictures, bridges, were not in their collection. I felt that having some long URLs for topics like Firestone and the site URL for others would not be very synchronous. In the end I decided to go simple and the user can go directly to Summit Memory, from the metadata, and search the Summit collection from there.

Day Ninteen, 930-1615, Total time = 119 Hours 50 Minutes

Today marked the final stage of my project; metadata. I meet with Kif in digital production and she took me through using ContentDM and the different aspects of the metadata elements that the Cleveland Memory project uses. The elements are very similar to Dublin Core and I found it very easy to understand. I feel this way because I have an understanding of DC before I began the project. Kif also went over some of the rules that Cleveland Memory uses for the sake of consistency. She gave me a guide to follow for coming up with picture titles, descriptions, etc. Something that we discussed was the fact that Clev. Mem. is geared toward Cleveland and that the controlled vocabulary for the subject terms will not always fit into Akron, i.e. Seiberlings, Akron Children’s Hospital, to name a few. I decided to enter the subject terms that were not in the controlled vocabulary and see if they could be added later. After submitting a few records I emailed Kif to see how everything was going with the metadata. She said that it looked good and she added the subject terms to the controlled vocabulary list.

Another thing that Kif and I discussed was the location of the items within Akron, i.e. neighborhoods. She had pulled up a map of Akron with the neighborhoods and said that she could add them if I wanted to use them, I felt to be accurate that I should use the neighborhoods of Akron because everything is not found downtown. A good example is the Airdock. It is located in the Ellet neighborhood and I felt that it deserved to be listed as such because if a user was searching for photos of Ellet they do not want to sift through hundreds of pictures of Akron to get to the one neighborhood. With that being said Kif added the neighborhoods to the location controlled vocabulary. Since this was my first day of metadata I was cautious and went very slowly. I was able to record 20 items.

Day Eighteen, 915-1530, Total Time = 113 Hours 5 Minutes

Yesterday's word of the day carried over to today. I spent today scanning again. This is starting to consume too much time. I talked with Bill about my progress in the project and mentioned that I had scanned about 170 photos up to this point. He asked if I had more photos and if I do to have someone in digital production scan the rest. I did have a few left, so I took the remaining photos upstairs for DP to take care of for me. Bill had expressed that I may have too many photos. I explained that I feel the same way, but I have a plan. As I am going through and entering the metadata, I will be even more selective and pick the upper eschelone of photos to tell the Akron story. Then, depending on how much time that takes, the photos that did not make the first cut will be added on a second cut. He liked this plan and hopefully next week I will be able to stick with it.

Day Seventeen, 900-1600, Total Time = 106 Hours 50 Minutes

The word of the day today is scanning. That is what my day was spent doing. I was able to get through the two files that I appraised on Tuesday. After getting through the two files, Goodyear and Firestone, I looked at the clock and my day was done. Upon futher reflection I think that I will have to have a more stringent selection of photos. How many pictures of a random machine do I need?

Day Sixteen, 1100-1315, Total Time = 99 Hours 50 Minutes

I decided today that I was going to tackle the two biggest files dealing with Akron; Goodyear and Firestone. These two files were overflowing with pictures and I could have created a gallery with these two files alone. The first step that I took with these files was to separate the pictures into piles: manufacturing, people, World War II, buildings, and unusable. The unusable pile had photos that only dealt with the rubber company and Akron indirectly. This pile also included any photos that I could not determine what the subject matter was because there was nothing written on the back of the photo, or those that, from contextual clues, I could not determine what the photo was dealing with. WWII was an important pile because there were many materials made in Akron and there is a lot of interest in the subject. From the surveys I found that some people wanted to know more about the manufacturing of tires so this pile was important also. From the piles I picked the best representative shots to best tell the story of Akron. Some of the photos may not be the most interesting, but they do shed more light on Akron.

Day Fifteen, 900-1600, Total Time = 97 Hours 35 Minutes

After learning how to scan and use the photo shop program, I decided to move straight into scanning. This is what the better part of my day was consumed by. As I was going through the photo files I found that for some of the larger folders I had a hard time weeding out some photos. This concerns me because I have only started to go through the Cleveland Press Collection. I still have the Bruce Young photos and the Wilbur Watson collection to scan. I have to keep telling myself when selecting pictures one question, "Does this photo best represent Akron?" I feel that if I keep this in mind, I will be able to create a good selection of photos for the Cleveland Memory Project. I have to do this so I do not run out of time in the practicum.

Day Fourteen, 930-1640, Total Time = 90 Hours 35 Minutes

I started the day by learning how to scan the photos that I will be using for my project. CSU uses Adobe Photoshop CS to scan and edit the photos. The photos are stored in two formats; TIFF and JPEG. The TIFF format is scanned at 600dpi in 8bit grayscale and used for archival purposes. The photos are then recorded onto magnetic tape and stored off site. The JEPG is used for uploading onto Cleveland Memory Project. It is still in 8bit grayscale but instead of 600dpi the resolution is at 72dpi. After learning how to scan and use the program the rest of my day was spent scanning photos. I was able to scan forty-five before the end of the day.

Day Thirteen, 900-1600, Total Time = 83 Hours 25 Minutes

At the start of the day I talked with Bill and he suggested putting in the replies from the lis-serv questionnaire into alphabetical order. This helped to organize and sift the results into a coherent usable list. There were a lot answers that were more modern and not appropriate for this project, but I did ask for modern ideas of Akron to see if there was something from the eighties. Some ideas that came across the e-mails that I did not think of are the Corsair F4U (built in Akron during World War II), Portage C.C., and Firestone C.C. The Cleveland Press did have some photos on Portage and Firestone C.C. but nothing on the Corsair. After I finished coding the results from the questionnaire I continued to go through the folders of the Cleveland Press to find usable photos for the project. This has become more time consuming than I had thought but I cannot just put anything onto the Cleveland Memory Project site. I should be able to finish doing the selection on Thursday and start digitizing on Friday.

Day Twelve, 900-1600, Total Time = 76 Hours 25 Minutes

The survey that I sent out last week had a couple responses so today I started my day by coding the e-mails. Most of the replies were what I had already searched myself; however there were a couple that I had yet to think about, i.e. Christmas Day Parade, Akron Marathon, Hopping Frog and Thirsty Dog Breweries, Lock 3, Rib Fest, and First Night. I looked for these on the off chance that there may be something, but I did not find anything because these are more contemporary examples of Akron. I did not receive as many replies as I had wanted to so I talked with Bill about possibly posting to the Kent State SLIS Lis-serv. He said that he was not too sure on the protocol of posting and suggested that I contact Dr. Zeng. I e-mailed Dr. Zeng and she has several good ideas. First she suggested to not have it worded as a survey but a questionnaire because survey sounds to formal and this should be more like a ‘pre-test’ for finding the data that I was looking to find. She had other suggestions, blog, Facebook, Survey Monkey etc., but after discussing it with Bill we found that for my needs an informal questionnaire would garner the best results. Since sending it out I have received replies from people not just in Ohio but from Arizona, Iowa, Illinois, Canada, and England. I did not expect this to receive so many responses but I am glad because it does give me a global perspective on Akron. Thus far most of the replies have been about what I expected but there have been a few that I did not think about, music and art. I will explore these two topics more tomorrow.

To finish out my day I started to go through the file folders and list one by one the pictures that I will be using for the final product. I found that in the topic of “Airships” there are a lot of photos of various airships flying. Some have the airship’s name and some do not. I think that the project will need only a few photos of the airships flying so some will need weeding out of the project. Though there are a lot of the flying airships there are just as many good representative photos of the airship boom centered in Akron.

Day Eleven, 900-1600, Total Time = 69 Hours 25 Minutes

I think that I am finally done compiling the data that I need to complete this project. Today I went through the lists that I have created of subjects and their results from the collections at CSU. Bill had asked me yesterday, “What is the scope of Akron that you want to cover?” At the time I did not have an answer to his question. Today I was going to take some time to determine what the scope was going to be, but this took a lot longer than I had anticipated. As I was going through my findings I found that the only direction that I had for the project was Akron. I had yet to put everything into a cohesive order. By sitting down and looking at all of my findings I was able to bring everything into an order and categorize everything into subject groups:

-The Rubber Years

-Transportation

-The City

-Places

-Events

These five subjects will aid me in picking the best pictures for the gallery. To insure that I have looked for everything Akron I went through some of the books that I borrowed from Akron Public Library last week. I did find that there was one major place that I missed up to this point; Polsky’s Department Store. This store is now a part of the University of Akron, much like most things in downtown, but it is still an important part of Akron’s history. As it turns out there is one picture of the building in the Cleveland Press Collection. To look for more search terms for Akron I looked through the Summit Memory website, but I did not find any more information. I have yet to receive any surveys back yet but I am sure that I will be receiving more soon.

Day Ten, 900-1600, Total Time = 62 Hours 25 Minutes

Today I worked on trying to finish compiling the data for my project. On last week’s post Bill had suggested to search in Cleveland Memory using the search terms that I had developed. This took up the better portion of the day. I did find some information on the rubber industry and some photos on the Goodyear Blimp, just to name a few items. These will be good photos to have to add to the Akron collection. I talked with Bill about the progression of the project and that I should begin to gather the collection to start the digitization process. He asked me today about the scope of the project and I had honestly not thought of it up to this point. I will be laying out for myself the scope of the project. This will include major aspects and minor aspects of Akron. I do not want to focus on just rubber and blimps I want to include things like Quaker Oats and Cascade Plaza. That is what led me to create a survey. I created this survey to help me make sure that I have not left anything out of my project. The search terms that I developed were on my perspective of Akron. The survey will help me to see others views of the city.

I also had the pleasure of talking with some members of the Erie Lackawanna Historical Society. They have most of their items on deposit here at CSU and they were up looking them over. I talked with them about other avenues of Akron that I could search to make my project complete. Scott suggested looking at old chamber of commerce records for a list of industries found within Akron. Previously he worked at the University of Akron and knows that the university holds many of the records from the camber. The members also suggested looking for a “Directory of Industries open to reciprocal switch”. This is a list that would be open to ship and receive goods from the railroad.

Day Nine, 900-1045 and 1200-400, Total Time = 55 Hours 25 Minutes

Today I started the day by stopping at the Akron Summit County Public Library Main Branch. I stopped there for two reasons; first was to pick up books about Akron and second was to talk to someone about the Akron Memory Project. I talked with Joanne O’Dell about my project here at CSU. I stopped out to make sure that I had searched everything that I could. We also talked about the metadata because I want to make sure that people searching for Akron they will be able to find all the available information, i.e. the Akron collection in Akron Memory and Cleveland Memory. Joanne suggested linking the Akron Memory website in the metadata. From our discussion it seems that I am moving in the right direction and she was more than happy to field any of my questions about Akron that I may have in the future.

After arriving at CSU I worked on two major things. The first thing that I did was to work on a timeline for the history of Akron. This will help me to put everything in order and have the project make sense to others when it is finally on the internet. Second was to search the other terms that Joanne had suggested. I looked for “marbles and polymers” to name a few. I also looked for articles by Helen Waterhouse but I did not find anything on any of the subjects. Though I did not find any new information I was happy to finish the timeline of Akron.

Day Eight, 900-1600, Total Time = 49 Hours, 40 Minutes

I had finished going through the collections yesterday and I talked with Bill today on what the next step will be. We talked about what I have found and how I went about researching the information. Bill suggested that I put together a short history of Akron, late 19^th through the 20^th centuries, not only for the project but to collect my thoughts also. I do not want to have all these items digitized and placed out of order or in a mixed up fashion. I had been using the internet to get information about Akron and Bill suggested finding a modern book on the history of Akron. He also suggested going to the Akron Public Library to talk with the people out there about the Summit/Akron Memory Project and ask if I was missing anything in my search. Even though this project is using the information found in Cleveland I do not want to leave anything out and the people working in Akron will be able to help. He also suggested talking with the librarians at Cleveland Public Library to see if they possibly wanted to add anything to the project. In regards to the Akron Memory Bill also suggested adding a link to the Summit County page so that it will be all inclusive. The project will aim for 150 photos. This is not a steadfast number but one to shoot for. There is the possibility to use some shots of Summit County if the usable photos fall short. Bill had given some suggestions as what kind of photos to conceder adding. They are looking for photos that tell a story, but also balancing with important photos that could be considered boring. I also went through the Cleveland Press articles for information about Akron, i.e. important events or buildings. I found a bit of information here but as of right now I am unsure what I will be using from here.

Day Seven, 900-1600, Total Time = 44 Hours 40 Minutes

Today I think that I have finished compiling the list of items that is held here at the special collections at Cleveland State University. Before I left last week I was talking with Bill and he informed me that there was a collection dedicated to Wilbur Watson. I found a finding aid for the Watson collection and there was quite a lot about the Akron Air Dock and the industry surrounding it. Today I also searched the American Memory Project and Ohio Heritage North East for information about Akron. A.M.P had more information than O.H.N.E. but most of it was about production during World War II in Akron. A.M.P. also had some photos of houses and the Air Dock. O.H.N.E. has information about Akron but it is very little and most of the pictures are held in Syracuse N.Y. Tomorrow I will talk with Bill about what the next step in the project will be. I am assuming that I maybe working on digitizing the information that I found, but I will find out tomorrow. There has been a lot of information found on Akron in this collection and I think that a possible focus on one or two major subjects that deal with Akron will help to narrow down the possibilities.

Day Six, 900-1600, Total Time = 37 Hours 40 Minutes

Today I continued to go through the Bruce Young collection, searching for anything that has to do with Akron. I started with railroads that ran through Akron, i.e. the B&O and Penn Lines. I found a couple of images of each but not a whole lot. I also found a few images that dealt with the old AB&O line. I searched in other categories to find information but these searches netted no results. The other topics I searched were; neighborhoods and suburbs.

Another search that I preformed was looking into streetcars in Akron. I saw that the Bruce Young collection had a large amount of pictures of streetcars so I first looked into what the streetcar company operated in Akron. The company went through many different names but finally in 1930 settled on Akron Transportation Company. I went to the file that was labeled “Streetcars A-CSS&CB”. The first file in the box was labeled Akron and it had many pictures of streetcars. Though streetcars had a relative short lifespan in Akron there were some good pictures showing O’Neil’s and the Mayflower Hotel. To me these pictures are more important in the story of Akron than the pictures of the streetcars.

Finally I went through a box labeled “Auto/Trucks, Airplanes, Blimps, Locomotives, Boats/Ships, and Misc. Streetcars”. The file that attracted me the most was the one labeled “Blimps”. This file had many different photos depicting the Goodyear Blimp, the Akron Air Dock, USS Macon, and the Graf Zeppelin. I did not expect to see this in the collection but it was a nice surprise. Between the Cleveland Press Collection and the Bruce Young Collection there are a lot of photos dealing with the aeronautics industry in Akron.

I realized that I have yet to provide the links to the docs that I have on Google Docs yet. They are as follows:

Search Terms:

https://docs.google.com/document/edit?id=1PtKJth3Is5jbF4I-wjA5s5dSRbhgP_yqdIYiVP2EQLw&hl=en

Search Term Findings, Cleveland Press Only:

https://docs.google.com/document/edit?id=1KpYNXrK7PjnCNPiNXKdiZM2vezmYxMW7kBuiSggX0fI&hl=en

Media List (Non Photos):

https://docs.google.com/document/edit?id=1ZsfstFTyfK4miFfj4xVNKCvDuFAICGjShECzhutHyDo&hl=en

Bruce Young Collection 1:

https://docs.google.com/document/edit?id=1WSKSLgW89O7pxJr-PMMa8Ju8lGpuTu7kz3aWuXlRoaA&hl=en

Bruce Young Collection 2:

https://docs.google.com/document/edit?id=1pPjI0F3_XBwcKhrFh0LBmH5ISoyniLO5MRXIs1AaxpM&hl=en

Day Five, 900-1600, Total Time = 30 Hours 40 Minutes

Today I picked up from where I left off on Friday. I finished going through the catalog for the Special Collections dealing with print material, i.e. non-photos. I used the CSU online catalog and searched using the subjects; Akron, Summit County, and University of Akron. From the list I only wrote down the items that could be found within the Special Collections. I found not only books but maps, videos, and serials. I put everything that I found into a list that is now up on Google Documents.

Bill had the idea to look for railroads that did not just originate within Akron but ones that could have passed through Akron. So I looked for stops or lines from B&O Railroads, C&O Railroads, and Pennsylvania Railroads. While searching for information on these I also found that there is an Akron Barberton Cluster Railway that is a little more modern. In regards to the B&O line they had two parts that dealt with Akron; The Akron Sub-Division and The Akron Chicago Line. The C&O did not go far enough East to reach Akron so they had no lines and Pennsylvania Railroad had one line in Akron; The Akron Branch which ran from Hudson to Columbus. I did not see if there is any information about these at the library yet. I will probably get to it tomorrow.

As stated on Friday I was going to call the Pro Football Hall of Fame about the crowd picture. After three calls I was finally able to get in contact with someone there. I explained my situation to Jon Kendle and he asked to have the picture e-mailed to him. He said that he was going to look for a score book or program from the game and get back to me about it via e-mail. I have yet to hear from him.

Finally I started to go through the Bruce Young Collection. This is a well cataloged collection with a lot of pictures, negatives, and glass slides. I was able to get through a box that was labeled with Akron City and it had quite a few pictures from Akron taken in the 30's and 40's. I have not yet looked at all the railroad pictures that are in the collection, but I plan on doing that tomorrow. A valuable lesson that I have learned up to this point is deductive reasoning. What I mean is that some of the photos are not labeled, Bruce Young and Cleveland Press, and from my knowledge of Akron I had to figure out what the picture was showing and where in Akron it is located. Granted with some of the older photos I have not been able to figure out what they are showing but due to my seeing the sites of Akron I am able to figure out most.Today I picked up from where I left off on Friday. I finished going through the catalog for the Special Collections dealing with print material, i.e. non-photos. I used the CSU online catalog and searched using the subjects; Akron, Summit County, and University of Akron. From the list I only wrote down the items that could be found within the Special Collections. I found not only books but maps, videos, and serials. I put everything that I found into a list that is now up on Google Documents.

Day Four, 900-1500, Total Time= 23 Hours 40 Minutes

Today I finally finished going through my search terms and the Cleveland Press collection. The subjects that I dealt with today are sports, transportation, and bridges. In sports I looked for information about the football, baseball, hockey, softball, and basketball teams that have resided in Akron. I did not find anything. Most of the teams were very early in the 20th century and I am not surprised that there was no information available in this collection. Next I focused on transportation. This included railroads, roads, and canals. I found many pictures on these topics because the Ohio Canal ran through Akron and the canal system is what put Akron on the map. Some of the pictures were labeled with lock numbers and I had to find what locks were found in Akron. There was a whole file dedicated to the AC&Y train line but nothing else in the general file. I also looked for roads in Akron but nothing turned up here either. Bridges did have some information available in the Akron General file mostly on the Main St Bridge and the renovation of the bridge.

I also revisited the 'crowd' picture from yesterday to see if I could find anymore information about it. I thought on my way to CSU this morning that it could have been a preseason game or a exhibition. I looked through NFL.com and other stat sites but did not find any information. I then e-mailed a friend that is a librarian and she suggested contacting the Pro Football Hall of Fame. I e-mailed the hall of fame and they suggested calling their archivist and ask them about the photo. I will do this next week.

Finally to round out my day I started to make a list of the books that the Special Collection department has on Akron. I will not limit my search on Akron alone I will also search for Summit County. In searching in the county the books that are here could have information about Akron.

Day Three, 9.00-16.00, Total Time= 17 Hours 40 Minutes

Today I did the same thing as on last Friday. I continued to work on my search terms that deal with Akron. I have not gone outside of the Cleveland Press Collection yet but I should be done with it soon. I went through the other industries found in Akron other than Rubber and Aerospace etc. This included newspapers, places, airports, landmarks, hotels, airships, and events, i.e. riots and murders.


Also today I went through the file labeled Akron-General. In this file I found a lot of things that I looked for on Friday. One of the biggest things that I found was pictures on the U.S.S. Macon. I looked for it on Friday but did not find any information. When going through the general file I found several pictures. In the general file I found many other photos that fit into other search terms that I had defined.


Finally, I spent some time on one photo to try and catalog it properly. It is a photo of a group of people in stands of a stadium or something of the sort. On the back of the picture it said "Rams-Giants, Akron Bowl" and the date stamped was 31 August 1942. I automatically assumed that it meant the Rubber Bowl which was built in 1940 and the Rams pertained to the Cleveland Rams the first NFL franchise in Cleveland. After some research I found that the Rams and Giants did not play in 1942 and in the previous years the two teams had played. However, they played in New York each time. I am not sure where to go with this photo but I think that if I move on then the solution will come to me.

Second Day, Time: 8.30-16.30, Total Time= 9 Hours 40 Minuets

Today I was able to dive into my project. After Lyn showed me the in's and out's of the finding aid and where all the photos were located I started the project. Anyone who knows a little about the history of Ohio knows that Akron was the "Rubber Capital of the World", so everyone would first think about the rubber plants and tire making companies. The next thing that I thought of was the Akron Air Dock and everything that deals with airplanes, blimps, and space. After that I was at a loss as to where to go next. After that I started by searching the internet for iconic aspects of the city of Akron. This brought out many different people, places, and things for me to search in the archive. After writing down the information I found I typed the information into a coherent list, this list is on Google Docs and I can provide you access at any time.

After defining the terms that I wanted to search I started to use the finding aid for the Cleveland Press Collection. I started with the names that I found but this turned up nothing. After a few of the bigger names of Akron, i.e. Perkins, O'Neil, Seiberling, etc., I decided to change my search subject. I moved to the neighborhoods of Akron. There was a little information found here but not a whole lot. Next I moved to the Blimps and the industry surrounding it. Here I found a lot more information than the other searches that I preformed. The next thing that I started to search was area Churches, Synagogues, and Temples. This did not net many results either. Finally I searched the rubber industry and here is where I found the most information for the day’s work. I found pictures on almost everything that I searched and some things that I did not know that I was looking for.

Something that I discovered was that I could find pictures about Akron in "General..." folders. This I did not expect but it does make sense, because this is a Cleveland Collection and why would there be a folder for one or two pictures of Akron when they could be placed into a larger folder. All of my findings are on Google Docs and just ask if you want access to them. I still have a lot of work ahead of me because I have not finished my search term list and I have only looked at one collection.

First Day, Time: 13.00-14.40, Total Time: 1 hour, 40 minutes

Today was my first day of my practicum. I met with Bill and we set out what my practicum will involve. We found that me living in Akron was a good place to start. The area that I will be working in is the Special Collections; this is not the traditional library environment. In that I will not be dealing with a lot of people and this practicum will be more of a project that will take all 150 hours. The project will start with me looking through the holdings of the library to find what they hold in regards to Akron and Summit County. Bill suggested that I look for Akron, Bridges, major infrastructure, the Rubber Industry, the Siberlings, government, major employers, i.e. Firestone, Goodyear, etc., neighborhoods and the Akron Air Dock. This is not a finite list but some of the idea that we kicked around in regards to the subjects that surround Akron. I really like the idea of this project because I live in Akron and I feel that living here will help me to understand and better convey the story of Akron via the Cleveland Memory Project.

Along with what my project will entail, we talked about the infrastructure of the Cleveland Memory project. This includes the areas of the Western Reserve and south. I found out that the project uses Multi-Site Server, M.S.S., between several schools and library systems. All of these systems use CONTENTdm for their metadata and this made it easy to pool all of their resources under one harvester, Ohio's Heritage Northeast. This makes good, rich, metadata very important because patrons researching can search a topic and find the information that they are looking for. With the O.H.N. the user can click on a picture and the site will direct them to the website of the library that holds the resource. I look forward to working on this project and I think that this will be good experience.