Day 1: What is Eugenics?

Today's activities centered around orientation, paperwork and laying the groundwork for an awesome internship. After a group meeting, it was agreed upon that I would take on three projects:

* a soup-to-nuts accession project culminating in the creation of a machine readable finding aid

* a photo digitization project for inclusion in CSHL digital collection of events photos. 

* work with the grant writer to complete work on an IMLS grant project by identifying eugenics resources for inclusion in the repository's collection

After a morning of paperwork and running around campus for IDs and permits, I was STARVING, so a nice quiet lunch was totally in order.

My ID makes the internship feel so official!!!

The afternoon was focused on familiarizing myself with the topic of eugenics--it's history, key players and it's role in starting the quantitative biology movement. 

The first collection I am working with is a small collection on Clarence Gordon Campbell, one of the past presidents of the Eugenics Research Association and a prolific contributor to Eugenic News. So applying best practices learned in Intro to Archives, I took to researching a basic history of eugenics and the key players using resources available through CSHL collections and then external sources (the notes taken will be included in the finding aid as a historical note). Check out a brief history of the Eugenics Record Office at CSHL (f.k.a. Carnegie Institute of Washington Station).

It is amazing how quickly eugenics was turned from science into an outlet for racism. As a result,  many organizations changed their names repeatedly to distance themselves from those individuals who caused eugenics to become synonymous with racism. 

Tomorrow's activity:  review and examine the contents of each box and folder for contents, condition and structure.

See y'all tomorrow!

LT