The Alma Mater Society is UBC's student body government, and was constituted in 1915. The AMS Archives holds historical materials dating from this time and into the present, consisting of written records, publications, meeting minutes, photos, videos, and an ever-expanding digital record, including emails from executive leaders. Working this position spurred an interest in local histories and the importance of keeping record.
As an assistant, I worked with a small team of 3 other students to maintain existing materials, archive incoming items, and provide research for interested parties. Regular tasks involved archiving incoming emails, digital files, and physical files using various technologies such as Outlook, Access, and Excel, as well as managing up to date file lists and location guides. One of the most rewarding aspects of this position was completing research requests from AMS staff, students, and the general public. This involved using archive materials in conjunction with online research to find answers to historical questions, and finding ways to relay the information to the interested party. Often this meant finding historical precedent for new policy, or helping students with their research projects.
One of my individual projects was digitizing Student Council minutes dating 1915-2004. This task involved unbinding the minutes if they were bound, scanning, ensuring that the image was able to be OCR'd and using Photoshop to touch it up otherwise, and compiling PDF documents that were easy to access for future Archive users. I found this project incredibly rewarding because it felt like I was preserving student advocacy from the past and ensuring them a permanent historical record.
Another project was uploading a large portion of the digital and physical photographic archive to a publicly accessible web platform, available here. This involved ensuring the photos were OK to be uploaded through a set of criteria, scanning the physical images and retouching if needed, researching for metadata and adding it to the files, and ensuring access identifiers matched between our internal system and the online platforms'. I believe strongly in open access to information such as these photos, and hope that I played a role in answering a research question or simply sparking somebody's interest in the student history of UBC.