Ina Archer, PEN American Center, Fall 2016, NEH
Established in 1922, and located in New York City, PEN American Center is a leading Human Rights and Literary Organization that celebrates and defends creative expression. The organization tirelessly advocates for writers who face political oppression and censorship, and they work to liberate unjustly imprisoned literary artists around the globe, urging freedom of expression regardless of race, ethnicity, gender, sexual preference, religious belief, nationality, language or political affiliation.
The audio and video collections contain documentation of PEN American Center's myriad events like PEN Congresses, panels, open meetings, Prison Writing Awards, readings, symposia, televised events, interviews and PBS produced television programs. The luminaries featured in the content are many, including Toni Morrison, Bharati Mukherjee, Susan Sontag, John Edgar Wideman, Arthur Miller, Salman Rushdie and Joyce Carol Oates.
PEN is preparing to roll out their archival holdings in February 2017 and most of my tasks were connected to facilitating discovery of the content for future visitors to the website. I worked with catalogers listening to audio recordings and viewing videos files to write descriptive metadata. Additionally, towards the latter part of the internship, I worked on "The M-Word," born-digital content about Muslim Identity in the US that will be incorporated directly into the PEN American archive. This project provided an opportunity to experience some born-digital preservation and research.
June Jordon
