This blog post was written by Sarafina Bryant-Miller, a summer 2024 intern in Towson University’s Special Collections and University Archives department, and student at Notre Dame Preparatory high school in Towson, Maryland. 

My experience here in the Towson Special Collections and University Archives has been greatly appreciated. I have learned skills that are going to be beneficial to my success in whatever field I choose. Before doing an internship here at Towson, I had a little bit of an idea of what I would be getting into with the little knowledge I had from previous applications to other archivist internships in the DMV area.

Before coming to TU, I did not expect them to have such a large collection of records. The collections that Towson has available show how beneficial it is to have a place like Towson that protects and preserves records from all different time periods. When working at Towson I wrote a wiki on a man by the name of Whitney Leblanc who was the first black faculty member at Towson.

The assignment that I was given was to research and analyze Mr. Leblanc’s accomplishments at Towson University and throughout his career. I also wrote about how his accomplishments impacted Towson University’s history. While researching information for this assignment there were many resources that were a vital tool to helping me complete the assignment. The university’s newspaper the Towerlight was very helpful in writing my paper, as well as the interview from The Unearthing Towson’s History Project. I also found it helpful looking at the historical newspapers in the database. Specifically, the Baltimore Sun which had direct quotes from speeches that gave me historical context and were difficult to find on the web.

This internship has helped my writing, research, and reading comprehension skills in many ways. I am now able to take these newly learned skills and put it to my classes throughout my educational and professional career.