Day 2

 Daily hours: 7

Total hours: 14

My time today doing my senior project went by in a flash. I started off the day continuing what I had left off with yesterday: organizing! I surprised myself with my speed because I finished clearing and organizing three shelves all before lunchtime. Yesterday it took me the whole day to get through three shelves so I was happy. I think I worked a lot faster today because I now understand my system and the categories make sorting simple. Despite sorting the books quickly I came across some shocking books. Some of the titles I found today were: The Vanishing White Man, Our Wild Indians, and Two Little Savages. Not only were the titles awful, but so was the content of the books. It is crazy and a little horrifying to face the reality of how Native people are viewed in these books. It is hard to think how readily available these books were to the public and how they could have reinforced harmful narratives about Indigenous people. 

After lunch, I headed to the front of the library to start getting the books I knew were a-okay onto the main shelves. Heidi snapped this picture of me while I was putting books about religion and philosophy of Native Americans onto the shelf. I created some more categories than I had yesterday which were about BIA reports and legal information, notable Native people, ecology, and gender and sexuality. Heidi and I also decided that the section I had created on Native languages could go to the archive because the books are so hyper-specific.

At the end of the day, this is what that shelf looked like. It needs more organizing and polishing for sure and it will forever be an ongoing process but I am very proud of the progress I have made so far. I need to figure out which books I want to face outward/are the most eye-catching. I also want to get a more critical eye on the sections on general history and information. All the books on the shelf currently have accurate and non-offensive information but I want to make sure that only the best of the best is on this display. The rest of the general information and history books will head towards the back of the library so that if people want to do more research they can head there. We want this display to be approachable, interesting, and engaging so it needs some more work to get there. 

Tonight I will send an email to the department heads since they have a meeting tomorrow. I will ask them to mention what I am doing in my senior project and if any of the people are interested in talking to me that they should shoot me a message. Tomorrow I will work on more organizing of the back and front shelves. I want to reach out to my family and Native friends to see if there are any books they love that we are missing from the collection. One way that I can get a better idea of which books are missing that we must add is by seeing what the courses at Proctor could implement. Hopefully, this is something that I can accomplish through interviewing and chatting with the educators here. I also need to figure out some concrete goals of what I want to accomplish by the end of my project. I want to walk away feeling satisfied while also knowing that this collection will always be a work in progress.