On the Monday of this week I arrived at Colbourn Hall and entered the RICHES office where my internship was to take place. I met Mrs. Wojtyto and together we went over all the files that made up the archive of the First Unitarian Church of Orlando. These files dated from the early 1900's to our present time and consisted of newspaper adds, letters, photographs, printed records along with many other types of material. While the abundance of archival material interested me there were two collections that caught my attention at first glance. The first was a box of documents concerning Adele Fuchs, a woman who traveled to German during the 1930's in order to find a church. She wrote extensively about what life was like in that location through her letters and they detailed the rise of Nazism. The second collection that interested me was a folder of documents concerning the Orlando Ministerial Association, an interfaith and interracial group of clergymen who championed civil rights activities during the years 1958-1965. Viewing these collections I was drawn towards the one concerning the Orlando Ministerial Association. The text of the OMA papers was very eligible, being printed and its ties to the civil rights movement in Florida I found to be interesting. I have always been interested in Florida history and being able to look at these primary sources excited me. I decided that I would make this collection my primary focus. After making this decision I learned how to operate the scanners thanks to the direction of Mr. Geoffrey Cravero. Knowing how to use the scanners, I began scanning some of the documents while researching the First Unitarian Church of Orlando's history.

On the second day I learned how to enter metadata concerning the documents I was scanning. I was already familiar with the concept but it was not until I began entering the data that I realized how much work went into assembling it and how much information it encompassed. I entered the metadata in an excel spreadsheet that was provided by Mr. Cravero and found out that entering the metadata was a time consuming process. However, this process allowed me to glean a lot of useful information from the documents. The documents I scanned were mostly printed records of the meetings held by the OMA. I found these documents very revealing and was fascinating reading information about such an inclusive organization that existed in a very unlikely place. The documents I scanned mostly concerned the internal workings of the association but the member's enthusiasm was very apparent, especially the enthusiasm of the late reverend John Fuller. John Fuller was a reverend of the First Unitarian Church and the secretary of the association, being an author of all the documents I scanned. I found John Fuller to be a fascinating man and Mrs. Wojtyto promised that she would find some records of his sermons so I could have a look at them. My hope is that by looking at his sermons I can learn more about John Fuller and maybe more about the Orlando Ministerial Association.