We regularly feature the interns whose hard work positively impacts the Library. Today’s interview is with a 2022 participant in the Fall cohort of the Library of Congress Internships (LOCI) program, Eliana Carter.
Describe your background.
My name is Eliana Carter, and I was born and raised in the small agricultural town of Winters in Northern California. I have lived in Northern California all my life, and I appreciate the natural and rugged beauty that this region offers. I grew up on a small farm and am the oldest of three children. The importance of hard work and perseverance was instilled in me from a young age.
What is your academic/professional history?
My educational path was not the most straightforward, and it took me a while to figure out what I wanted to do. I attended my local community college on and off for eight years while I worked full-time. I decided to pursue history for my undergraduate degree, as this was a subject I had always loved. I transferred from Sacramento City College to the University of California, Davis in 2017 and graduated in 2019. After this, I decided to further my education and pursue my master’s in history at California State University, Sacramento.
How would you describe your job to other people?
As a special project intern at the National Library Service for the Blind and Print Disabled (NLS), I worked on several historical collections and helped to inventory and survey these collections. These projects required me to collect metadata so that NLS may establish the collection for future processing, preservation, and reformatting to eventually make the collections available to the public.
Why did you want to work at the Library of Congress?
Growing up, my favorite pastime was reading, and I had always hoped that somehow my love of reading and libraries would feature in my adult life in some way. Libraries not only represented wisdom and knowledge to me but also allowed me to escape to new worlds through the endless array of books I had access to growing up at my local library. The Library of Congress is world-renowned, as an educational institution and library, where all kinds of knowledge is stored, from maps, photographs, books, manuscripts, audio recordings, movies, comic books, and so forth. The Library of Congress represents to me a place of vast knowledge and wisdom, as well as a space where people can work together to further the mission of the library, and engage with and inform the American public.
What is the most interesting fact you have learned about the Library of Congress?
The Geography and Map Division of the library is impressive due to the sheer amount of material and objects it contains. With over 5 million maps, the Geography and Map Division contains the largest and most extensive collection of cartographic material in the world. I have spent hours looking through the scanned items that the Geography and Map Division has added to their online map collections.
What is something most of your co-workers do not know about you?
I know how to play four instruments: clarinet; tenor saxophone; tin whistle; and bass guitar.