The New York City Department of Records and Information Services (DORIS) offers internships to high school and college students throughout the year. This summer DORIS partnered with the New York City-based non-profit organization, PENCIL, to again participate in their internship program. PENCIL’s internship program matches interns with local organizations and businesses to provide career readiness training, connections to professional mentors, and a paid summer internship. In return, the organizations and businesses benefit from the work completed by the interns and from the relationships fostered with the intern and wider community.

The Municipal Archives hosted PENCIL intern Saadia Islam to begin the transcription of the messages written on supports from September 11 anniversary commemorations. The September 11 memorial transcription project is an ongoing project initiated this summer that will conclude when all of the written messages are transcribed.   

The Municipal Archives holds numerous collections documenting the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, including wooden beams inscribed with messages.  Comprising fifty-six pieces, they are the wooden supports for the temporary reflecting pools that were constructed on the footprints of the two World Trade Center towers destroyed by the attacks on September 11, 2001. Prior to the opening of the 9/11 Memorial and Museum, anniversary the temporary pools were the location of memorial services held for the families who lost loved ones.  Attendees left mementos such as stuffed animals, notes and flowers.  They also inscribed handwritten messages on the wooden supports. Municipal Archives staff collected many of the items and supports annually between 2002 and 2009  after each commemoration concluded.

In 2020, DORIS hired photographer Stephen Mallon to document the messages written on the supports. In many instances the writing is fading and preserving the information in digital images was the best preservation strategy. In 2021, in preparation for the start of the transcription project, Digitization Specialist, Matt Minor, meticulously numbered each message inscribed on the supports. With each inscription assigned a number, Saadia worked within a spreadsheet to transcribe more than 450 messages.  The transcriptions completed by Saadia form the background of a banner that will be displayed at the non-profit Photoville event that opens in September, “Messages to Those We’ve Lost: 9/11 Memorial Railings.”

Staff archivist Patricia Glowinski talked with intern Saadia Islam about her project:

PG: Tell me about your background, how you became a PENCIL intern, and why you were interested in working at the New York City Municipal Archives for your internship? 

SI: I graduated from Boston University this May with a double major in International Relations and Linguistics. I originally went in as an IR major, but I was always intrigued by language and the power of it, so I took an introduction to Linguistics class. I fell in love with it and decided that the hassle of overloading on credits for 2.5 years was worth adding Linguistics as my second major.

I actually have worked with PENCIL in the past and first heard about it through a friend. It is a great program with incredible summer internship opportunities for students. Since I did not want to jump straight into a full-time job after graduating because I wanted to dedicate a good portion of my time to studying for the LSAT, I thought that finding an internship through PENCIL would be a good option. Through PENCIL, I was able to find the transcriber internship at the Municipal Archives. I was always aware of the deep and rich history of New York, being born and raised here. I knew that there were archives in the city, but I never ventured into it in the past since I never realized that it was open to the general public. When I heard about the position at the archives, I was ecstatic about getting a deeper understanding about archives and getting the experience working for one. Having the chance to work with texts and historical documents seemed like a dream job for me and I could not have asked for a better internship experience.

PG: You have previously worked at that Lighthouse Guild International as an intern/teaching assistant where you gained skills as a trained sighted guide, reader, and notetaker. Has this experience informed your work transcribing the handwritten notes on the memorial risers for the Municipal Archives?

SI: It definitely has! I developed many skills that could be translated into the work I did for the Municipal Archives through working with visually impaired adults looking to go to college (or go back in some cases). For example, it was imperative that I refrain from adding myself into anything that I may have been typing up or writing down for them when working with the adults. It is a task that requires a great deal of patience and cognizance because it is easy to input oneself into anything that one does without realizing it. I was able to translate this skill into my transcription work. Preserving the content in its original state without any sort of modification from myself meant that I had to pause and take care to authentically replicate what I saw whether it was incorrect spelling or a lack of punctuation or grammar rules.

PG: Tell me more about your project.  What has been the biggest challenge? What has been the most surprising/interesting?

SI: I worked on transcribing messages from loved ones of those who were lost during 9/11. There are wooden beams where family and friends can write messages every year on the anniversary. Since I was working remotely, I used high definition photos of the beams to transcribe what was written down.

The biggest challenge was the overwhelming sense of grief and the gravity of what I was transcribing. The families went through tremendous loss. Seeing pure grief and sorrow is always hard, I can only imagine the magnitude of it for those who lost someone. Something that I did not expect from this experience was to somehow get to “know” the victims through different family members or friends’ eyes due to there often being multiple messages addressing each person. I felt like this allowed memories of them to live on and never forget.

PG: Because of the Covid-19 pandemic your internship has been completely remote apart from one site visit and tour of the New York City Municipal Archives. How has this experience been for you? Has there been challenges and/or benefits?

SI: Shifting into working remotely has probably been strange for most people but it does have its benefits. I am grateful for the opportunity of being able to go in for a site visit and tour since it helped me ground my internship experience physically. Working completely online with digital images can become monotonous or tiring in long intervals and it is easy to lose sight of what one works on, but the tour helped solidify the feeling of actually working with archives.

One challenge I had was the legibility of the handwritten messages. There was a lot of messy handwritings which could be deciphered but the digital images sometimes limited the legibility of faded notes or smudged notes because of the pixilation. I am usually good at being able to read just about most handwritings, but I think it is a bit different and more helpful to be able to manipulate the object with the text physically. Nonetheless, the photos were of great quality for the most part and working remotely has been a good experience. I do like the added perk of working in pajamas all day!

PG: Now I am going to put you to the ultimate archivist challenge! During your internship you have been reading about what archives are and what archivists do. As archivists, we try to have an “elevator speech” ready to explain to others what archives are, what archivists do, and (most importantly) why archives matter. Basically, it’s a concise statement that could be expressed in the time it takes to ride an elevator with someone, say thirty seconds or so. What would be your elevator speech about what archives are and why they matter?

SI: Archives are generally somewhere where information, resources, and primary sources are gathered and preserved by archivists. There are many different types of archives and most contain sources of historical records and documents or anything of value that archivists organize and keep in as best condition as possible for anyone looking to access the information. It is essential for maintaining a comprehensive historical record and to learn about and from the past.

The Municipal Archives is grateful to Saadia for her work on the first phase of the transcription project.  We are recruiting volunteers to assist in transcribing the content of the remaining supports.  As she noted, the contents are very moving and important to preserve. We welcome volunteers to engage with the transcription project.