{"id":259,"date":"2018-03-31T13:29:56","date_gmt":"2018-03-31T17:29:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/slis.simmons.edu\/blogs\/lis476\/?p=259"},"modified":"2018-03-31T13:29:56","modified_gmt":"2018-03-31T17:29:56","slug":"meet-kate-bradley-archivist-and-research-librarian-at-the-flagler-museum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/slis.simmons.edu\/blogs\/lis476\/?p=259","title":{"rendered":"Meet Kate Bradley, Archivist and Research Librarian at the Flagler Museum"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Karen Duhamel<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"
Picture from \u201cNEH-Funded Projects Completed.\u201d Inside Whitehall 22, no. 3 (Summer 2015): 4.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Kate Bradley, Archivist and Research Librarian of Palm Beach, Florida\u2019s Flagler Museum, came to cultural heritage, archives, and her current position through what she calls a \u201cweird series of events\u201d driven by a lifelong love of learning about history.\u00a0 These events included the pursuit of a Bachelor of Arts in History and French from Skidmore College, a Master of Library and Information Science and a Master of Arts in History, both from Simmons College, as well as a stint as Director of Engagement and Special Collections for the Calvin Coolidge Memorial Foundation.<\/p>\n

Her experience with outreach and advocacy, however, has been much more straightforward.\u00a0 As Director of Engagement and Special Collections, Bradley worked to fundraise for the organization, as well as plan programs and activities, honing skills which she brought with her to the Flagler, where outreach and advocacy are more complicated.\u00a0 Unlike those of the Calvin Coolidge Memorial Foundation, the Flagler Museum Archives are closed to the public, finding aids are not shared, and none of the collection is online, limiting Bradley\u2019s interactions with the public.\u00a0 Also complicating matters is the fact that museum has not prioritized outreach in the past.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s hard,\u201d she says, \u201cwhen the institution in question hasn\u2019t done much in the past.\u00a0 You\u2019re basically building it from scratch, and you might experience some pushback.\u201d\u00a0 Not to be discouraged, she advises \u201cyou have to understand that pushback, where they\u2019re coming from and how to work through that to get to a point where you are bringing archives out more and showing it to more people and just getting more people interested in it.\u201d\u00a0 Bradley does this in a number of ways, promoting the archives to parties both inside and outside of the museum, starting with the fielding of traditional research questions and an expansion of the museum\u2019s use of social media.<\/p>\n

Beyond those questions and social media posts, Bradley starts with the museum\u2019s docents.\u00a0 As part of their training, Bradley introduces docents to the archives and talks with them about the collections she keeps secreted away, explaining how the collections are and can be used.\u00a0 By keeping the docents informed, Bradley makes sure that they \u201cbetter understand their roles\u201d and are capable of sharing their knowledge of the archives and relevant history with museum visitors during tours.<\/p>\n

A second critical group of stakeholders that Bradley targets within the internal structure of the institution is the museum members, which she does through the museum\u2019s quarterly membership magazine.\u00a0 In each issue of this magazine, entitled Inside Whitehall<\/em>, Bradley includes an article relating to the archives.\u00a0 These articles, which might be about a unique item that was found in the collection or about a research project that was undertaken to answer a research question or to help create an exhibit, allow members to see behind the curtain, as it were, and understand how their donations are put to use by the archives, and thus (hopefully) justifying the archives existence in the minds of members.<\/p>\n

Bradley also does important work to help students understand what her archives, and archives in general, have to offer.\u00a0 Firstly, at the Flagler, she meets with groups of visiting schoolchildren and explains what primary sources are and how to use them.\u00a0 Secondly, Bradley works outside of the museum by taking part in National History Day. In the past, she has used her expertise in historical and archival methods to serve as a judge at the state and county levels of students\u2019 historical works such as documentaries and papers, though she was unable to partake in this year\u2019s programming.\u00a0 Her involvement with National History Day allows her to share her \u201cskills as an archivist and history professional to help these students grow in their own fields and understanding.\u201d<\/p>\n

The final outreach project that Bradley discussed was one has allowed her to bring items from the archives to the museum floor.\u00a0 In order to draw further attention to unique items in the collections, beyond what Bradley has been able to articulate in her Inside Whitehall <\/em>articles, she has worked to create so-called \u201cpop-up exhibits\u201d or \u201cspotlight cases\u201d within the museum proper.\u00a0 These exhibits are small, thematic, and temporary (the current exhibits about Presidents Day and Valentine’s Day run through the first half of March), and are designed to \u201chighlight pieces from [the] archival collection that really have never been seen before.\u201d\u00a0 It\u2019s \u201creally nice,\u201d she says \u201cbecause we\u2019ve really been able to bring some stuff out that I think is awesome but nobody ever gets the chance to see.\u201d<\/p>\n

For more information on the Flagler Museum, visit https:\/\/www.flaglermuseum.us\/<\/a>.\u00a0 Also see the NEH 50 States of Preservation article on the museum at http:\/\/bit.ly\/2kMtlNd<\/a>.\u00a0 To learn more about National History Day, visit https:\/\/www.nhd.org\/<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Karen Duhamel Kate Bradley, Archivist and Research Librarian of Palm Beach, Florida\u2019s Flagler Museum, came to cultural heritage, archives, and her current position through what she calls a \u201cweird series of events\u201d driven by a lifelong love of learning about history.\u00a0 These events included the pursuit of a Bachelor of Arts in History and … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Meet Kate Bradley, Archivist and Research Librarian at the Flagler Museum”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":433,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[20577,613],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-259","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cultural-heritage-professionals","category-museums"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/slis.simmons.edu\/blogs\/lis476\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/slis.simmons.edu\/blogs\/lis476\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/slis.simmons.edu\/blogs\/lis476\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/slis.simmons.edu\/blogs\/lis476\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/433"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/slis.simmons.edu\/blogs\/lis476\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=259"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/slis.simmons.edu\/blogs\/lis476\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":261,"href":"https:\/\/slis.simmons.edu\/blogs\/lis476\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259\/revisions\/261"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/slis.simmons.edu\/blogs\/lis476\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=259"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/slis.simmons.edu\/blogs\/lis476\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=259"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/slis.simmons.edu\/blogs\/lis476\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=259"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}