The Archivist

Hi! I?m Claudia and am currently in my first semester of the dual-degree program for archives management and history. I graduated this past May from Simmons College with a Bachelor of Arts in history and a minor in East Asian studies. I am obsessed with the American presidency and have a personal goal to read a biography on every president (4 down, 40 to go). After GSLIS I hope to work in an academic/university archive or in a presidential library and museum. When I kick off my academic shoes and relax I enjoy books, running, wine, the Red Sox and pie.

Introduction to John Hay and Michael Gizzi

The big oak doors are opened to student workers at 9:00 AM; the library does not open to the general public until 10:00 AM. Walking into the John Hay Library at Brown University for the first time felt as intimidating as writing this first blog post. I move forward confidently reflecting on how incredible my first experience with a collection that is mine went.

The project I am assisting on, Revealing Brown?s Hidden Archival and Manuscript Collections, is funded by a National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC) grant. The John Hay Library was awarded a two-year Basic Processing Grant of $141,455 from NHPRC to make accessible 892 archival and manuscript collections. This project will reveal a number of significant collections, papers, and records held in Manuscripts and University Archives. These include the papers of prominent literary figures, gay writers, poets, screenwriters, scientists, historians, Brown faculty and alumni, and the records of small presses, literary magazines, and cultural, arts, political, and activist organizations. The grant will support a full-time processing archivist to survey 6,500 linear feet of ?hidden? archival and manuscript collections and create catalog records and Encoded Archival Description (EAD) finding aids. In addition, Archivists? Toolkit will be implemented in order to manage archival and manuscript collections through a single database.

In the following eight weeks, I anticipate working with two or three collections. My first collection is the papers of Michael Gizzi (or, to me, MS 2011. 025). My posts will follow my adventures through protecting, constructing, and accounting for Michael Gizzi?s and others? contributions to the Brown community and the research community at large by developing finding aids, accession and assessment records, and all of the other cool archives lingo I can manage to conjure up during my posts. Hopefully, you?ll get a sense of what it is like working on a grant-funded project and the turmoil a new archivist feels as a tiny fish in a giant lake.