Heather Szafran

I never know where I’m gonna wind up when I get up in the morning; that’s half the fun of waking up, for sure. Sometimes that very phenomenon stretches over days, months years–forever, it seems–and it is through such serendipitous happenings that I wound up in Simmons College’s epic Archives Management program within the Graduate School of Library and Information Science (GSLIS) this January.

Boston is home; I grew up around here, about 25 miles north of the city. When I get excited, my accent comes out like gangbusters, inviting ridicule from non-Bostonians. That made my New England mannerisms and speech patterns particularly aberrant when I lived in Raleigh, North Carolina, from 2010 until just last September. North Carolina State University granted me a full scholarship and a teaching fellowship to their American Literature MA program, so I did what any right-minded full-time graduate student would do after being accepted: I went hunting for internships to add to my jam-packed schedule. After a couple weeks of poking around the Research Triangle’s many museums, libraries, and universities, I found the perfect fit.

I have worn many hats over the past decade: darkroom manager, podiatry biller, operations manager for a biotech startup, high school English teacher, industrial painter, molten iron performance artist, yogini, wedding photographer, and…unpaid intern at the North Carolina State Archives, where I completely revamped their World War I map collection (read: scavenged, arranged, rehoused, described, digitized, entered in MARS, and wrote a 102-page finding aid for 500+ items). My internship had an unexpected consequence: I found myself falling riotously in love with archiving.

Kenny Simpson and Druscie Simpson, two of the most amazing humans on the planet (and highly skilled archivists, to boot), wound up as my supervisors and mentors. Through their guidance I got a taste of provenance, LC subject headings, time management on a large scale, basic preservation, and journeyman detective skills. I found myself speaking knowledgeably about German paper stock from the early 20th century and other esotericism related to the Great War as a result of their tutelage and my work. Through their persistent encouragement, I also realized that as much as I enjoyed my research in my MA program at NC State, I genuinely loved preparing collections for use by our enthusiastic researchers. I knew that Kenny and Druscie were right: I needed to attend library school and pursue archiving as a career?and adventure.

Kim Anderson, the non-textual materials archivist at the State Archives, encouraged me to apply to Simmons’ strong Archiving program. She knew the faculty would foster my interests and skills in photographic archival materials, and that the working relationships I built while in Boston would set the tone for a richly successful career.

My decision to move back up North and face the grey winters here became easier the more I learned about Simmons. I did a significant amount of research about ALA programs, but again and again, Simmons yielded what I suspected to be the best fit: a small, selective program in which faculty focuses not on grades and classroom exercises, but on building library professionals who have a firm grasp on why their careers exist?and where they are going with the advent of an increasingly digital age. Although it is but my first semester in GSLIS, I already know I made the right choice to become part of such a vibrant community of LIS innovators, and I am very much excited to see where my career before and after graduation takes me.