Tag Archives | archives

The Love Letter: Sharing Wisdom on a Curious Kinship

It’s fall, or leaning towards fall, and I’ve been thinking these days about the wisdom inadvertently passed on from any given collection of personal papers. As an archivist, I recognize my curious kinship with the collections on which I work … like the reader who stumbles onto marginalia wedged into the inner margin of a book page, I can’t help but read between the lines and imagine a back story.

These days, I’ve been immersed in a collection of love letters. I am working on companion collections held at Vassar’s archives and special collections library. Most archival collections generally contain only correspondence received by the collection’s donor. In the case of these two complementary collections of beloved faculty members, I am faced with the somewhat unusual opportunity of reading through letters from both author and recipient. read more

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My Italian Summer: Tracing a Family Tree in a Sicilian Archive

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In the day-to-day work life managing a variety of archives here in the NYC metro area, I recognize how easily I can forget the extraordinary meaning of this work for that occasional end-user who finds him/herself on a mission with passionate meaning. This was the summer my husband and I traveled to Sicily, with an intention to spend time in the homeland of both his parents – a trip that was long in the planning, and short in its hope to locate lost relatives during our brief stay. We were going on very little. A cell phone image texted to us from a Staten Island nephew – a faded image of a house that looked like every other house in Floridia and an image of two small boys standing arm in arm, from the late 1980s. How could this possibly mean anything? read more

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The Mystery of Mahler’s Unfinished Tenth Symphony

Carpenter's Rendition of Mahler's Tenth Symphony, Cubic Footnotes

The itinerant archivist moves from repository to repository, ushering documents of note from states of jetsam/flotsam – often brimming from cardboard boxes once holding bottles of Smirnoff – into a state of order and meaning. Papers are shepherded into acid-free folders and boxes, where even the most cursory “To Do” list, meandering thought, or errant postcard suddenly, and finally, becomes — an objet.

I am continually inspired by this process.

I am inspired both by the physicality of handling the material and providing insight into its contents, as well as, and perhaps in particular, the chance to have yet another conversation with a being who completed an extraordinary life’s work. There is always a curious backstory lurking there, beyond the apparent reason why an individual’s papers are being preserved in perpetuity. read more

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Like A Note Being Passed To Me Through Time: Doodles at The National Archives at New York City

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CHATTING WITH ARCHIVIST BONNIE SAUER about the stupendous doodles she found embellishing U.S. District Court Law Dockets, circa 1920s and 1930s

Bonnie Marie Sauer is currently the Records Management Officer at the U.S Mission to the UN.  She was an Archivist for more than seven years at the National Archives at New York City. Prior to that, she worked at the Winthrop Group where she processed the Peter W. Rodino, Jr. papers.

COLLECTION: Law Dockets created by the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York read more

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Like Sending a Message in a Bottle : Peering into a Collection at Oregon Historical Society

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Oregon Historical Society Research Library, James Anctil Papers (1930 -1997)

CONVERSATION WITH ARCHIVIST GEOFFREY WEXLER
Pondering the inner life of a Portland-based artist discovered within the pages of his diary.

Geoffrey Wexler is an archivist and artist friend who made a strong impression on me early in my career.  Geoff created a meticulous foundation for the ongoing development of the Robert Wilson Archives, and, I am sure, unknowingly inspired me to be detail-driven in an artful way.  I have always admired his aesthetic sensibility and how he managed to incorporate an artist’s eye into the structure of Robert Wilson’s collection.  Geoffrey Wexler is Library Director at the Oregon Historical Society. read more

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