Archival Ardor

I have always had an interest in culture and history, and as Eudora Welty calls it, "a sense of place." Growing up in the South tends to foster a personal sentimentality for items which have been handed down generation to generation. One desires to care for these items and to make sure that no harm comes to them and the memories they hold. Photographs are the easiest example of such items. What can be captured on film is preserved for the lifespan of that photograph. The faces of family members, the costumes of a little girl, the fashion of a certain era, the relationships between individuals: these are just examples of the information photographs provide. Letters give personal accounts of war, relationships, society, and other concerns. They can be the primary sources of information for a scholar's research about certain concepts and ideas held at the time the letters were written. The same with journals, as they give accounts of daily life in a way which may prove more personal and truthful. Artifacts such as shoes, uniform pins, plaques, and clothing may seem bulky, but they hold as much value as any other documentary materials. For example, in the Oseola McCarty Collection at USM, there is her own Levi Straus denim jacket which has a red rose and slogan "It Ain't Nothin' But a She Thing" embroidered on the back. Her white organdy nurse's cap is kept in a hat box. These are items of her everyday life that others associated with Oseola McCarty when they met with her. Then, there's newspaper clippings. As one could tell when looking through newspapers 30 and 40 years ago, society and culture has changed. Newspapers help provide a record of this change through their articles and through their advertisements. All these items help portray what culture and society was like for a certain era.

Working in an archives allows for me to pursue several of my interests at the same time. I enjoy learning about culture and history through artifacts, letters, photographs, newspaper clippings, and whatever else can be found in an archives. While creating Finding Aids and other documents for collections, one has to perform some research to properly describe and account for the items in the collection. These sometimes include biographical sketches of individuals. My interests also lie in the preservation of these artifacts. In order for them to be properly preserved, one must know or learn how to take care of each item. I also want to work in an archives because its also where digitization projects are starting to rise. I have interests in preserving artifacts not only in the physical format, but also into a digital format. Though it is imminent that photographs and papers will deteriorate over time, it may be possible to save the information these items provide in a digital form. Keeping up with the technological changes in the digital world would be beneficial for an archivist who is considering creating a digital archives of the manuscripts and collections. I want to be able to work in a place where I am constantly learning about culture, technology, and preservation.

While pursuing my M.L.I.S at The University of Southern Mississippi, I took a few classes taught by a certain professor, Dr. Rodriguez-Buckingham. One of these courses was titled "Preservation of Documentary Materials" and it was in his lectures and assigned readings where I discovered I had an interest in archives. It was also when I discovered that digitization projects existed. My professor introduced his class to the Daguerreotypes at Harvard exhibit online. I recalled that I had seen some similar photographs in my family's boxes of photos. I went home and found seven photographs which were close in description, though none of them were daguerreotypes. They were in fact ambrotypes and tintypes. Nonetheless, I was inspired to begin a project which I called Collectively Speaking. The project is completed up to a certain stage, but in unfinished in other ways because it is time-consuming and I had not had the time to afford working on it. I hope to complete it in the near future. I had the desire to work with these photographs, digitize them, and describe them in ways that helped others understand them, and then provide access to them online.

It is important that these items are saved because of the information they provide for countless kinds of scholars and researchers. Even genealogists can find helpful resources in an archives. Those who study culture, history, and society find their best resources are in an archives. Primary resources are the life force for any scholarly paper. The documents and materials in an archives are beneficial to the community because it provides a sense of community self, a personality that describes the people there. A University Archives holds the history of its students, community, and sometimes state. Political figures have donated materials to their alma maters. Families contribute the rough drafts, photographs, recordings, pens, typewriters, and drawings of their own family writer. These materials should be saved for history and culture, for study and for entertainment. The best histories seem to be the ones which are the most tangible and personal.