October 23, 2015
Archives and Special Connections: Bringing Histories to Light
Mount Holyoke Archives & Special Collections aims to inform people about MHC history, and excite them about the amazing stories that can be shared through an archive. This presentation will focus on two main projects I worked over the summer that involve those stories. Through my involvement with these projects, I gained an appreciation for how instrumental archival material is for teaching and research, and how we make decisions as archivists in order for our materials to be as accessible as possible. The first was a two-week program in which we used various kinds of letters, books, and items from our collections to teach high school students about early American women’s history and the Mount Holyoke Female Seminary. The second project was the complete processing of a large donated collection. I began with a box of completely unorganized papers, photos, notebooks, and publications; by the end of the summer, I had a fully catalogued collection that is currently being prepared for exhibition and used in academic research.
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