Archival Appraisal, Arrangement, and Access

Spring 2024 welcome post and discussion

First, sign up for a Commons account. Then, add your contribution in the comments of this post!

Please take a browse through the Queens College instance of JSTOR Community Collections. This JSTOR instance has both archives and museum collections, but for the purposes of this assignment please make sure you are reviewing archives collections.

Select one digital item that grabbed your interest, showed you something new, surprised you, etc., and write a couple sentences about what intrigued you (please include the link to your item). What questions do you have about the item? Why is it in Queens College Special Collections and Archives?

Then, try and think of all the places an archivist interacted with this one item so that you could see it in this form. List those interaction points!

Commenting on other posts is not required but is encouraged!

21 responses to “Spring 2024 welcome post and discussion”

  1. Trudy Delaney Avatar
    Trudy Delaney

    https://www.jstor.org/stable/community.31916371

    This is a seal design for Queens College by Jack Posner, dated 1937. It is part of a collection of seals that were entered for approval when the college was founded. What I found interesting was the amount of owls included, also seen in Posner’s design. I never thought of owls as a QC symbol, but this makes me want to look more into the history of it. Perhaps the owl symbolism has to do with his “knowledge is power” quote.

    This item is in the QC archives because it is part of QC history, the very start of the school. These logos didn’t win the contest, but they have been immortalized by the archive for us to appreciate almost a century later.

    An archivist must have found the original item and figured out the history behind it: the artist, the context, etc. Once they had categorized it, they must have stored it over the years in collections to preserve it, and finally an archivist scanned and uploaded it to the website. Someone would have had to create the website and the categories there as well, to give further context to what it is.

    I’m glad it wound up where we can see it, because I do like his design!

    Reply
  2. Noa Danesh Avatar
    Noa Danesh

    https://www.jstor.org/stable/community.28485378

    I chose a scrapbook kept by Queens College Biology professor Andrew Greller between the years 1970-1975, one of two available in the JSTOR collection. For maybe obvious reasons, given this course of study I find myself in, I’ve been intrigued by the idea of a commonplace book–a journal which collects, not the days’ reflections and events, but quotes or ideas or transcriptions encountered throughout a day, collected for reviewing and even indexing later–a mostly obsolete medium now. Although this scrapbook isn’t a commonplace book per say, it had a steady throughline which is the intellectual work and achievement of this one individual, through the compilation of newspaper articles on Greller’s work to preserve local nature, a warm thank you letter from his students, and photographs. I most of all enjoyed his wry sense of humor–on page 3 he took the effort to paste in an advertisement for chocolate frosting with the text “And the rich get richer”.

    The collection description on JSTOR does not include any details on how these items came into the larger Queens College archive–the attendant description only includes biographical information on Grellar. I would be curious about when Grellar decided to donate these scrapbooks, whether it was to commemorate his retirement or if it was included together with his larger archive (which is also held by Queens College).

    Assuming something of the latter, the archivist who processed his larger collection must have taken special note of these scrapbooks, perhaps due to the visually interesting medium. The larger collection is not digitized; however, it is clear that the archivist took great care with this item. Even small newsprint is clear to read, and juxtaposed or folded up memorabilia are shown in place and then, on the next page, folded out, so that everything is available to be read. Furthermore, the photographs in each scrapbook have been collated into their own respective items (wc?) within the collection, demonstrating further care and attentiveness to the nature of the material and the possible wishes or needs of a researcher or visitor.

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  3. Kyle Imperatore Avatar
    Kyle Imperatore

    https://www.jstor.org/stable/community.28634124?searchText=&searchUri=&ab_segments=0%2FSYC-7052%2Ftest&searchKey=&refreqid=fastly-default%3Aa3d50f5d28fbd77d83ce30640cbda71e

    I chose a fragment of papyrus from an ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead. This item in the Rare Books and Manuscripts collection is from a portfolio called “Pages from the Past”, a collection of rare objects compiled by the Society of Foliophiles in the early/mid-twentieth century, which was mined by universities looking for examples of historical printing techniques. I was drawn to it for its incompleteness, its ancient language and bits of Egyptian artwork. I was also drawn to it for the idea that its background may be inaccurate, further mystifying this scrap of history.

    This fragment conjures so many questions. What information is being conveyed in the hieroglyphs here? What else was a part of this Book of the Dead? Was this surreptitiously taken from someone’s tomb, and how did the Society come to own it as a part of its collection? Under what circumstances did Queens College take ownership, and for what purpose was it used?

    It may have been left in the care of an archivist once its practical use had ceased to be. Because of its inherent historical qualities, I can imagine it would be something difficult to part with – and yet, its lack of context makes it equally as difficult to rationalize its archiving. Considering its age, care must have been taken to preserve it in the archive and to then digitize it. And the archivist must have done research on its context, discovering the Society of Foliophiles and its connections with American universities.

    Reply
  4. Sergio Morales Avatar
    Sergio Morales

    https://www.jstor.org/stable/community.28535365
    The image I chose is from the civil rights movement photographs. It drew me in since it was a frozen moment of the activist Bob Moses while he was just starting his journey. We forget that most of these older activists were just our age and younger when the country began reshaping itself. As for questions about this item, I would love to know who the young lady behind him was. Also, if the photographer had any personal connection with Moses or if this was just a photo that he just happened to catch on that day. If the Archivists who handled these photos had to research some of the individuals within them or they needed?

    This image is part of the QC archives since it’s an important piece of civil rights history. This is a great representation of the diversity of the QC student body.

    Archivists interacted with the collection on multiple levels.
    The initial assessment and procurement of the collection would be the first actual interaction an archivist would deal with the collection.
    Then there will be a basic organization of the collection to separate it into sections.
    Cataloging each photograph with archive catalogs.
    Creation of storage of these items (enclosure boxes, framing, backing, etc.)
    The scanning and digitizing of all items allowed through copyright.

    Reply
  5. Olivia Zisman Avatar
    Olivia Zisman

    https://www.jstor.org/stable/community.32438139
    I chose this collection of anti-war and political protest pins from the 1960s and 70s. I was initially drawn to this item because I have a personal collection of pins that belonged to my grandmother and parents from around the same time- the blue ‘moratorium’ pin pictured in the collection here is one that I also have in my personal collection! I love the idea of learning about people and time periods via the physical objects they leave behind.

    Before delving further into this item, I wondered if this collection of pins belonged to one student or to several students? How did this collection come together? Was it assembled by the archivist or were all of these pins given to the college together as a preexisting collection? According to the source description, these pins belong to Arthur Gatti, who attended Queens College in the mid-1960s. While this explains why this pin collection is included in the QC archives, it raises other questions for me as well. Did Arthur Gatti attend all of the marches/protests from which these pins originate? Where did these protests take place? Who made these pins? How many were made? I would be curious to look further into the imagery and slogans displayed here to gleam more information about this collection.

    The archivist would have interacted with this collection on several levels: They may have separated these pins out from a larger collection of ephemera and preserved them over the years, grouped them together into this particular collection, researched the slogans on each of the pins to determine the specific marches/events/context to which each pin refers, organized them chronologically, photographed the pins as a group and cataloged it as an item within this larger collection, and digitized and uploaded the collection so we can access it today.

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  6. Steven Saunders Avatar
    Steven Saunders

    https://www.jstor.org/stable/community.32438141

    I chose these pins of the United Farm Workers and Anti-apartheid campaigns that ranged from 1960 to 1986

    My eye was first caught on the broken chain of the larger pin against the yellow background, and then the message about the Soweto Uprising. I’ve never researched many facets of South African apartheid but the pin made me look into it. I would say it’s pretty shocking that a decade could have passed between the deaths of the students in the original uprising and the Tenth anniversary June 14th march of remembrance without South Africa Apartheid being torn down, but fights against oppression are often long and winding and the system in question didn’t collapse until the 1990’s.

    I was also taken with the UFWpins. They’re understated (if that makes sense?) compared to the Anti-Apartheid pins, with the more somber color palette, but they also have a very effective style for both of the different messages. I wonder if both pins were part of the same protest or if the pins came out in waves as the organization had different events.

    These pins are part of the QC archive because I assumed they belonged to an activist to Queens college or a student who participated in these events; The pins had to have been donated to the QC Archive.

    My best guess for how the archivists preserved them is as follows: The archivists would first have to take possession of the pins. The archivist has to divide the various piles of the donations into categories (pins, letters, artifacts, etc.) After that, I assume they would detail the collection, recording their size, color, condition, construction/composition of the collection. Then they photograph them with a camera, one with excellent resolution as you can even see small scratches and smudges by zooming in far enough to the picture. After that, they’re organized and placed in dry, cool boxes to preserve their condition for anyone who wants to see them. I saw other collections of pins, so I want to know why these three pins were grouped together compared to some of the other pins in the collection. The way they’re not altered but left as they were with small scratches and light grime makes them more real to me, and gives them a historical weight.

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  7. Edison Weinstein Avatar
    Edison Weinstein

    https://www.jstor.org/stable/community.34291264

    The item I selected is a Gay and Lesbian Union journal from 1987-1988. I chose this item because it was in a collection pertaining to GLASA. I have interacted with GLASA before and I am friends with several members. I wanted to learn a bit about the club’s history. I was surprised to see that the club has material from the 1980s because I thought it was a newer organization. Within the collection are other Gay and Lesbian Union journals, the most recent ending at 1992. These journals are in the Queens College Special Collections to show the history of GLASA and how its members responded to major events that affected their community such as the AIDS crisis.

    I noticed, however that the last journal stops at 1922. Why is this? Are there journals after 1992?

    In order to get this item where it is now, an archivist would have to acquire it from GLASA, put it in a collection with like items, digitize it, then upload the data to JSTOR. A digital archivist would then need to organize the data into a digital collection.

    Reply
    1. Nancy Lambert Avatar
      Nancy Lambert

      Edison, I saw these journals and wondered about that too! Did they stop writing in the journals after 92? Or were the journals misplaced? Or maybe they started recording and saving journal entries on a computer instead of in a notebook? I wonder if anyone knows!

      Reply
  8. Emma Daniel Avatar
    Emma Daniel

    https://www.jstor.org/stable/community.28634107

    This is a liturgical fragment of the Catholic Church and dates back to the 12th century. I was drawn to this object primarily because of its age. I also have a personal fascination with Medieval Latin, as I majored in Greek and Latin in undergrad and love to see how the language evolved over time.

    My main questions regarding this item would be where was it found and how did it come to be in the Queens College collection? I would be especially curious to know what country the document came from and further if there were differences in calligraphy or artistic elements from country to country which would help an expert determine its origins.

    This item is part of the Rare Books and Manuscripts Collection, which is “generously supported by Szilvia and Charles Tanenbaum and Shirley Klein,” but it is unclear if supported simply means funded or donated, so I am so far unable to determine based on the information I can find on JSTOR where this item came from.

    I think this item is a valuable piece of the collection because of its historical significance. This is a very old fragment, which would be fascinating to study. Its amazing to think that these pieces of parchment survived approximately 900 years, doubtlessly passing through the hands of hundreds of people or more during that time.

    It’s hard to know exactly when this item would have come into the hands of an archivist. Because this is only a fragment, one can assume that the original volume containing this parchment was damaged at some point. Someone must have preserved these pages, perhaps someone affiliated with the church, and eventually a museum or archive must have gained possession of the fragment. I imagine that due to its age this piece would have had to have been handled by someone with expertise in conservation as well as historical background knowledge. I wonder how many collections this piece may have featured in before making its way to Queens College.

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  9. Zachary Doe Avatar
    Zachary Doe

    https://www.jstor.org/stable/community.29234759?ab_segments=0%2Fbasic_search_gsv2%2Fcontrol&refreqid=fastly-default%3Aafa9d72aa6a294819c61e0027b457760

    I chose the “Administrative Responses to Campus Unrest” from 1969. I found it interesting to see university administrative responses to unrest that were almost exactly a year before the Kent State Shootings that would rock the country. There is an active desire to police themselves rather than call in government forces which was an interesting observation, as well as a bulleted section that provided a reference to how to handle unrest. Part of this was a multiple choice section which I found fascinating, as if they were searching for the ideas from the faculty and student communities to determine their thoughts on various subject matter and responses.

    Overall there is a News Release from 6/27/1969 that details from the faculty response, which was against dropping criminal charges to thirty-nine students that were arrested after a five day sit-in. At the same time this is a referendum where only 800 faculty voted. I would be curious to learn why this referendum happened and why only those 800 were allowed to vote, of which 1/3 of them were still promoting dropping the charges upon these students. I also wonder if there is any documentation of the forms that were drafted here filled out by various faculty or students, and what the overall thoughts of the students were during this time.

    In order to get these six pages of documents, each one had to be been saved after production. With the News Release, and the Statement from the school, there were numerous printed. Either the University, a particular individual, or an organization only had to save two of these for future use. The reference tests for suggested procedure on the other hand had to have been given to a student or faculty member and then saved instead of being filled out, or the body offering the test had to reserve one for a future archive/record.

    Once these were saved, someone had to keep it safe before it was handled by a photographer who took a picture of it. This picture was saved on a digital database that was then uploaded onto their website. We have at least three to four people active in this way, unless the photographer was also the digital preservationist.

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  10. Nancy Lambert Avatar
    Nancy Lambert

    https://www.jstor.org/stable/community.33095452

    The item I selected is a photo of “Students Protesting Introduction of Tuition at CUNY.” What surprised me (and what initially caught my eye) was the title. Record scratch–there was a time before tuition? Apparently yes, for 130 years of CUNY’s existence, but that ended in 1975. The photo was taken by J.A. Steinlink and is part of the Queens College Special Collections and Archives.

    I believe it is included in this archive because it captures a moment in Queens College history, CUNY history, and New York City and New York State history. It also captures an instance of student activism on campus. Since the photo has a listed date of 1965, but the description states “CUNY was free until 1975,” I’m curious about the timeline of the tuition changes–were these rolled out over a decade? I’m also curious about who organized the protest–were students the only ones protesting or did faculty and administrators protest too? When in 1965 did this protest occur? How long did it last? How many people were there? [For anyone curious, I found some additional information about the timeline of the tuition implementation in this collection, which is a collaboration between the American Social History Project, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, and CUNY Graduate Center-–it has a lot of information and photos about CUNY’s history: https://cdha.cuny.edu/coverage/coverage%5D

    The archivist interaction points might include:
    An archivist with Queens College Special Collections and Archives who selected this photograph from the Queens College Creative Services collection, which is the source of the photograph. Either this person, or a different archivist who oversaw the QCCS collection before it became part of the QCSCA, might have determined the details about the photograph and logged them as part of this item’s record. Whoever scanned this image and stored it (and possibly tagged it). Before that, someone would have stored this photo (or a negative?) with the others that became the QCCS, perhaps they were the person to have noted the photographer, date, and other information on or with the photo. I’m sure I’m missing many of the steps involved in this photo’s journey to JSTOR.

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  11. Caoilinn Andrews Avatar
    Caoilinn Andrews

    https://www.jstor.org/stable/community.28618693?ab_segments=0%2Fbasic_search_gsv2%2Fcontrol&refreqid=fastly-default%3A97b1034d8ae301245b1768098bb73f9a&seq=35

    This is an image from the 1976 Queens College yearbook that shows students holding a sign that says “STOP $800 TUITION.” I wish tuition was still only $800! Using an online inflation calculator, I found that $800 in 1976 is equivalent to almost $4300 today. However, the current CUNY tuition per semester is almost $7000.

    I wonder who is in the picture, and how they feel about the ever-rising cost of education. I also wonder what led CUNY to jump from free tuition to $800 tuition in one year. This image is in Queens College Special Collection and Archives because it is in the yearbook. Yearbooks are documents that can show student and campus life, past professors and programs, important issues from that year, and other information.

    First an archivist obtained the yearbook. This could have been in 1976 when it was published, or any time after that. They had to add it to the collection of yearbooks. In order to put the image online, they had to scan the pages and upload them and their information.

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  12. Devorah Sterzer Avatar
    Devorah Sterzer

    For this assignment, I chose Lydia Howrilka’s submission to the Queens Memory COVID 19 Project
    https://www.jstor.org/stable/community.28816999?ab_segments=0%2Fbasic_search_gsv2%2Fcontrol&refreqid=fastly-default%3A78bbeda616705711883b226357a7e078
    When I was scrolling through the Queens College COVID-19 collection, looking for anything that caught my eye and resonated with me, I was surprised to see the name of a classmate of mine in the MLIS program from last semester!
    This item is a letter submitted to the Queens Memory COVID 19 Project on May 15th, 2020. It describes Lydia’s experiences as a teacher and a Queens resident during the Covid era. I assume it is in the Archives as part of the project to document people’s lived experiences during Covid.
    I was intrigued to see a snapshot of Lydia’s life around 3 years before I met her. I also got a kick out of seeing the name of someone I know personally in an archives!
    I wonder how Lydia heard about the Queens Memory COVID 19 Project; is she an alumna of Queens College? Did she hear about it from a friend or family member? What made her want to submit her story to the project; did she want her voice heard? Did she want her experience in the Covid pandemic preserved for those who didn’t go through it?
    I assume the document was born digital, and was submitted through email, or through a link from a website. An archivist would have had contact with it when it was collected from wherever it was submitted, labelled it, and placed it with other submissions before uploading it to the Queens Memory COVID 19 Project.

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  13. lex barlowe Avatar
    lex barlowe

    https://www.jstor.org/stable/community.32508767
    ‘…No More Dying Over Me’ Clipping
    This item is a newspaper clipping from the Queens College student newspaper, The Phoenix, from September 1964. This clipping shows an article titled ‘…No More Dying Over Me’ by Sy Safransky. The article is about a group of QC students fasting in protest of segregation in Mississippi and demanding Federal protection for civil rights workers, as well as raising money for a bail fund, just a few months after a QC student, Andrew Goodman, had been murdered alongside two others – one Black – James Chaney of Mississippi and another white & Jewish – Michael Schwerner, during Freedom Summer. It is also about the impact of Goodman’s murder on campus and other QC-related connection to/ involvement with Mississippi as well as local organizing initiatives. The clipping also has photos from Freedom Summer, and photos of a Black student leader at QC, and one of Goodman.

    I was drawn to this initially because it was related to Andrew Goodman. Upon starting this program and having classes in the library, I noticed that the clock tower was named after Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner, which was notable and important to me since I grew up learning about them and their murder. Although their story got so much visibility at the time because of the murder of white people in the name of civil rights, it was notable in my family (Black & Jewish) because Goodman and Schwerner were Jewish and spoke to solidarity of white Jewish people in the US with Black people in the South. I never looked more into why the tower was named after them and so it was important to learn through this clipping that Goodman had been a QC student. I also appreciated learning about Black student leaders on campus themselves.

    It is pretty clear why this was saved in QC archives, since it relates to a highly visible QC student, intersecting with a politically transformative and turbulent time in this country and on campus, as well as the organizing and student and faculty initiatives that occurred around all of this. In the info I learned that this came from the collection of Art Gatti, another QC student involved in activism on campus and beyond, who also went to Mississippi in following years. I am curious as to why he saved this particular article – I’m sure there were other articles written most immediately after Goodman’s murder but this one is a few months later, maybe due to the mention of the other organizing going on. Or it’s possible that others more close to the murder date are in the archive but not online? I’m not sure when it was digitized and I am curious about that as well, and how this particular one was chosen to be digitized. I can tell it was already quite old when it was scanned due to the color and fraying at the bottom of the image – Gatti donated the collection in 2009. So it’s important that it is not kept in the archive because QC decided to save and archive it on its own volition because of its content about QC history, but because it was kept by a QC alum who thought it was important as well, and was able to be about both QC history as well as an alum’s archive.

    The archivist probably interacted with this upon receiving the boxes, going through the boxes to appraise the materials, identifying them for basic content, quality/physical status, and historical/QC significance, to creating/assigning subject headings, cataloguing the information about this clipping from creator, title, description, location, etc., assessing the order/organization within the boxes, organizing the boxes and collection within the larger QC archive, scanning the clipping, assigning a file name and other information to the clipping, organizing the clipping within the online database, providing public access… and likely even more.

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  14. Elena Butuzova Avatar
    Elena Butuzova

    https://www.jstor.org/stable/community.28485379?ab_segments=0%2Fbasic_search_gsv2%2Fcontrol&refreqid=fastly-default%3A9aa55ef076c7697a2a7527902fd824e7&seq=52

    The “Andrew Greller Scrapbook 2” peaked my interest within the Special Collections. The description for the object states. “this scrapbooks documents the career and environmental activism of Dr. Andrew Greller…[containing] correspondence, photographs, newspaper clippings, and ephemera.” I connected with the object because I scrapbook as well and found it interesting that an activist/professor took the time to glue down, cut out, and print out materials that held some type of meaning for him. Looking at the digitized scrapbook, I learned bits and pieces of his life through the material he decided to leave behind. Dr. Greller was an avid environmentalist, activist, a professor in Queens College, a traveler, a marine, a Queens County Bird Club member, and so much more. He lived a multitude of lives–the scrapbook was able to capture some moments from those lives. It surprises me how an ID, a photo of a tree, and even a napkin can say so much without saying anything. I am currently reading a book chapter for my history course about the impact of evocative objects in everyday life and our connection to them. There is quote from the article that I feel is relevant to the assignment, it states, “…We forget that objects have a history. They shape us in particular ways. We forget why or how they came to be…” (What Makes an Object Evocative? P.311). Objects contain history and power; therefore shape the owner and the viewer. Through the object there is a movement within time, a movement I was able to grasp by looking through, reading, and analyzing his scrapbook. Questions such as was his activism successful? Why did he choose to preserve these clippings, and not others? Why did he scrapbook–was this his version of memory preservation? What time in American environmental history does this object capture? I believe it ended up in Special Collections because he was a successful environmentalist and professor. His legacy is important to preserve because he can be considered a “gold star” member in the history of Queens College. How does the archive collect items that might showcase the failures of the Queens College, of the failures of its professors and alumni? Are only positive legacies “worthy” of preservation? As an archivist picks up an items, opens its, reads, analyzes it, and takes notes by it, researches its, and ultimately categorizes and describes it, does the archivist present the failures of an individual or only their accomplishments? Is that up to the viewer to consider? What narratives does an archivist determine as they engage with the item?

    Thanks!
    -Elena

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  15. paige laino Avatar
    paige laino

    https://www.jstor.org/stable/community.29269002?searchUri=%2Fsite%2Fqueenscollegearchives%2Fgodwinternbachmuseum%2F&ab_segments=0%2Fbasic_search_gsv2%2Fcontrol&refreqid=fastly-default%3A443abb30fd4cb16743969201aefd1972&searchkey=1706810297610

    First, I have so many questions about this specific collection as it exists on JSTOR. At my job, we just finished the transition from Artstor to JSTOR and I would love to know if this collection had to do the same thing. And if so, I would love to talk to whoever all handled that, because I want to share war stories! On that note, this is a wonderfully cataloged collection in general.

    I was thrilled to see this piece in the museum! I also think this is one of his strongest works—he was so talented in general, but the linework feels so emotional and respectful here. We just bought an edition of this print as a goodbye present for my former boss at my job, so I think this also has an extra emotional valence for me. I absolutely love Ben Shahn’s work, but as far as I knew, he had no real connection to Queens. He spent some time in NYC, but he was a real Jersey boy. I’m not terribly surprised, though, thinking more about it, because this whole museum collection is exceptionally well curated (at least what’s in JSTOR), and there are some really heavy hitters. That Kathe Kollwitz piece is a banger! This is going to really expose my internalized dismissiveness, but this museum has an outstanding collection and I had absolutely no idea about it.

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  16. Karin Fjellman Avatar
    Karin Fjellman

    https://www.jstor.org/stable/community.28618655

    I chose the 1944 edition of the Silhouette yearbook, initially because I loved seeing each cool font or design of the covers. I’m a sucker for great design, especially from the 1940s-60s. Yearbooks were also on my mind because I was recently helping a patron locate the bound volumes of Andrew Jackson High School‘s literary journal from the 60s. A colleague noted that Mary Weiss (the recently deceased member of the Shangri-La’s) had gone to that high school, and that led me to search through the stacks to see if we had anything from the years when she would have gone there. I couldn’t find any yearbook, so apparently I was longing to see some when I clicked on this section!

    Yearbooks are always such curious time capsules that provide a window into things like the fashion and hairdos of the era, of course, but this one also reminds us of its place in worldwide history, with pages noting those classmates who have gone off to fight in the war. It also dawned on me that yearbooks are like active preservers or archives of their own school community, with yearbook committees respectively acting as the archivists. It only makes sense to me now, the connection of my having been on my high school’s yearbook committee!

    In this sense, it seems only a natural progression for both someone to think to donate this to an archive, and for an archive to consider this a worthy item to take into its collection. I did notice a handwritten inscription on the first page that I initially thought was a note from a classmate, as we might remember as a key use of the high school yearbook, but in reading it, it may actually be a note from the donor herself.

    I have not done much work in terms of appraisal or accession or digitization personally, but I know that the process is lengthy and can be tedious at just about every step. I would imagine this is part of a larger collection, so what is that? Were there 100 yearbooks, or just this one? Again, I’m not sure of the order of these operation, but I imagine there needs to be some preliminary inventory made of the collection, as well as identification and description of the item, all of which would go into a finding aid for the collection. It would get assigned a control number, or some other marker in finding it. The book would need to be stored in such a way that protected it from external factors that could otherwise cause its deterioration. From there, someone deemed it worthy of being digitized, and with the help of what looks like a very nice scanner, that was diligently done page by page. Finally all this information had to be merged to the online platform, where it is very easy to access and view!

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  17. Wilhelmine Coste Avatar
    Wilhelmine Coste

    https://www.jstor.org/stable/community.29113208

    The item I chose is a photo of an anti-tuition rally held at QC in 1965. It’s interesting to me because of the history of CUNY and because I have a friend who audits classes in the history program at QC who was doing his undergraduate degree in this period and may have even been at this particular rally. We’ve talked a lot about how the campus culture has changed and what it was like to be part of the social movements that were taking place at the time.

    I wonder where those students and faculty in the photo are now, and whether they still believe that CUNY should be tuition-free. I heard recently that Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist, has given money to the Newmark School of Journalism to make it entirely tuition-free for 50% of students. He would have been about 13 years old when this photo was taken.

    In order for this photo to be available to me, it would have had to be accepted as a donation, likely as part of a larger group of items. Then someone would have had to go through those items and distinguish them as individuals, including assessing the context. Since there is nothing in the photo that explains where, when, or really what it is (other than a speaker talking to a crowd), an archivist would have had to find a way to link its context and ensure that the next person to pick it up would know exactly what it was. Then it would have had to be scanned, the new digital item would have to be assigned that same metadata, and it would also have to be uploaded on to this particular system so that it became available to the public.

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  18. Bianca Oliva Avatar
    Bianca Oliva

    https://www.jstor.org/stable/community.32468549

    The item I chose is the 1969 edition of the Queens College yearbook. I chose this year specifically because of the number of documents in the Campus and Queens Activism of the 1960s collection that highlight 1969. The campus this year had at least one intense incident of campus unrest that we can see from examples of letters and addresses from college staff, faculty, and the college president. In a statement from the college president (https://www.jstor.org/stable/community.29234755), he addresses a student protest in which students and some faculty members occupied a campus building to demand a student-faculty voting voice in the running of the college. When the protestors refused to leave, the president deployed police to arrest the remaining 38 students and one staff member still in the building. I was curious to see how a year of unrest would be represented in a college yearbook.

    One thing that really took me by surprise was how beautiful and well shot a lot of the photographs were in this yearbook. The photos tell the story of the year from the perspective of a Queens College student- from moments on campus, musical artists that students enjoyed that year, to special guest speakers such as William Douglas and James Baldwin (!). I was expecting to see some whitewashing of history in the photos, but there is a good representation of campus activism and even photos from when the president made the decision to call the police to make trespassing charges for the student building occupation.

    The archivist would have received the yearbook perhaps as a donation or worked with the Alumni Affairs Office to digitize the yearbook and then maybe return to their office. On the inside cover, there are suggestions that there might be two collections at Queens: one complete collection in the library and one collection in the Alumni Affairs Office. The archivist would have had to make high quality scans of the book to digitize and upload the yearbook as part of the Queens College Yearbook collection and provide item details such as the scope, creator, date, and resource type.

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  19. Nilda Sanchez-Rodriguez Avatar
    Nilda Sanchez-Rodriguez

    I selected archival documentation demonstrating the involvement of Queens College students in the Civil Rights movement in the mid1960s. An original photograph from the Civil Rights Movement Collection caught my attention. The image illustrates A. Phillip Randolph speaking at the statewide Freedom School Convention during the Mississippi Freedom Summer.
    Title: A. Philllip Randolph at the Mississippi Freedom School Convention
    Photographed by Mark Levy
    Dated: 1964
    https://www.jstor.org/stable/community.28535265

    For me, the photo provided a visual glimpse into the work it took African American civil rights leaders and activist in advocating for racial equality.

    Questions that arise about this item include the significance of this moment in history and its impact on the broader civil rights movement. How did Mark Levy document and perceive this historical period at the time?
    Archivist interactions with this item and collection should include the following:
    Acquisition of Mark Levy Papers
    Assess and Catalog Items with unique identifier
    Record with metadata
    Create Finding Aid
    Digitize to make accessible online and worldwide

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  20. Daniel Stimpfle Avatar
    Daniel Stimpfle

    I chose a photograph that was part of the archival documentation of the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s. This picture caught my attention because it shows a massive flood of people walking through a street in Belonzi Mississippi. I just liked the seemingly candid photo of such a massive and grassroots movement and moment in American history.
    Questions I have are: What was the photographer doing that day when they first saw this march of people? Did they know about it ahead of time?
    The archivist interactions involved in this item probably included the following steps:
    Some kind of acquisition of the photograph – did the archivist reach out to the donor, or did the donor offer it?
    assessment and cataloging the item with a unique identifier
    add metadata record
    create finding aid
    digitizing of the photograph
    upload photograph into some kind of server setup to be findable online

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