By Gianna Brassil and Grant Stroud
Gianna Brassil, Special Collections, Firestone Library
Education background: I am currently pursuing my MLIS at San Jose State University. I graduated from Macalester College in 2020 with majors in Anthropology and Religious Studies.
Previous experience: This past spring I was an Archives Intern at the San Francisco Public Library (SFPL) History Center. In that role, I processed the papers of Blanche Pastorino, owner of an art gallery restaurant in San Francisco that was once a hub for San Francisco artists such as Ruth Asawa, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and Imogen Cunningham. I also had the opportunity to process a small photo album collection on the Manila-San Francisco Friendship Library. My internship at SFPL taught me how to apply archival theory and methodology to collection processing and description, as well as how to develop arrangement schema and processing timelines.
Additionally, I was an archives intern at the Freedom Archives this past year. Freedom Archives is a community archive located in Berkeley, California, that is devoted to preserving the history of progressive social movements in the Bay Area. At Freedom Archives, I conducted inventory and appraisal for new acquisitions, digitized archival material including reel to reel tapes and cassettes, and created item level records for material in English and Spanish. For my culminating project, I utilized materials from the Freedom Archives to create a zine on the interconnected history between Nicaraguan and Palestinian revolutionary movements in the 1970s and 1980s. You can read my zine on the Freedom Archives website..
My approach to archives: I am indebted to the work of Michelle Caswell, Marika Cifor, and so many others who have articulated an understanding of archivists as care workers, bound to and within communities through webs of mutual affective responsibility. I am drawn to this understanding of archival work as care work, on a continuum of intergenerational storykeeping labor.
I was born and raised in San Francisco, California and grew up in a diasporic Nicaraguan, Peruvian, and Irish-Australian bilingual English and Spanish household. My archival practice is deeply informed by my family’s multiple migrations, my own diasporic upbringing, and my political commitments to anti-capitalist-imperialist and decolonial world building. These perspectives inform my professional archival practice by prompting me to wonder, what role does the archivist play in creating modes of postcolonial storytelling and storykeeping? In the dialectic between preserving history and (un)making it at the same time? In what ways, directions, times, places, and spaces can an archivist contribute to liberation struggles and the lifework of fighting imperialism?
Other interests: In my free time, you can find me looking at pictures of my cats, Fern and Parsley, nervously biking around New York City, and studying Arabic verb patterns.
What I’m looking forward to working on while at Princeton: There are so many things that I am looking forward to this summer! I’m excited to learn more about collection connoisseurship and exhibition curation, and work on reparative description projects such as the redescribing of 6 Lenape-related land deeds in the James Alexander Papers. I’m also really looking forward to creating a Digital Princeton University Library exhibit. To everyone who has introduced themselves and made me feel welcome at Princeton, thank you.
Grant Stroud, Special Collections, Mudd Library
Education background: I graduated from the School of Information and Library Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill this spring, where I received my M.S. in Library Science. I obtained my B.S. in History from Western Carolina University.
Previous experience: Some of my previous experiences have been with the York Historical Center in South Carolina. The Buncombe County Special Collection is housed in Pack Memorial Library in Asheville. While there, I processed the Pen and Plate Collection. In the previous summer, I interned at the Sisters of Loretto Heritage Center and Archive in Loretto, Kentucky. With the Sisters of Loretto, I completed processing of the Sr. Jeanne Dueber collection, which documented the convent’s resident artist from 1960 to 2014. I also worked on a conservation project reframing religious artworks from the late 1800s to the mid-2000s. Lastly, before coming to Princeton this summer, I interned with the Digital Production Center at Duke University. While there, I digitized patron requests for researchers.
My approach to archives: I grew up surrounded by educators and instructors in history, government, and economics within my family, which sparked my interest in history. I appreciate archives because they can uncover historical silences and provide the public with truth through their records, programming, and outreach efforts. I’m also fond of archives as they offer a glimpse into what can be rather mundane history; I enjoy seeing how ordinary people lived and the various ephemeras and records they accumulated.
Other interests: My other interests include outdoor activities, such as hiking, kayaking, and bouldering. Hopefully, I’ll get to check out a few of the places Will Clements suggested. (Thank you, Will!) I’m also into sports, mainly baseball and college football. I also collect vinyl, mostly from older country musicians such as John Prine, Townes Van Zandt, and Tom T. Hall.
What I’m looking forward to working on while at Princeton: I look forward to working with more born-digital collections and content with Valencia Johnson this summer! This will be a tremendous help in my future endeavors as more things continue to move exclusively into an online-only space. I’ve already enjoyed processing a few collections related to student life, which has been a good learning experience so far. I am looking forward to getting more experience with reference requests and possibly processing another analog collection while at Mudd.
Our summer fellowships provide paid work experience for current or recent graduate students interested in pursuing a career in special collections or archives.
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