Collins Unbound

Hello! My name is Julia Masur and I’m the current Peer Research Specialist here in the Archives & Special Collections. I’m a senior history major, with minors in education studies and sociology/anthropology. On campus, I’m also involved in Greek life, ski team, and a few honors societies. I started working as the Peer Research Specialist at the beginning of my junior year, and applied during my sophomore year after a class session in the A&SC for my History 200: Doing History class. One of our major projects in that class was to create a collaborative class website about one of the pieces in the A&SC collection, a 1642 pamphlet about the English Civil War, titled A fuller answer to a treatise written by Dr. Ferne, entituled The resolving of conscience upon this question, whether upon this supposition or case (the King will not defend but is bent to subvert religion, lawes, and liberties) subjects may with good conscience make resistance. Believe it or not, that’s a shortened version of the title! Being able to touch the pamphlet and read through the original pages from almost 400 years ago was such a great experience, and made the topic feel much less abstract. You can tell from looking at the pages how well-read this copy was, and the way in which it could have helped change people’s worldview during the English Civil War and maybe even shifted their allegiances was exciting to me. I love it when history feels personal, and that pamphlet definitely made the English Civil War feel that way while working on this project. You can find the website that my class built about this pamphlet here.

My job responsibilities involve a lot of independent work. I help run some of our social media (mainly our Tumblr), pull materials and set up for classes or events, fulfill research inquiries, digitize archival materials, and reach out to student clubs and organizations to collect materials. The most interesting part of my job has been curating exhibits, of which I’ve done two. The first spotlighted the John M. Canse Pamphlet Collection, and centered around tourism in the American West during the early 20^thcentury. The second went up as a part of the Race and Pedagogy Conference, and dealt with how Japanese incarceration during World War II impacted Japanese-Americans in Tacoma and at Puget Sound, as well as historical memory of incarceration. For that exhibit, I mainly used university records like President Thompson’s personal correspondence, university ephemera, and yearbooks. Something that challenged me in this position was learning the difference between thinking like an archivist and thinking like a historian. While archivists are obviously still interested in the content of the objects in their collections and need to know what’s in those collections, they do have to balance competing priorities and assess when it’s necessary to take the time to go in-depth with an object.

You can apply for my position on LoggerJobs through February 25. If you have any questions, feel free to contact me at jmasur@pugetsound.edu or contact Archivist and Special Collections Librarian Adriana Flores ’13 at aflores@pugetsound.edu.

The Archives & Special Collections is open Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday from 11:00 AM to 3:00 PM or by appointment.

By Julia Masur

Welcome back, Loggers! We are happy to have you back on campus and are looking forward to working with many of you in the Archives & Special Collections this semester. Our open hours have changed a bit for spring. You can drop in to the A&SC on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays from 11:00 AM to 3:00 PM. If you are unable to make it during that time, you can always schedule an appointment with us outside of those hours by emailing archives@pugetsound.edu.

We have some exciting new items available for viewing in the A&SC. We recently completed finding aids for two of our manuscript collections – the Collins Library Zine Collection and the Ken and Rochelle Monner collection of Shereen LaPlantz book structures. The zine collection contains approximately 250 zines that cover a wide breadth of topics, including local and national issues, politics, personal narratives, popular culture, activism and social justice, environmental justice, queer identities, feminism, race, and more. The Shereen LaPlantz collection features more than 100 artists’ book structures created by LaPlantz, an internationally recognized artist, author, and teacher.

In addition, we have also purchased several new artists’ books. Artists’ books are often identified as handmade, limited edition or one-of-a-kind objects that employ innovative binding structures and handmade papers. We have several hundred artists’ books in the A&SC, many of which address social justice issues. This month we acquired “Shoot to Kill” by artist Ann Kalmbach, which asks the question “Did you ever wonder why police targets are torsos?” and includes abandoned targets from police shooting ranges.

Lastly, we’ve received many interesting records from our university departments. Gender & Queer Studies transferred records to the A&SC that date back to the beginning of their program in the 1970s, when it was known as Women’s Studies. We are currently in the process of organizing those records for use by students and faculty. Student Activities sent records relating to Outdoor Programs, including the Passages planning materials.

This represents a small portion of the many materials that we’ve received in the A&SC over the past couple of months. The A&SC is actively collecting records, so please contact us if you think you have materials that we might be interested in!

The Archives & Special Collections is open Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday from 11:00 AM to 3:00 PM or by appointment.

By Laura Edgar