New Reflections on Collaboration and the Madison Trust for Historic Preservation

      As a first year student, I was very nervous about what I would find at UW-Madison. Not only was I starting life in a new town at a school approximately five times bigger than my private liberal arts undergraduate university (and everyone watches college sports here! Madness!), but also I was concerned about library school itself. 

      My undergraduate background is in English and History. Our classes took the form of a lecture from a professor followed by class discussion. We rarely did group work—it was all essays all the time. But when I came here, it seemed like the only thing professors and second years could talk about was group work. Group work, group work, group work with a side of getting out into the library community to start networking.  

      It all sounded a little frightening. As much as I enjoy spending time with others, I prefer to work alone.

      But in the spirit of all this group work and networking, I volunteered at my first SAA meeting to take on a project with the Madison Trust for Historic Preservation. The Trust is a volunteer organization that fights to get historic landmark status for old homes around Madison. It also restores those homes and offers tours. In honor of their approaching fortieth anniversary, the Trust leadership wanted to conduct interviews with retired board members and then build an exhibit around those interviews. Since I had written for the school newspaper in my undergraduate days, I thought this was the perfect way for me to begin my adventure in archives.

      Of course, as many interesting projects do, this anniversary exhibit has taken on a life of its own. I pitched a few interesting ideas to the Trust board members at our first meetings. They ran with that pitch. Then I took our new ideas to the next SAA meeting, where other Archives students contributed their own thoughts. Due to the contributions of others this small project potentially now has audio AND video interviews and a YouTube channel. We are going to try to have a video installation in the exhibit featuring the audio interviews piped over photographs from the Trust archives. Furthermore, after the private anniversary celebration for members of the Trust, the Madison Public Library will be showcasing the exhibit in their new Central Library, and there is a possibility it will go on tour. I have reached out to my former colleagues at the ALA (where I had an internship) for help in designing this exhibit. Other archives students with experience in video are bringing their skills to the project.

      In other words, this is now a group project. And I like it!

      Archivists—perhaps even librarians in general—are often seen as a solitary species. However that is not the state of the field today. We may still spend some time in the stacks or the archives alone; however it is by working together that our small projects become great. I am so excited to work with my new fellow students on this project and to see what other projects SLIS has in store for me.