In class, we went over the case study of Ahmad V. University of Michigan. The debates we have in class over these case studies are great, and help me with better understanding the issues. I was on the side that the donor contract has to be honored and that Michigan University did the right thing …
Author Archives: Matthew Headley
Week 9: Site Visit
I’ll be visiting The American Philosophical Society today at 2:30 P.M for my site visit today. I’m excited to be returning to APS and have prepared by printing out the questions to refer back to. I’m meeting with Bayard Miller, Associate Director for Research, Engagement, and Technology. He has an M.A. from Temple University in …
Week 8: Archives and Manuscripts
The discussion we had around the Harding Affair Letters was something I continued reflecting on after class. I still don’t feel like I have a good answer, but this case study was thought provoking. I went home and told my wife the story to see what someone that isn’t in the history or archival field …
Week 7:
In class we discussed finding aids. I was amazed in how different they are across institutions. Two points I was fascinated by were the size of finding aids, and how accessible they are. Finding aids are helpful, and something I didn’t know about until graduate school, as they were something I never worked with before …
Week 6:
One of the topics we discussed in Archives and Manuscripts class yesterday was disaster preparations. We were asked how we would respond to an incident like a fire, if you could have someone in to save materials what would you save? My thoughts were to save the materials that bring people to the organization or …
Archives and Manuscripts: Week 5
Our visit to the Special Collections Research Center at Temple University was exciting. I had no idea SCRC had so much material, nor did I know how new the building was. We were told that SCRC holds around 90,000 feet of material between two locations, and we saw only a third of the material. 90,000 …
Week 4:
One of the topics in class this week that I thought was interesting and wanted to reflect on is how to get people engaged and working with primary materials. In class, we saw an example of primary documents shared with educators with response questions for students to answer. Margery pointed out how using these objects …
Week 3:
One of the issues we discussed in class that I’ve enjoyed thinking about is the article, “More Product, Less Process: Revamping Traditional Archives Processing” by Mark A. Greene and Dennis Meissner. We also discussed how archives typically have a backlog of material and insufficient funds. My original thoughts after reading this article and discussion in …
Blog 2 Archives and Manuscripts:
An interesting question was posed in the reading and in class, who controls the past? I have to side with the archivists here. When it comes to the collections and materials they are working with, they have to be allowed to decide what happens with these materials. For example, if they decided to get rid …
Archives and Manuscripts Week 1:
While reading the article, “ No One Owes Their Trauma to Archivists, or, the Commodification of Contemporaneous Collecting” by Eira Tansey I continued to reflect on my own work and question if I am practicing what is argued in this article. Tansey challenges archivists collecting trauma, and one specific point I’d like to reflect on …