Day Sixteen - June 11, 2024, Interview with Lead Supervisor, Morgan Gieringer

I am a Library Sciences major with a concentration in archival studies. I'm also earning a certificate in archival management. My internship with UNT has been invaluable since it's given my hands on experience in archival processing, and metadata management, two very important skills in archives work. Processing is basically the, for lack of a better word, process of accessing the value of materials, determining how they might benefit researchers, addressing preservation concerns, and entering them into the archival system. I mean that in the physical sense, many items need to be re-filed in approved boxes made of non-corrosive materials and that a collection needs to be accurately entered into the university's online database to make it available to researchers. Which will often involve the curation and writing of metadata, which is how most search functions connect materials to search terms. However, what I hoped to learn in the interview with Morgan was more focused on the actual workings of archives and libraries as an industry. I was basically looking for advise on how to find a job, since the instructions on actually working in an archive was already so thorough. 

Since my internship was structured like a class, we conducted our interview as a group with everyone having a chance to ask a question to Morgan. I liked this process because some of the other interns had some interesting questions that I had not considered asking. 

1. What are some common mistakes for new archivists?

There’s a big learning curve with archiving and a lot of new archivists worry about doing things the “right way” but there is no real right way. It’s better to focus on the goal, the time you have to do it, the resources you have to do it, and how to do the best job within those constraints. In institutions you also have to balance other constraints like outreach, processing, etc. Just continually reminded yourself do the best job you can and you’re doing it the right way. 

2. What made you pursue a career in special collections/UNT? 

I worked in the woman’s collection while earning my master’s in library sciences and it clicked for me. I worked with the state federation of woman’s clubs and worked with their national branch in DC. It’s very common for people to relocate for their first job. 
I encourage people to do nationwide job searches as much as they can. They tend to be in metropolitan areas or extremely “far-flung” places. 
I worked in the Missouri historical society and the university of Kansas, using the experience I had gained to move into new positions. Eventually I saw an opening in Denton. 

3. What makes someone qualified to work in special archives? 

A curiosity about people and absorbing new information. That’s not something that comes naturally to everyone and if you don’t have it this job can get really boring.  

4. What do you see about new career professionals that separates us from other career professionals?  

One thing that sets people apart is experience, internships and volunteer work can be invaluable when you’re starting out. Also, involvement with professional organizations/societies. It’s a great way to show you care about the job, also meet new people and network.  Being involved as best you can is great, including being involved in poster sessions.   

5. What does the interview process look like for an archivist?

That highly depends on where you’re interviewing. Academic libraries usually take a whole day and involve multiple interviews and presentations that you need to cover. You have to go to lunch with people, so even the lunch is part of the interview.
In other locations, the process is much faster. Usually just one or two interviews and may not even have a search committee.

6. Personally, what do you think is the biggest difference between academic archives and public/museum archives?

I think the biggest difference is what you are considering your primary audience. In an academic library the primary audience is going to be students and we try to frame our materials and collections around that. The second consideration is scholars who need access to rare or unique materials.
In a public library, the primary audience is a local community. Which is going to have very different needs, and interests. A community is going to be more rooted in the place you are situation, with local history, genealogy, etc. 

7. How are the rules of archives changing and how can archivists prepare? 

The way archives are set up, traditional people would conduct research in person, and there is a growing expectation that materials are available in a digital format. And there are many benefits to digitization, but also huge costs involved. Here at UNT we’ve invested so much in digitization, but we will never even get close to digitizing everything in our collection. 
We need to be careful how we digitize things now because people are starting to seek out digital collections first, so we need to be careful what is selected. It’s essentially another form of appraisal. We need to decide what is going to be the most accessible. It’s becoming more and more important for archives to create standards so digital archives are as representative as our physical holdings.

8. Are there any examples of you being unable to bring in a new perspective and why? 

We’ve been trying for a long time to bring in more collection representative of local Hispanic communities and we had a chance to work with a local community archive group that had been working for decades. They didn’t have a stable place to preserve the material or make them accessible. They solicited formal purposes for their collections from archives, which was very unusual. I wrote the purpose. That’s not a collection we received I believe it went to the Dallas public library. 
There was another collection I looked at there was a woman who wrote a lot on food and vegan studies that went all the way back to the 1960s. That kind of collection would be an anchor for a whole new kind of collection. But she wanted $300,000 for that collection. We did not have the budget to pay that. It was an amazing collection but not the kind people are willing to pay for. Creating a market for collections really does a disservice to archives.

 Overall, I found the interview really informative, insightful and kind of fun. Morgan had some really interesting antidotes about her time working and finding materials for the special collections. I felt like I did learn what I was hoping to learn before the actual interview started. Her insights on the industry side of things were reassuring in a way. I have had worried about "doing things in the right way" before, so it's nice to hear there are many paths to success, more or less. Her perspectives on the interview processes and the differences between different kinds of archives were especially informative to me.