In an interview with The Stute, Head of Archives and Special Collections Librarian Leah Loscutoff and Archivist and Digital Projects Librarian Ted Houghtaling shared more about documenting the present.
As Loscutoff summarized, “We want students to realize that we’re interested in documenting their life and memories at Stevens so when they come back someday they can see themselves in Stevens history.” Some recent examples of projects the archivists have done have related to COVID-19 and how students adapted to the pandemic. Additionally, Houghtaling mentioned, “Students feel like there’s no place for their memories which is what we’re trying to address.” Both Loscutoff and Houghtaling acknowledged that there are “gaps of representation in the archives.” To address this, the archivists have actively been collecting more material on groups that have been marginalized throughout history to broaden their collection.
Q: Are you documenting the new buildings on campus, like the University Center Complex (UCC)?
“We document just press releases and the major announcements so far. We work with other departments on campus as well like the Department of University Relations […] eventually those photos that they take will come to the archives where we’ll have access to them.”
Houghtaling added, “we also keep an institutional history spreadsheet that keeps track of buildings like when they were erected, when they were torn down, events, when student organizations were founded, when academic departments were founded. So there’s an entry for the UCC. So that’s like a living document for whatever we find for some major Stevens events.”
Q: Do you have any upcoming projects you would like to share?
“Next month on October 19, there’s a professor of music at the University of Oxford who used a lot of collections here at the archives to write a chapter of her book and it kind of centers on a former Stevens professor. So we’re gonna get her to give a guest lecture about her book but also about the history of the type of research that this professor did at Stevens […] The fact that a pretty prominent sound studies researcher wanted to devote a whole chapter on this guy is really cool and interesting and that’s the kind of stuff we as archivists like, when historians use our collections to shine a light on unknown parts of history and bring them to life.”
Loscutoff and Houghtaling noted that many outside researchers do in fact use the archives in their publications, books, articles, etc. They described the archives as “very interdisciplinary” and Houghtaling emphasized, “What we want to stress is that it’s not closed off to the public. We keep these records because we want them to be used. We don’t want to keep them in some attic space on the third floor where no one will ever see it. You have to make an appointment to come see it of course, but we want people to come in and use them for their research or if they’re just interested. You don’t have to be writing a history book to come see our collections.”
As Loscutoff reiterated, “We’re all about access. We’ve been giving this writer from Hoboken Girl who just posted an article about dogs of Hoboken […] There’s endless topics [and] so many different angles to the history. We’re always learning more ourselves.”
A topical example of the relevance of archives that Houghtaling mentioned is Lizzo playing a crystal flute from the Library of Congress. He explained that Lizzo’s concert is “the perfect example of what archives are all about. [It] is to have them be used and have them be activated. Because there’s some people who are like ‘I can’t believe they let her use that. It’s gonna cause irreparable harm to the object’ […] But it’s like no, what are we all doing this for if not for it to be used and brought to life? And it’s great for the Library of Congress because look at this person bringing it to a different context.” “Bringing this to a younger generation where it can be more relatable and interesting as opposed to being very standoffish,” finished Loscutoff.
All Stevens students are relevant to Stevens’ history and the archives will continue to provide insight into the lives of students for years to come.
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