An Archivist's Tale

Tamar Zeffren, Archival Collections Manager at the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, tells us how archives kept her from becoming a lawyer, explains how she worked odd archives jobs when beginning her career during the Great Recession, and explains how her archives team continues their work while working from home during the Coronavirus Pandemic.

Greg Hunter, Professor at the Palmer School of Library and Information Science at Long Island University, tells the stories of his career, stories of almost always starting from scratch and creating archival improvements for the United Negro College Fund, ITT, the Academy of Certified Archivists, the US National Archives, and historical societies on Long Island.

Pat Franks, Professor, and Program Coordinator of the Masters of Archives and Records Administration program at San Jose State University, tells us how a grant opportunity from the New York State Archives led her to records and information management and eventually into a rich career of teaching and writing.

Cliff Hight, Head of Special Collections and the University Archivist at Kansas State University, sits down to discuss his life as an archivist, how his archives was prepared for working at home for covid-19 because of another disaster they had experienced, and shows how his career and ours have intersected many times over the years.

Judy Blankenship, a de facto archivist working to document the visual culture of Cañari people of Andean Ecuador, tells us her story of becoming an accidental archivist after finishing her career and traveling the world.

Karen Trivette and Geof Huth, hosts of An Archivist's Tale, discuss how they are conducting their archival and library work while confined at home and living their lives in Manhattan, in the epicenter of the global coronavirus pandemic.

Diedre Dinnigan, an Archivist and Heritage Specialist and the Principal of ForKeeps, tells us how stumbling upon an archives changed her life, how she became an archivist because of that, and why she prefers to be an independent archivist in charge of her own destiny and focused on helping people and institutions save and understand their heritage through their archives.

Ostap Kin, Archivist, Librarian, and Research Center Coordinator at the Zimmerli Art Museum at Rutgers University, tells us the story of chance that redirected part of his life from literature to archives, his immigration to the United States, and how archives capture valuable and coherent fragments of the world. (Photo credit: http://alkadabraphotography.com)

Marvin Sackner, one of the founders of the Ruth and Marvin Sackner Archive of Concrete and Visual Poetry, explains how he and his wife became collectors of visual poetry and other works that merge image with text, how they built their renowned collection, and where he donated their assemblage of publications, artworks, and personal papers related to this field. This is a story about the collector as a curator and archivist.

Rachel Binnington, an American archivist in England, reveals her peripatetic life story that begins when she was a child, tells us of her archival yearnings which began many years be most of ours did, and surprises us with her wide array of archives jobs covering corporate records, US congressional records, and the colonial records of Louisiana.