Ann Galloway

Assistant University Archivist
Age: 33
Hometown: Marietta, Ga.
Time at Georgetown: 6 years

How did you become interested in working with archives and archivist’s work?
As a history major, I think everyone expects you to go into academia and I knew I didn’t want to do that. And some of our projects would take us into archives, and being able to touch and feel the actual tangible pieces of history was what I found interesting. So I gradually started veering in that direction and thinking museum studies, library science, archives. And so finally settled on archives.

On the day-to-day level, what work do you do?
Day-to-day work usually involves answering a lot of questions from people who are curious, either curious about the university or from the university administration who needs answers to questions and problems that they have. Special projects come up. We do a lot of digitization work and transferring some of our old media to new formats. We have a lot of reel-to-reel tapes that aren’t usable and so we’ve undergone some projects to get those upgraded. There’s lots of times when we have our day planned out but then we’ll get a call from an office on campus that they need something and we literally have to drop everything and focus on it. It could be a request for President DeGioia. It could be a special visitor. It could be anything. That happens frequently. 

How do you see students and the university using the archives?
A lot of students will have projects for class. There’s a couple of classes that we work with. We work with the John Carroll Fellows and they usually have a primary source class where they have to come in and they get an item and they research it throughout the year. We have had students who have come in to do their thesis. We have had students who are just curious about, like, “Oh I’ve heard the relics used to be over here in Williams Chapel,” so they’d come in to learn more about it on their own time. It could a range of anything from projects to just general interest.

What is your favorite piece from the archives?
I like the really sort of splashy show-and-tell stuff. Documents are fun and documents are good for certain purposes but I like things like… It’s not up here right now but we have a lemon encased in acrylic that was used at a student protest in the ’70s I believe. And we have the Healy clock hand molds. Things like that. Things that people can see, identify what they are and interact with that in different ways than documents. Those are my favorites, and photographs.

What are the main categories of stuff you have in the archives?
Our main goal really is to collect the records of the university for institutional purposes. The university is a corporation and they need and they keep the records to prove they were… Just an organic outgrowth of what they do on a day-to-day basis. They come to us to find out why was this decision made or have we done this before. So it’s a lot of support for the administration but then we have a lot of student records. So all of the yearbooks. We have The Hoya. We have student organization records. So we just have a lot of varied material so it’s not just boring administrative stuff. We have — I don’t know why we have this — but we have cookies that Hillary Clinton made in a bake-off with Laura Bush many, many years ago. We have… gosh, I could sort of just peek on the shelves here. We’ve got posters going back a hundred years. A lot of varied information.

What kind of work do you do to preserve these kinds of things?
First and foremost, with documents, it’s putting them in proper storage. Acid-free folders that won’t break down the paper. And then they go in boxes to help keep them supported and upright. If they’re unbound they go upright on a shelf. You don’t want to put them a certain way because it’ll ruin the binding. Photographs should be kept in a climate controlled area, which we don’t have at the moment, but we’re getting. And negatives and things like that have to go in proper housing so that they’re not scratched or that they don’t degrade over time. So we do a lot of work to make sure that the item’s life is extended as long as possible. 

How is the construction going to help you preserve the archives?
First and foremost, we’re getting brand new HVAC system to help us keep things. Things should relatively stay at 65 degrees and a certain humidity, like at 35 percent, and our current conditions in Lauinger don’t do that. So the big thing is that we will be having an enclosed area for our collections that will have constant temperature and humidity controls, which is great! And that goes a long way to preserving the items. Temperature and humidity are big factors in whether or not they degrade faster or not. So that’s the big thing and we’re going to get our own classroom space so that we can bring more people in and show them what we have. And we’re going to have a better processing area for the staff, so we can manage what we have better.

How do you think the university could better advertise the archives as a resource for students?
The library’s been doing a much better job. Our communications coordinator upstairs, Jenny, has been using Facebook and Twitter to push out images, like Throwback Thursday usually comes from the archives or every now and then she’ll put up something for a holiday or with commencement coming up she’ll probably put up something from years past. And most of those images do come from the archives, sometimes special collections. We also have the art department here, the art collection and manuscripts, papers and rare books here, so there’s a lot more besides the archives, but the archives strictly focus on the history of the university. And to be honest, we could do a better job. You know we could advertise better with student organizations to know that we’re here so that they can give us their records. That’s something we’re working on. Partnering with the history society is another way that we’re trying to get out there and get more people in to see what we have and get interest in them to come in. And we do reach out to faculty, especially new faculty when they come in, to let them know what we have. But it’s tricky, especially with students, because there’s so much turnover in the organizations. You’ll get somebody on board and they’ll have a great time, and then four years later they leave and the next person doesn’t know we’re here. We just have to constantly work at it. 

Anything else you’d like to add? 
Everybody should come to the archives. Everybody at some point has a question about Georgetown that could likely be answered with what we have. We would love to see everyone.

Interview by Ian Tice