So Alex, if we let you loose on the radio station, what would you want to do, in terms of being an archivist, not in terms of being someone who digs radio?
Oh, I would love to get the history of the various shows that have been on the radio, collecting on the different-- the notable shows over time, maybe some notable personalities. I did see, walking through the Student Center, that they have their own WREK Catlanta. Now, I'm not saying that they have to give us that, but that would be pretty cool. I do love cats, so--
[MUSIC PLAYING]
You are listening to WREK Atlanta. And this is Lost in the Stacks, the research library rock and roll radio show. I'm Charlie Bennett in the virtual studio with the whole show crew, Fred Rascoe, Wendy Hagenmaier, and Marlee Givens. Each week on Lost in the Stacks, we pick a theme and then use it to create a mix of music and library talk. Whichever you're here for, we hope you dig it. WENDY HAGENMAIER: Today's show is called "The University Archivist."
It's our introduction to one of the new members of the archives team, Alex McGee.
Alex talked to us about her job here at Georgia Tech, both the day-to-day reality and the long view.
And Charlie called her a troublemaker.
Hm.
Whoa. Hey, I'm pretty sure I cut that part out of the interview.
We're archivists, Charlie. We control the vertical. We control the horizontal. And we decide what's part of the historical record. INTERVIEWER 1: [SIGHS] Troublemaker.
[CHUCKLES]
Our songs today are about rolling up your sleeves and doing the dirty work, guiding your users to important stories, and trust. And really, trust could be the theme of all the songs today, because all archives want their users, researchers, and donors to have trust in how those collections are acquired and cared for. So let's kick off with "Trust" by Prince right here on Lost in the Stacks.
[MUSIC - PRINCE, "TRUST"]
You just heard "Trust" by Prince. This is Lost in the Stacks. And today, we're talking to Alex McGee, university archivist at the Georgia Tech Library. Alex was recently hired, and we wanted to know more about her and her work.
So what's your actual title?
So my actual title is the university archivist.
The university archivist. Are you--
Well, I threw "the" in front of it. Yeah.
[LAUGHTER]
What does the job entail?
Basically, I'm here to document the history of Georgia Tech, is my short and sweet explanation. And so that is faculty, staff, students, alumni, all of it. And I would say the good and the bad, so telling a true history of Georgia Tech, including the folks that maybe have been looked over for a period of time. Not to anyone's fault, but just, people have different preferences, priorities when collecting.
And so looking at our collections that we currently have and seeing, what are the gaps that we have, and who are the people that are not currently represented, and making a concerted effort to do outreach to those communities and try and bring them in to the archives to feel included.
I feel like there's an actual example behind that that you were just talking about.
Yeah, probably. The classic examples in all archives, I would say, are women and people of color. Especially in higher ed, you find that archives are historically white men. And I think-- I came from MIT, so that was certainly true there. And no higher-ed institution, unless maybe it was a women's college, is immune to those problems. And they may still exclude people of color. So--
So did you have to do, like, a scan of all of the university history that had-- I can't imagine being able to do that when you first arrive in a useful way.
So I'm still doing it, yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, so it's basically like, I've run a report of what are the collections that we have. And I'm looking for who's not there. We may have specific faculty. Who do we not have? Are there specific student groups that are missing? And then, basically, again, going and doing the outreach to try and bring those kinds of stories in.
You mentioned your last job was at MIT. So you're at a kind of similar-- sort of similar-- institution, focused on STEM and technology. Was your job similar there?
So I actually had two jobs at MIT while I was there. I went up there first to be the Women@MIT project archivist. And so that was kind of similar, except MIT hadn't created a position. They had two donors put up funding to create this role, where it was going to be explicitly focused on documenting women's history at MIT. So bringing in collections for women faculty, staff, students, alum there. And the interesting thing about MIT is that in the '90s, they had a lot of press.
It's like the MIT 16. And that was this group of women faculty that were meeting in secret and comparing the data on, like, how much square feet did they have for their lab space compared to their younger male colleagues, let's say? And they basically collected the data and proved that they were being discriminated against at MIT. And there was a big report. And it was, like, 1999. It was on the front page of all the major newspapers because they released the report.
And the president of MIT did an opening statement on the front of the report, saying that they want to believe that MIT is better than this, but this data shows that women have been discriminated against. And so there was this history. And that report spurred a lot of higher-ed institutions to look at how women in STEM were being treated, particularly faculty, but also women students. We know about the leaky pipeline.
Why are women studying and then not continuing on to become faculty at institutions like Georgia Tech and MIT? And so they wanted someone to come in and document that history, but also with the aim that by collecting these stories, the good and the bad, that we could then do things with it that would inspire younger generations to also pursue STEM. So with that in mind, I did things like, I started a research fellowship using our collections.
And it was more of a creative fellowship where we actually had-- the first round, the recipients did an immersive virtual experience, kind of like a video game, essentially, using our collections, and showcased women's history and the journey over time for women at MIT, in particular, but also in STEM. That was my first job.
And then I served as the interim head of public services for distinctive collections, which was basically-- I was in charge of outreach, instruction, the reading room, our exhibits program. So I wore a lot of hats. And I got to take the focus of Women@MIT with me still while we were hiring my replacement. But it became more broad. I was all the collections as opposed to just my very specific area of women at the institute.
So you've immediately centered one aspect of the archives, which is that it is evidence and, in a way, a tool for justice representation, the first draft of history, all that kind of stuff.
Absolutely, yeah.
So you're a troublemaker.
[CHUCKLES]
And I don't have Wendy here to back me up.
[CHUCKLING]
That's our standard nickname for archivists because of that influence and because of that role. Can you talk a little bit more about how you feel about that position?
Yeah. So I'm a little different than a lot of my library colleagues in that I actually don't have a library science background. I have a master's in history. So I think that, in particular, gives me a different perspective on using archival material, because I've used that to write my own research, to write my thesis, and knowing that, yes, if it makes it into the archive, that gives it some significance. So there's power in making the decision that something is coming into our collections.
And for me, I think I have to acknowledge that I do have this power, because I'm making decisions, because just the significance of it coming into our collections alone makes it a historical source. It's something that someone can now cite in their research, where finding it in someone's basement, not in a library or an archive-- there's less weight to that, we'll say.
And so I think if we have archives that are white male, they're not representing a diverse perspective, that, to me-- we're not telling the whole story. Both as an archivist and a historian, that's problematic. We want to have an inclusive history. And certainly, it's a better experience for our users if they know that they're coming to a place that has made an effort to collect a more robust, true representation of that institution, that person, so be it.
Now, there's a whole other side to when you're talking to an individual or an office, getting them to give you all their stuff. I have worked with donors where they've purposefully chosen to hold back things that they knew they didn't want public in their lifetime. And certainly, there's negotiation power there, where we want to try and work with them to make sure that that stuff gets preserved.
But at the end of the day, if it's their personal papers, it's their decision whether or not to give it to us. So we do our best. But also, that's my caveat-- that we can't always get everything.
But certainly, building that relationship of trust so that people are willing to even consider donating it is a big part, too, of making sure that we're able to bring in folks and stories that had been excluded, that maybe were marginalized, that felt left out-- that you need to build that trust back to make sure that they actually believe that we can steward their materials well.
We'll be back with more from Alex McGee, the university archivist at Georgia Tech, after a music set.
File this set under HM132.G526.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
You just heard "Better Distractions" by Faye Webster, and before that, "Be Sweet" by Japanese Breakfast, songs about deciding where to put your trust.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
This is Lost in the Stacks, and we are talking to Alex McGee, the new university archivist at Georgia Tech.
One major thing that's different between archives and libraries, or archivists and librarians, is just the nature of the work. A librarian does not go out and negotiate with people, except possibly to get money. We don't have to go ask people to give us stuff. So can you just give us an overview of that process? How do you identify a person, and then what happens from there?
Obviously, I've been talking about doing-- a gap analysis is what I call it-- looking at what are the holes in our collections. And so when you zero in on, oh, let's say there's a faculty member who is a woman of color, has been quite successful at Georgia Tech, we notice we don't have her papers. So we want to do some outreach to bring her collection in. That's going to be probably a slow process because I think sometimes people are ready to go. They've been thinking about this.
Maybe they're closer to retirement. Other folks-- they're still actively using their materials. They're not ready to part with it. So really, it's just, you reach out and introduce yourself and explain what the archives is and basically make your appeal as to why you think their materials should be in our collections.
And what I found with-- especially with my Women@MIT role was that a lot of these really amazing women scientists, in particular, were incredibly humble, could not believe that we wanted their stuff. Little old me. Why would you want my scribbles? And having to explain to them the significance of their role-- both their work, but then also the meaning of them being at an institute like Georgia Tech, like MIT, and why that's impactful for us to have in our collections.
And so usually, they'll sit with it. They'll think about it. I'll leave them with our deed of gift, which is the legal document that they would sign, giving us their papers when they transferred them. And generally, there's a lot of questions. We have a lot of things we want when it comes to copyright. We want ownership. We want to be able to provide access to those.
There's usually a negotiation, like I alluded to, with folks maybe not feeling comfortable with opening up their entire collection to the public. So sometimes people will want restrictions. And usually, we don't want to take things that are restricted forever, because then that should just go to a storage unit. Our mission is to get materials and make them accessible to the public. So if folks want a restriction, usually the ones that I always prefer are your death plus 5 or 10 years max.
And people usually are OK with that if they are really concerned about something. Like I said, it takes a while because folks may not be ready to part with their things. There may be stuff in their office on campus. There may be stuff at home. And they want to take time to go through it. Sometimes they'll ask the archivist to come in and help pack. I haven't done that yet here at Georgia Tech. But at MIT, I did do some packing. And that's usually kind of a fun, dirty day.
You wear your-- because people just-- I have certainly encountered my share of-- we'll call it rodent feces. So yeah, so I have my gloves. So it's not all glam. That's the dirty part. And then once we get the materials transferred to us, and we have the signed deed of gift, then we can work on getting it processed.
Or even better, if we were able to do a great job with getting it packed, there's minimal processing needed, we can just get it described in our system, which is ArchivesSpace, so that folks then know it exists and can come in and request it to see it in the reading room. Or they can request a digital copy, and we can scan something for them if they're remote.
When you're packing up a box or something, and you find dead bugs, rodent feces, whatever, do you ever think to yourself, I should have been a digital archivist?
[LAUGHTER]
I actually haven't thought that yet, but now I probably will, because I definitely will pack up hard drives or floppy disks or laser disks. But no, I haven't had that thought yet. But now I probably will, yeah. Yeah, it could get real gross.
The way you're describing this is-- it's a little bit like a cleanup crew. It's a sort of end-of-life process. But clearly not, because you go to the office. You talk to the folks and then make the plans. Do you like or do you need to get everything at the end of an era?
I would love to get stuff when the person is still jamming. We can certainly take materials that they're ready to part with right now. And maybe in 5 or 10 years, they have another round ready. So it just depends on how active that person is. I know I've worked with faculty at MIT where they had given stuff before I came, but it wasn't the really good stuff, we'll say. The sexy stuff was still in their office. And so they were nearing retirement.
And so they were now like, OK, I can part with these things. But yeah, no, I love working with people that are actually still working and active, because honestly, they usually are more willing to provide robust description and more information about what they're giving, which is really helpful on the processing side because that means I can think about the records and how they're actively using them. But then also, it provides for better description when I'm creating the collection record.
Can you just give a couple of examples of what you consider sexy?
[CHUCKLING]
Well, so the Women@MIT stuff-- the binders of the floor plans where you can see where they highlighted the square footage, just because that was a really impactful thing that was used to sway the folks at MIT about discrimination. I've--
It tells a visual story instantly.
It does, in a way that a lot of times archives-- we have a lot of textual documents. So that was just something a little different. I always like photographs. I think photographs are really fun. I'm trying to think what else would be sexy.
[CHUCKLES]
I always like correspondence, because usually, it's a different way that people present themselves. Like, you have their very formal writing. But then a lot of times, especially-- now it's emails, but it used to be typewriters. We had some letters from previous presidents for MIT responding to nasty letters they got.
And the frankness with which-- I think one of them, he said, you're an idiot for writing me this letter-- where you just don't see that anymore from-- I don't think you would see that from President Cabrera. So it just is a window into another moment of time. And they were just much more honest. And so I think that that's always just kind of fascinating.
You're listening to Lost in the Stacks. And we'll be back with more from Alex McGee on the left side of the hour.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
OK, I've got it. All right. I'm Snowden Becker. I'm an archivist who's worked with everything from film and home movies to bricks and pieces of bed springs. And you're listening to Lost in the Stacks on WREK Atlanta.
[MUSIC - MISSION OF BURMA, "WEATHERBOX"]
(SINGING) Every man thinks he's done what he can. Then he [INAUDIBLE],, and he's holding the weatherbox.
This is Lost in the Stacks, and today's show is called "The University Archivist." Our guest, Alex McGee, is that very archivist. But she hasn't always been. Marlee had a question about Alex's collecting from before she came to Georgia Tech.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
What's something that you have collected that you were just delighted by?
This is throwing it way back to my first full-time archivist job. I worked for John Portman and his architectural archives, a Georgia Tech alum. And we had the original watercolor renderings of various projects that they were designing. And some actually did happen, and some didn't. The watercolors were absolutely gorgeous. It was just, a lot of them were, like, '60s, '70s. And it definitely looks like that-- just the interiors.
But also, just the idea that you were seeing something that could have been that ended up not happening. So we had watercolor renderings of-- he did a design for President Carter's Presidential Library. And it was not a good design. It had huge windows, so bright sunlight. There was a water feature inside. Obviously, for a presidential library, those things do not mix. But it was just kind of fascinating.
There was a lot of stuff about the great park and when they were going to build an interstate that would cut through, and then park and how that didn't happen and became Freedom Parkway. And the presidential library is there. But there was one design where it was going to be, like, a monorail, which I thought was great. So I just always really enjoy those. I still think about those, actually. So yeah, if I could just get my hands on those, then I would just take more photographs of them.
I didn't take any photographs of them when I was working. So now I just have to describe them to people and be like, believe me, it was such 1960s, '70s vibes.
Like storyboards for Logan's Run or something?
Yeah, yeah.
File this set under QL737.R66 ooh 6.
[MUSIC - STEELY DAN, "DIRTY WORK"]
You just heard "Dirty Work" by Steely Dan, a song about doing the jobs that are tough and often thankless.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Welcome back to Lost in the Stacks. Today's episode is called "The University Archivist," featuring an interview with Alex McGee of the Georgia Tech Archives.
Can you talk about what the end result is of these collections? We were talking about the materials that are useful or intriguing or compelling. What's the eventual presentation to folks once you've gathered this material? How do you retell these stories?
Usually, we describe a collection in our system, which is called ArchivesSpace. That's what we use. And the result is, you create a finding aid. And it has things like a biographical note or a historical note if it's an office or a company or something like that. And then you have, there, our collection description, which is basically a very high-level telling of what's in the materials.
And that's where you can let people know what's in here that is worthwhile, what's not here that's also really important. If you're a researcher, and you're looking for something very specific, that may be where you find out, oh, it's not here. And then you have your breakdown of your ser-- usually it's series. And so series, you'll see our correspondence, subject files of-- a lot of times, people keep subject files on different folks, companies, various research.
If it's faculty, you'll find their teaching materials. So we always ask faculty for-- if you taught a new class or-- give us your top-two versions, the way you did it, that you like the best. We'll get people's tests and then their research itself, so especially if they've written papers, articles, drafts, that kind of thing. I always like seeing drafts because you can see the evolution of how they ended up getting to what they eventually publish.
And I think that's a really interesting way to look at how these folks tick. And so you'll have the series. And then, generally, we'll either describe it at the box level or the folder level. And it'll literally be the folder titles from how they kept it, hopefully. We want to preserve original order, preserve how they use these records. That's the most useful way to keep things for future users. And from there, we get to do fun things. Like, we want to promote it.
We want to figure out how we can use it in social media. If we can do a research fellowship, like the Women@MIT one, where we're actually able to pinpoint, these are collections of interest for you. We would suggest you use these to do your research fellowship-- and maybe they'll do a video game or something. So yeah, and from there, once it's public and accessible, obviously, folks can do just about anything they want with it. And that's ultimately the end goal.
So is the way you prioritize who is going to be researched later-- because obviously, there's no way you can do this for everyone. There's thousands of faculty members, just to start with. So yeah, how do you choose who's at the top of the list?
Is this for collecting or for processing, is my question.
Well, now I want to know both.
OK. [CHUCKLES] For collecting, again, certainly, if someone is nearing the end of their career, they may be a higher priority because there's a higher likelihood that we may miss out on getting something. So I would say that's for collecting. For processing, it may be-- if it's a really high-value collection, if we can project that it is going to be very high use, that is certainly going to make it go higher on our priority list for processing.
If we know that we get a lot of questions about this area or the subject from students or faculty, then again, that's another reason it'll go higher on the list for processing.
Do you have a specific collection in mind that you're going to target, or can you not divulge that at this time?
Oh.
[LAUGHTER]
Well, I think you guys probably have picked up on my priorities from things I've said already. It's certainly women and people of color. I think, also, looking at the collections, we're missing student groups. And that's a very critical part of current campus life. And student groups are an interesting challenge because, obviously, their leadership rolls over more frequently. So building the relationship with them is kind of harder.
But I think there are ways we can work with them and support them. And we're at an interesting moment where I've had some conversations already with some different students, and they are not interested in keeping their physical materials that they may have in their group's office. They are looking for help with that, whereas previous-- So the switchover from physical to digital is very much on their mind.
And digital is much easier for them to give to us because it's not their only copy, let's say. And physical materials are just seen as taking up a lot of space. And they feel like they don't have the expertise to make sure that these things are taken care of, whereas I think previous years, those members may have been a little more like, how could you let those go? So it's an interesting moment, I think, to work with these groups and hopefully lend our expertise.
And I also am very big, with student groups, of saying, I'm happy to be a resource if you are trying to think about how to care for your physical materials. But you don't have to work with me with the expectation that it's going to come to the archives right now. That's totally fine. And I think you're seeing more schools do a post-custodial kind of arrangement where we may get digital copies of their physical things, but they're actually holding onto the originals.
And we're still able to have copies of something and make it available and accessible to folks, but they're not having to let go of the custody of the actual physical things. And that seems to be more popular, especially with groups that maybe are a little hesitant that you have to build back the trust relationship with the archives.
So Alex, we're almost out of time. What's the best part of your job?
So I really like outreach. I like meeting folks and talking to them about their history, their-- like, what are the significant things that they've done, that their group has done that they're very proud of? And then working with them to think about, OK, what does that look like in your materials that you may donate to the archives, and think very specifically about how to make an impact with their materials so that we can get their story told.
And I think that there's just power to being in an archive. And if we can bring in more people and tell this more robust, true picture of a place, then that's a great thing. And I'm very proud to be part of that effort.
Alex, thanks for being on the show today.
Thank you for having me. It was my pleasure.
You've been listening to our interview with Alex McGee, the university archivist at Georgia Tech.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
File this set under QC911.2.C37.
[MUSIC - MARCI, "IMMATERIAL GIRL"]
(SINGING) The girl is a go.
You just heard "Direct Sunlight" by Tops. And we started the set with "Immaterial Girl" by Marci, songs about helping people discover the story you're telling and using tools to tell that story.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Today's episode of Lost in the Stacks is called "The University Archivist." And I think it would be a good pre-credit roll for each of us to say a little bit about the collection we'd like to see in the university archives. I, for one, would very much like to see the WREK collection that Alex imagined in the cold open of the show. How about you, Wendy? WENDY HAGENMAIER: Great question.
There's so many gaps in our holdings-- in most archives' holdings-- things that just were never collected that I'd love to be able to fill.
But one thing I've always thought would be fun, if we had infinite time, would be to maybe embed with a group of, like, female software developers founding a startup or something at Tech, a group that's underrepresented in our documentation about the history of software development or the history of technology, and talk to them, consult with them about what they want to document and what their documentation is and how it's valuable for history, and documenting that experience.
So I guess documenting the moment, some of the innovation that's happening in the moment at Tech before it's lost. CHARLIE BENNETT: Documenting the now.
Exactly.
I wish I had a really good answer. But I'm very tickled sometimes because I see the Georgia Tech team chiropractor, who has-- well, his name is Randy Rhino, and he is a Hall of Famer football player who returned to Tech to work for the athletic department. And first of all, he has walls of his own memorabilia. I mean, his walls are covered with his own memorabilia for all of his time there. And they're pretty huge. So I'd love to see all of that move into the archives.
It's not much of a collection, though, as far as collecting. But one day, I was in there, and he had an old yearbook. And he was showing me pictures from back in the '70s when some students were doing some streaking. And I thought, there's got to be records of student shenanigans. I think that would just be fun. I don't know.
That would be one of the best finding aids imaginable [INAUDIBLE].
Oh, I know. Yeah. CHARLIE BENNETT: --student shenanigans. [CHUCKLES]
Yeah, like Marlee, I'm a little intimidated to follow the archivist Wendy in deciding-- or, trying to decide-- something that should be in the archives. I recently saw a flier for the Georgia Tech Flying Club. And so just in the few minutes here, I thought, oh, that would be a good one. But let me look it up. And there's actually already stuff from the Flying Club in the archives. So I would probably think of stuff that was already in the archives. And I would be embarrassed on air.
So [CHUCKLES] I'm going to punt, I think, on this one.
Oh, this is good, Fred. You're like a validator. You're a validation session. Roll the credits.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Lost in the Stacks is a collaboration between WREK Atlanta and the Georgia Tech Library, written and produced by Charlie Bennett, Fred Rascoe, Marlee Givens, and Wendy Hagenmaier.
Today's show was edited and assembled by Fred in a rodent-free and "not yet packed up" workspace.
Legal counsel and one of those Portman watercolors were provided by the Burrus Intellectual Property Law Group in Atlanta, Georgia.
We don't know where they got it, and we're not asking.
Special thanks to Alex for being on the show and for providing all the music recommendations. It was 100% the guest today, folks. And thanks, as always, to each and every one of you for listening.
You can find us online at lostinthestacks.org, and you can subscribe to our podcast pretty much anywhere you get your audio fix.
Next week, we find out what the OSTP is and why they are sending memos. Is it about the TPS reports?
I don't think so. It's time for our last song today. Archives are always changing, being modified, added to, expanded, improved, because an archive is a collection of things that we want to even outlast us so that they're useful to the next generation. So let's close with a song about maintaining something for the long haul. This is "Long May You Run" by the Stills-Young Band right here on Lost in the Stacks. Have a great weekend, everybody.
[MUSIC - THE STILLS YOUNG BAND, "LONG MAY YOU RUN"]