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I always tell my students, when I leave my processing area for any reason there is always new stuff waiting for me when I return.  I came back to work after attending ALA and found boxes of new, empty archival boxes (above), which makes me so happy!, and a new collection of the Carstens family (below). It has been a busy morning. 

Yesterday was Grandparents U at CMU. Grandparents and children stay at CMU and engage in multiple fun activities. This year's theme was elephants based on the book and Netflix movie the Magician's Elephant. I highly recommend it. The CMU Libraries had a lot of fun activities to offer. In the Clarke we shared circus posters featuring elephants, a stereograph of the Forepaugh circus parade (with multiple elephants) in Kalamazoo (above), and other stereographs depicting the lives of children in the late 19th century. Everyone's favorite was the relatable hair brushing (Pulling and hurting) stereograph. The bare butt bath also made everyone smile. It was interesting to hear that most of the grandparents had parents or grandparents with stereograph collections that they had enjoyed as children. We also had handouts and treats. One of the handouts was how to download stereographic images from the Library of Congress and make your own working and easy to make 3-d viewer (see https

  Before graduating in 2014 from Central Michigan University with a Bachelor of Arts degree in History, I had the good fortune of in terning with Marian Matyn  at the Clarke Historical Library. During my internship, I spent most of   my time on  the Aladdin Housing Company collection, sorting through the personal records of Aladdin founder William Sovereign and his son, Will Sove reign, Jr. I loved finding unexpected things, like photographs of pilot Jeanette Lempke  (William Sovereign’s wife)  and her trailblazing flights  in the 1920s .   I  knew pretty quickly that I’d also found a new career path .   Fast forward about 9 years- I now have a Master of Library and Information Science degree from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. After a brief stint as a Local History Librarian in Ohio, I am  currently  a Visiting Processing Archivist at Grand Valley State University. Drawing directly from my processing experience at the Clarke , I am  currently  working to process a large coll