Daria heads off to new experiences

My name is Daria Batzner, and I’m going into my fourth year of my undergrad here at CMU as a History Major and Dance Minor. Over the Summer of 2026, I worked as a student archival processing assistant. I mainly worked with the Barbara Madison collection, which was quite the first experience with archival work for me. I spent a lot of time going through Madison’s papers, and I learned a lot about how to process material along the way. Once I had finished processing and encoding the Madison collection, I moved on to other smaller collections that were much easier to process. The switch to working with collections with an original organization system, like the Pine River Superfund and related collections, made everything seem a lot easier. Even though the work could be confusing or tedious at times, I loved every minute of it.

 During my time at the Clarke, I worked closely with Marian. She taught me how to process collections, including what should be withdrawn vs. retained, how to appropriately store photos and photonegatives, how to write folder labels, and how to encode collections and update finding aids. I think the things that I have learned here will be very useful in my future career with archival work, and I’m grateful to Marian and everyone else here for giving me this opportunity and creating such a welcoming space for me.

Daria, it's been a pleasure. I'm going to miss you and your excellent work. I wish you all the best.