M.E. Grenander Department of Special Collections and Archives

The M.E. Grenander Department of Special Collections and Archives is fortunate to have undergraduate and graduate students working on a variety of projects including arranging and describing collections, conducting research related to our collections, and many other initiatives. Here is another posting from one of these students, University at Albany graduate student Kali Roy.

My name is Kali Roy and I am a graduate student in the Information Science Program at the University at Albany, SUNY. I also work as a student assistant in the University at Albany’s M.E. Grenander Department of Special Collections and Archives. In general, I aid David Mitchell (Curator pro bono of the Miriam Snow Mathes Historical Children’s Collection) with collection maintenance. This collection maintenance can involve seemingly mundane tasks such as shelving, searching Minerva and OCLC for copies of books for the collection, and providing preservation housing for the collection artifacts, such as phase boxes, portfolios and enclosures. The reason I use the word seemingly is that while I am in the process of performing these necessary tasks to keep the collection neat, orderly, and significant, I am also gaining knowledge about how a special collections department works, and about how the history of children’s literature has evolved over time. This results in giving the tasks a positive complexity with learning that is two fold. Past and present children’s literature is one of my all time favorite interests; this job has provided me with great resources for learning about past and present authors, artists, publishers, and stories that continue to inspire those working in the field of children’s literature. As a student assistant, I have also learned to be flexible and open to all avenues of learning and experience.