By Carlee Stoner

From May to August 2024, a lot was going on at Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh (CLP) – Main in the Archives Department!

I have been interning in the Archives Department as a Masters in Library and Information Science student from the University of Pittsburgh. This is my first experience with hands-on work on archival collections, and it has been great! As an intern for CLP’s archivist Amanda Ciccone, I was able to contribute to the preservation and processing of 4 sets of historical materials related to Pittsburgh’s local history. These will be available to be viewed and used by members of the community.

Here is a brief rundown of what I worked on:

1. Hill District Community Collection

The Hill District Community Collection was a pre-existing collection that came to CLP – Main for reappraisal and to receive some well-needed love and care. This collection shows the rich history of Pittsburgh’s Hill District, and it includes plenty of materials originating from the CLP – Hill District location. The collection contains many types of media covering a large stretch of time. Looking at the collection, you can see how the area has changed over time and its vibrant culture. This collection is available to be viewed at CLP – Hill District in the August Wilson Room. No appointment needed.

 

 

2. Greeting Cards (Pennsylvania Postcard Collection)

Sitting on a shelf in one of the storage rooms was a photo album full of vintage greeting cards, many of which came from the Victorian Era. This series is a part of the Pennsylvania Postcard Collection. Materials in this series are in the process of being digitized. This series taught me a lot about digitization. This unique experience allowed me to work with these beautiful greeting cards, and I got to do work so that everyone else could experience them too someday. These cards were meaningful to someone and preserving them will ensure that their sentiments are not lost in time.

 

 

 

3. Personal Letters of Advocacy for Frances Jenkins Olcott

Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh used to be home to a program designed to train children’s librarians. It was the first of its kind and it set the standard in the field at the time. Frances Jenkins Olcott, esteemed children’s librarian and children’s book author, spearheaded this program. Students came from all over the country to attend this program. In 1911, Frances Jenkins Olcott resigned* from her position as head of the school, causing a huge response from alumni of the school who believed Olcott’s teaching to be exemplary. This collection largely contains letters from alumni of the program. This collection taught me a lot about working with correspondence. You cannot always tell what is being communicated! Old timey handwriting can be hard to decipher. This collection is part of CLP’s Institutional Archives, and the finding aid will be posted in the future on HistoricPittsburgh.org. *[Editors note: Olcott was fired. In the archives at CLP, there is a letter signed by all of the students at the children’s library school at the time, about how mean and unprofessional Olcott was. They were going to leave en masse if the Director didn’t fire her. Olcott was asked to “resign” to avoid a scandal.]

 

4. Schenley Heights Neighborhood Club

This is a scrapbook of materials related to a women’s club in the Upper Hill, A.K.A. Schenley Heights. The scrapbook was found in an abandoned school. Opening this scrapbook reveals a vibrant, active group of women that worked hard to make their neighborhood a better, livelier place. There is not a lot of information online about this group, but this scrapbook tells us a lot about the contributions made to Pittsburgh’s Black community by the Schenley Heights Neighborhood Club. Now that it has a finding aid, it can be known to the world. The finding aid will be posted in the future on HistoricPittsburgh.org.

 

Working on these collections enabled me to get a good grasp on what each set of materials contained so that I could determine how to arrange them in order to create a resource that anyone could easily use. Our archives are here to be used by patrons, so it’s important to design collection arrangements and finding aids that are intuitive and easy to understand.

Working with the archivist has taught me so much about local history and the stakes that communities have in what we are doing and what we keep in the archives. People want to know the past and how it relates to them. Doing the work of an archivist taught me things that I would not have been able to learn in class. As a current student, this experience has boosted my confidence in what I’m capable of doing and prepared me for future positions in other archival collections. I had the opportunity to learn about finding aids, arrangement, digitization and preservation. My time in CLP – Main’s Archives Department was educational, and I feel that I was able to contribute to something important.