Elaina Granse
Elaina Granse
In the fall of 2023, I took my Advanced Archival Management course, and in this course, I spent time at the Minneapolis Central Library working on my professional practice project. For this project I was put to work on several boxes of photographs from The City Pages newspaper, sorting the materials, documenting them, and moving them to a new, archivally safe, home. Before this, I had never worked hands on with photographs, and this was my first hands on experience in an archive. I used what little documentation I had to identify photo subjects, researching people, buildings, events, and theatres, which had sometimes been photographed before I was born (BI-c). I had completed my required time on this project for my class with only making a small dent in the stacks that had sat untouched since COVID originally halted the project. So, I asked to keep coming back as a volunteer. I spent almost 100 hours on the project, and at the end was able to look at the project completed (BI-f).
This project was a tremendous chance for me to grow as a student and professional, allowing me a real look at a wonderful future as an archivist, cementing my path forwards. I had the chance to work as a professional, to trust what I had been learning in class, and what I had been told be my supervisor, and to trust in my own capabilities (BI-g).
In my LIS 7480 class, I completed a Community Walkabout assignment.
This assignment covered the inherent issues in this community left from the red lining, as well as the success of the current day. I undertook a day of walking and exploring this area, documenting the different aspects of the neighborhood and the effects acting upon them. Many issues of this area can be traced back to how this section, located between Nicollet and 35W, was red lined and so had its development hampered by lack of support and funding.(BI-a)
One of the largest issues is the lack of walkability, in the last few years crosswalks have been added to the pavement, crossing the major roads in the area, however these have only partially helped the problem, as there are no accompanying signage or effort to slow traffic on these busy streets to make it actually safe to cross on these paths. This walkability issue is what makes this section of the neighborhood largely cut off from the larger neighborhood area. Fixing this issue would increase the effectiveness of the available assets, bringing the advantages of the park to the greater community, and increasing connections across Nicollet instead of allowing the divide to grow.(BI-b)(BI-d)
Coming into this course, my capabilities in research were something I felt confident in. I had been doing research for papers and projects for almost a decade. But despite my confidence that I was well established in this field, this course was still able to teach me things. In my 7010 Introduction to Library and information Science, I had to take on a new format of presentation, an infographic (BI-d). From there I continue to learn.
In my Management of Libraries and Information Centers I took on case studies. Before I had learned to tell if I was looking at a trustworthy source or if it was too heavily biased, but I had only touched on the dangers of how easily a study can be misled in a one semester psychology class in high school. For these case studies, that was a subject I had to carefully consider (BI-e). I had to learn how to identify the different aspects of the cases and how choices made by the people involved could have influenced or altered the findings, and how the desired outcomes might biased the people involved (BI-a).
In my 7530 Web Design and Accessibility course I took on the challenge of learning HTML and CSS to build a website (BI-a). This was not the first website I had built, but it was the first from that ground up approach of coding items into existence rather that drag and dropping elements onto a page, and so there were many aspects that felt far more important to do right by. The use of technology in the LIS field was regarded by me as nothing more notable or exceptional than a cheeseburger having cheese, the world (especially post COVID) is deeply intertwined with technology existing at every level so in LIS it did not seem of much note. This project however changed that, as it made me ask questions I had not previously. I had known my website should be accessible, but the levels of what that meant did not become apparent until this project was underway. The alt descriptions for my photographs were basic, notes for if I made a mistake and they didn’t load, but it did not stop there. How can I make my website accessible for a reader? How do I make sure that assistive devices can work with what I made? (BI-d) (BI-e). Trying to make something I could be proud of, for the first time made me consider without provocation the realities of the prevalent usages of technology. It is a tool that can greatly increase accessibility, but all those steps can be pointless without forethought.
The necessary distinction between disinformation and misinformation have become even more important I feel in the past few years but being able to distinguish them from each other and information have become increasingly difficult. In my 7750 class, Introduction to Archives and Special Collections, I created a presentation on the debate of protesters defacing artworks in their protests, and in this research, it became readily apparent that despite the number of news sources reporting on these events, most would not be useful for my project, or were too blatantly biased to use comfortably (BI-f).
I encountered a similar issue in my introductory course creating my presentation on The Loss of School Librarians and the Rise of Censorship, where a number of sources I found were pushing disinformation that had no basis in reality, but supported certain groups agendas and so were repeated ad nauseam, so that where disinformation ended and misinformation began was impossible to tell (BI-d). Misinformation can be corrected, information can be shared, but disinformation is a parasite that can only be starved, by correcting misinformation and making sure that information is not just available, but identifiable to all who come looking.
One of the largest projects I have undertaken in this program was the aptly named Semester Long Project from my 8810 Advanced Archival Management. In this project, I created a fictional archive and created plans on how it would be run, its location, and outreach activities in the community, before summing everything into a class presentation (BI-b). I created a section on outreach, including when, where, how, and with who this institute would be engaging with (BI-d). I created a comprehensive paper on the different sections of this project before giving a class presentation with a PowerPoint (BI-a).
When I began my application for the library studies course at St Catherine’s, it was with the grasping claws of the uprooted looing for something to hold onto. I had started my degree in English at St Thomas with confidence and a five-year plan carefully laid out that I stuck to like glue. Until I couldn’t anymore. COVID struck in the middle of my degree and was the first of many dominoes to fall, disrupting when or even if classes would be available, my five-year plan to graduate with a masters in English evaporated like smoke on the breeze, along with my planned-out career in publishing.
I took a semester to study communications, paying out of pocket and was miserable. I looked for a library program and found one at St Kate’s. In the month of January, I finished my classes, and applied to the Master’s program, taking the required placement tests, and reaching out to previous professors over their winter break hoping someone would see their email and be willing to write a letter of recommendation for me.
I didn’t have a plan, I didn’t even know much about the different paths of archives, public, academic, that I could pursue, but through my coursework I have found a happiness and contentment in work I did not know was possible.