AN INTERVIEW WITH:

I'm really interested to know how you started to pursue a career in archival science. Was it something you knew about before or was the field something you stumbled upon?

When I was in college, pursuing a history major, the final senior project was a thesis. We had to use primary research materials, and that’s when I learned about archives. I don’t remember them calling them “archives” specifically, but we had to use primary materials like newspapers; they didn’t allow secondary sources. That’s essentially how I was introduced to Special Collections and Rare Books librarianship. It’s funny because I don’t remember the exact moment I learned about archives, but I must have known before I went to library school. I remember thinking I wanted to be a Rare Books conservator, but then I realized I didn’t want to do that because you need to take chemistry and so many prerequisites that you would have to start when you were about 18 years old. So, when I started searching online to decide if I wanted to go back to school, that’s when I learned about archives in more detail, like what librarianship was and what an archivist was.

I noticed you had a lot of library experience before moving to LACMA. Was there something that made museum archives speak to you?

Where I was working before, I wasn't making much money and I realized I could make more money as a library technician with an associate's degree than working in the retail buying office with my supposedly valued bachelor's degree. I took classes at Pasadena City College, which had a library tech associates program. While I was taking these classes, I was also interviewing for library technician jobs. I had an interview at Chapman University, where I went to college, and they had a new library. I was excited about the office with a window, and they had suggested I should go back to library school. I hadn't considered it before, but I realized they were right. Until then, I'd been working in windowless rooms. From then on, I made it a point to have a window in my workspace.

So, I quit my job, took library tech jobs, and to enhance my attractiveness as a library school student, I secured positions as a circulation clerk. It seemed like a practical and accessible job. I had a lot of jobs during that time. I was on call for a library clerk job, had a part-time library clerk position, and also worked part-time as a receptionist at a different place where I managed reception duties and booked DJs. I had all of these jobs while I was trying to get my library experience. During my time at the public library, I saw the different roles librarians played. Circulation clerks could check out books, but not shelve them, catalog them, or do any kind of reference. The prestigious job seemed to be a reference librarian. I really admire public librarians and the work that they do, but realized it’s ok that I didn’t want to do that. I made the decision to focus on Special Collections, avoiding the notion of having a fallback. My first job was at the Huntington Library, where I got experience processing archives.

The Huntington Library job was advertised as a part-time, grant-funded library assistant for two years. I applied and got the job, and my first day at the Huntington was also my first day at UCLA. It was great. I also realized what a huge stroke of luck it was to have that position. As an archivist, especially when starting out, you don't often get to choose the type of institution you work for.  You don’t have the luxury of deciding if you want to work at a university vs a museum, etc. Everyone in the field tends to apply for every job available.

After graduating from library school and finishing up a second grant project at the Huntington, I probably went through about ten interviews for various positions, ranging from CSUN to LA Public Library, LACMA, Jerry Bruckheimer Studios, and even an estate cleanout. When I was working at the LA Public Library I got a call from LACMA offering me a position which offered a two-year term.

Can you speak more about the first two years you worked at LACMA before you stepped into your Museum Archivist role? I’m curious about that transition and congratulations on your 13th anniversary of working there!  

Thank you! The position I initially held was grant-funded, focusing on establishing the institutional archives. Following the two-year grant project, there was an additional year funded to facilitate the relocation of records from a building, contributing to the soft money phase. Although I started in 2010, it wasn't until 2015 that I transitioned from a Project Archivist to a permanent employee.

What does an average day look like for you at LACMA?

There’s usually never an average day. Typically, I prioritize reference inquiries, and the time spent on that depends on the complexity of the inquiry. Sometimes, there are reference-related activities, such as looking up records in the archives for researchers. 

In terms of specific tasks, here’s an example from a Thursday in September:

• Created a Move Object Request - I created a move object request for some magazines stored offsite that I identified during an inventory check.

• Intern Requisition Form

• Records Retention Policy - I worked on drafting a clean and polished version of a records retention policy that was redlined our legal counsels

• Meeting Agenda - Drafting an agenda for an upcoming L.A. as Subject meeting

There’s no one “average” day and there is usually no block of time, such as “8 am-12 pm: Processing.” It’s hard to set time like that aside. I also, of course, spend time doing emails, in meetings, doing research and retrieval requests, creating findings aids, and just recently, I had to find a deed of gift someone was looking for. No day is the same, and no day is in the same order.

It sounds like working on a grant project, like establishing the institutional archives, means your days are much more focused on one specific thing, while a general day-to-day in the position covers a lot of different things.

You could say the goals are self-directed. I’m the only archivist, so it can be hard sometimes when people are confused why I’m not doing something. For example, I have to explain why I can’t show people certain artist agreements. Everyone wants you to succeed, but sometimes they have competing concerns.

For grant projects, there is usually a very clear work plan, even down to the months you’re working on something and what the associated tasks and deliverables will be. On the grant I started working at LACMA under, the deliverables weren’t very clear, and I had to rewrite the goals and make clear what I would accomplish by the time the grant period was over. 

Establishing the institutional archives sounds like a massive undertaking for someone who just started at an institution. Did any particular skill, course, or experience prepare you for that? Or did you figure it out as you went along?

I figured it out as I went and also pulled from past experiences. When I worked at the Huntington, they didn’t have Archivists’ Toolkit, but you could see how having a database like that would be helpful. LACMA didn’t really have anything either, so I established that because I knew it was important to have a database to track the archives. Exploring database options and understanding their capabilities for collection management was helpful. Challenges included people bringing me two sheets of paper and saying, “Oh, it’s archives,” or when I found a room in the basement with boxes and boxes of files kept for storage. So, you have to identify what’s going on and what’s important. Learning about the records life cycle, and functional analysis (which is how you do appraisal for records management or for institutional records), and asking the question, “Why should we keep this? Why should we not?” I was proud of getting through a large backlog, and feeling confident throwing away a lot of things that I knew needed to go. It’s really important that you throw things away. It’s something I haven’t done for a while, but I will soon. Pulling from prior experience, for example, from my retail office days, I know how long you’re supposed to keep credit card receipts. There’s a certain period of time you’re supposed to keep that media, but afterward you should shred them.

I’ve known people who think they should have gone to library school right out of college, but I say definitely not. It’s nice to have life skills because you’re going to be working on all sorts of collections, and who knows what kind of experience you’re going to bring to the table?

Do you think it’s better to have a more general knowledge of many cataloging standards, databases, and metadata tools, or is it better to hone in on the most commonly used ones?

I personally like and think knowing more is better, and for me, it’s also just generally more interesting. I really liked a class I took at UCLA called “Metadata,” taught by Murtha Baca, which focused on understanding how standards are created rather than just teaching them. I’ve had interns that go on and don’t do archivist roles and instead become something like taxonomists or database analysts where they’re creating the standard, as opposed to following a standard. Someone who becomes a taxonomist at a company like Airbnb won’t be using Library of Congress subject headings. Knowing how to create standards is important, too. I think it’s helpful to have a wide array of knowledge, and learning one standard isn’t very difficult. By learning DACS, which is very simple on purpose, you can learn to become an expert in that standard. Learning how to catalog with MARC is not that difficult; if you can learn one, you can learn more. So, it’s good to be familiar with many, but familiarize yourself with the most standard ones everyone uses, like Dublin Core. It’s hard to predict the standards needed, especially in the future.

That's a really great point. My last question is: How would you respond if someone asked you what an archivist is and why their work is important?

This is a great question because I got asked this a lot when I started at LACMA. Whenever I introduced myself, "I'm Jessica. I'm the archivist," everyone asked, "What is that?"

 I used to have an elevator pitch because I was asked this so much, especially from people who didn't create a lot of institutional records. 

For LAMCA specifically, I like to tell people that the records can be used to research the museum itself. People will come in and say they’re interested in Picasso, for example, and want to use the archives for that reason. I usually ask, “What about Picasso?” Because you’re only going to find how Picasso intersects with LACMA, which is a small point in the universe of Picasso-related information. But, if you want to see how LACMA interacts with the community, with the art history field, with artists, you can do that through the archive. 

People often do art historical research on exhibitions, which is one of the most popular topics to research, and are looking to see what the exhibition looked like, how it was installed, the differences between installations between museums, but you can also know what kind of educational programs were associated with the exhibition. What students were coming, what student tours, from what parts of LA County, what LACMA did to make sure programming was reaching different populations. A lot of our programming has been bilingual, and we can see which programming and for how long.. That is valuable, not just how the art was hung or which specific objects were displayed, and you can find that using the records.