This summer course will provide fieldwork experience to GSLIS students pursuing the Archives Certificate in order to develop proficiency in archival appraisal, arrangement, description, and access. Students will complete individual processing projects from the Joseph Crowley Papers with supervision and guidance from the instructor and SCA staff on-site at the Queens College Library.
The Joseph Crowley Papers consists of professional and personal materials of Mr. Crowley, the former U.S. Representative from New York’s 14th congressional district who served the district from 1999 to 2019. A major figure in New York and national Democratic politics, he served as Chair of the House Democratic Caucus from 2017 to 2019, as well as the local chairman of the Queens County Democratic Party from 2006 to 2019. A Queens College alum (1985), he donated his collection to the college in 2019. His papers reflect his long tenure in Congress and a deep commitment to issues like healthcare and reproductive freedom, his relationships with the Irish community in Queens, and his high-level appointments including the House of Representatives Ways and Means Committee.
The donation consists of a range of formats including correspondence, memos, speeches, photographs, memorabilia, and more, which will provide varied options for students to interact with archival materials they may not have yet encountered in their course of study at GSLIS. This class will provide an opportunity for students to experience donor relations and the specific challenges and unique attributes of processing political papers, with the unique addition of interacting with the donor at multiple points during coursework. Processing this collection will provide students with an excellent challenge to think through a specialized donation and to prepare records from public officials for broad access.
About the instructor
I’m Caitlin Colban-Waldron, please call me Caitlin! I’m an archivist at Queens College and an archives instructor in the Queens College Graduate School of Library and Information Studies.
