I had a great time there, and after coming home and volunteering for the curatorial department at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum for a few months, I was looking to move on to a new archival venture. When I heard about the Tulane Libraries Recovery Project, I thought it would be just the thing! I have always wanted to see New Orleans, and there is no better way to get to know a place than to live there for a while.

When I arrived at the Recovery Center and saw all the boxes on the first day, I started to get really excited about digging through them. In addition to books and documents, there is also quite a bit of photographic and audio material in Howard-Tilton Memorial Library’s collections. I’m looking forward to getting a look at that, but also really excited to learn more about their paper-based archives. I’ve been enjoying reading up on the various collections this past week and on the individuals to which they belonged such as Hale Boggs and other politicians. I don’t know much about New Orleans’s political history, but this first month has been a fantastic crash course. What a great way to learn about local history —to actually get the opportunity to look at important documents from the city’s past. The more I learn about the holdings at HTML, the better I feel about being a part of this project and our ability to make this history and culture available to future generations. I’m really glad to be here, and looking forward to digging into the project and finding out what the next couple of years will bring!

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