The New York State Society for Clinical Social Work Records.The New York State Society for Clinical Social Work Records is a collection rich with information. It is not, however, rich in images. This was one of the earliest details shared with me when I began working on its digital exhibit. Few among us would dispute that exhibitions are a special species of outreach whose success tends to depend upon images. After all, they help sell the experience, working in tandem with words and other materials to create the immersive microcosm that is the exhibition. Color helps, but images are more explicit, especially in a digital exhibit, where virtual patrons might prefer them. Initially, I thought the best way around this issue was to create an image of my own, a symbol composed of three circles or a spiral with three sections that would encapsulate the contents of the collection under...

Nodiaus DiTonno 2024 Patricia Stocking Brown Research Awardee Alice Russo 2024 Patricia Stocking Brown Research Awardee ALBANY, N.Y. (May 24, 2024) – The University Libraries at the University at Albany, SUNY announced the 2024 Patricia Stocking Brown Research Award recipients are University at Albany graduate student Nodiaus DiTonno and undergraduate student Alice Russo. Ms. DiTonno received $500 for her research on how hegemonic feminism does not prioritize intersectional thought, which in turn can lead to exclusionary practices. She recently completed her first year in the Master of Arts program in the Department of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and is a Teaching Collective Graduate Assistant. Ms. DiTonno’s research, initially explored in the department’s Feminist Theory course this past year, is under the supervision of Dr. Barbara Sutton. Ms. DiTonno is expanding her topic for presentation and for her final M.A. project by examining whether and how intersectional thought relates to...

German and English correspondence of Felix Hirsh from the 1930s. During my tenure working as a graduate student assistant at the M.E. Grenander Department of Special Collections and Archives from 2022-2023, I processed the Hermann Rauschning Papers and the Felix and Elisabeth Hirsch Papers among several other arrangement and description projects. The Rauschning and Hirsch Papers were especially exciting for me because of my knowledge of German. I studied German language from sixth grade to my senior year of undergraduate studies. My passion for German language and culture comes from my dad; he was stationed in Germany during his time in the U.S. Army. Along with being a graduate assistant in the Department of Special Collections and Archives, I received my dual degree MA in History/MS in Information Science (Archives and Records Management concentration) at the University at Albany. The overlap allows for students to expand on the unique skillsets...

Andrea Carolina Miranda Pestana ALBANY, N.Y. (April 28, 2023) – The University Libraries at the University at Albany, SUNY today announced that third-year doctoral student Andrea Carolina Miranda Pestana was the 2023 Patricia Stocking Brown Research Award recipient. Miranda Pestana is working with rare books from the Latin American & Caribbean Book Collection in the Department of Special Collections & Archives to examine how criminalized, incarcerated, and peasant women have used literature, journaling, and solidarity networks to promote collective love, affection, and healing as critical aspects in dismantling patriarchal systems in México to achieve social justice. In the project, Miranda Pestana will also examine how political revolutions can be conceived as actions developed by women collectives to disband neoliberal policies and exploit communities imposed by Latin American nation-states, corporations, and the patriarchal system. This project is for independent coursework with Professor Alejandra Bronfman for Miranda Pestana’s doctorate in the Department...

During the summer, fall, and winter of 2022, I was afforded the opportunity to work on a cataloging project for the M.E. Grenander Department of Special Collections and Archives regarding its Elzevir collection. We hoped to completely catalog this collection of more than 700 volumes of rare books to facilitate better access alongside other offerings of the department. It was a tremendous opportunity to develop skills in rare books/special collections cataloging. The Elzevir Printing House was founded in the late 16th century by Lodewijk (Louis) Elzevir in the city of Leiden. The collection consists of the works of the various Elzevir printing houses operated by him and his descendants throughout the modern-day Netherlands in the 16th, 17th, and early 18th centuries. The collection also contains many works of their contemporaries in the Low Countries, such as Francios Foppens and Abraham Wolfgang, whose work strongly resembles the Elzevirs. The collection was...

Andelina Dreshaj ALBANY, N.Y. (May 13, 2022) –- The University Libraries at the University at Albany, SUNY today announced that second-year doctoral student Andelina Dreshaj was the 2022 Patricia Stocking Brown Research Award recipient. Ms. Dreshaj’s research explores the Women’s Building Collection and how activists in the Albany, New York community, specifically the Committee for a New Korea Policy, were a part of a larger global conversation about capitalism, neocolonialism, human rights, and the creation of asymmetrical geopolitical power. This project was created in the Department of History’s graduate Research Seminar. Dr. Alexander Dawson of the Department of History serves as faculty advisor. The annual Award honors Professor Patricia Stocking Brown, who taught Biology and Women’s and Minorities’ Studies for 35 years at nearby Siena College. Trained at the University of Michigan in comparative endocrinology, and a self-described feminist, Patricia Stocking Brown was the first female faculty member in the...

One of the remarkable aspects of web archiving work is that it allows for greater access to digital content. This serves an obvious purpose of helping scholars and researchers access material that they cannot access in person, but it also lends itself to the visibility and accessibility of voices or communities that have been oppressed or misrepresented throughout history. Through the UAlbany Web Archiving Project, archivists at the M.E. Grenander Department of Special Collections and Archives focus not only on capturing, preserving, and making accessible New York State and University-related web content, but they also are granted the responsibility of helping preserve important projects that are the creation of researchers or faculty. Through these digital repositories, users can learn more about the subject matter, but they serve a greater purpose in representing, or even reworking, how a historical event is described. One example found in the UAlbany Web Archives Collection...

When you think of your freshman year of college, what first comes to mind? Would it be the partying? Maybe even the clubs you joined, or special events your school held? In my case, the first thing that comes to mind is COVID-19. I think about how it shifted my way of learning, and even working. The experience was definitely something new to me, which surprisingly wasn’t as bad as I had anticipated, but I hope it never occurs again. One thing I was excited about, was being employed my freshman year. Not only was the transition into college hard mentally, but financially as well, so a job for myself was a major goal I wanted to accomplish. Thankfully, for my spring semester my professor had introduced me to a position with the Department of Special Collections & Archives at the University at Albany. (This is also a good tip...

My experience working for the Department of Special Collections & Archives was great. I really enjoyed working for the department on campus. But working from home was an adjustment, along with working on my time management. Unfortunately, it has been very hard for me to keep focused and get work done while at home. Supervisory Archivist Jodi Boyle has been very helpful with walking me through this process, which I greatly appreciate. Although I have not been able to completely explore the department, I would like to see more collections from historical Black figures. I am currently working on a minor in Africana Studies and would love to have the opportunity to study the works of historical Black figures that could possibly be featured in the department in the near future. At times it became very challenging to juggle archive work and schoolwork while also dealing with the affects of...

Upon the arrival of the societal table-flipper that is the COVID-19 virus, UAlbany closed down, pushed their students out, and required employees to work remotely. This left me in a place where I had to adapt to a new form of schedule which relied entirely upon my own discipline and choice as opposed to the set structure found on campus. This change allowed me to choose where and when I wanted to work. Instead of working in the brightly lit processing room of the Department of Special Collections & Archives, I would find myself surrounded by family and in the comfort of my own home. Moreover, I would be in a place where I would not have to worry about contracting the pandemic virus. Before the pandemic, my project in the Department of Special Collections & Archives involved vetting books in our department’s stacks to potentially be transferred to the...

Exactly two weeks ago, I was working at the Archives on the reference desk, as students from a variety of classes came to look at collections that they were assigned to for projects that were due right before spring break. While the time before Spring Break is usually busy with students trying to get last minute information before they went home, this time it was different. This time, the students did not know if they would ever get the chance to come back to campus this semester. Nervous students came in, trying to gather as much information as possible, and I tried to manage the reference desk, along with my co-workers, while also being hyper aware to sanitize our hands after we pulled collections from the back or handed a researcher a photo form. This anxiety continued throughout the day, but the staff at the department greeted everyone with a...

Looking back, I was most struck by how many executions in the American South had been left uncounted in the original dataset. The first state that I was assigned to create metadata for was Mississippi. While I do not have a background in the history of the death penalty, there was something that just seemed... off about the data. When I initially scanned through the execution IDs that were already in use from M. Watt Espy's dataset, I was surprised to see what I thought were relatively long gaps in the time between executions in the 19th century. Had the state really not put anyone to death between 1859 and 1875? Given the rate of executions in Mississippi during the early 20th century, this didn't seem all that likely. Had the Civil War and Reconstruction perhaps been a period of significantly lower crime rates or lenient sentences? Newspaper clipping documenting...

Having spent countless days and months reading over and documenting the Espy materials, I have a come to appreciate what he was trying to accomplish. Having collected most of his materials before the Internet and the variety and number of sources he was able to gather shows his diligence and dedication. Sometimes the execution would be no more than a passing mention in a narrators recollections. Others would be thirty documents long having been written about over and over again. Some of those executed were well know criminals like, Bonnie and Clyde while others were not considered important enough at the time to bother publishing their names. A few were "special" enough to have invitations sent and this relic may be all that is left to inform the future of this person's death. I have read many letters written to court clerks, historical societies and libraries, following up on leads...

Watt Espy kept detailed notes of the executions that he found in various newspapers, archives, books, correspondence, and prison records. While Espy's notes were often detailed, the records themselves often lacked information that helped identify the person who was being executed. Often times, the records would indicate the crime committed, when and where the execution took place, the name of the executioner, any fees that the execution produced, and sometimes they even identified the witnesses that attended the execution. Despite all of these details, the name of the person being executed was often left out. Usually if the person being executed was African American or Native American, not only would the record not contain their name, but it would also not contain their gender. This contrasted the execution records of white Americans, which usually had identifiable information including the name of the person being executed, their family, details of the...

Three new collections have recently been completed as part of the Building New Access Tools for the National Death Penalty Archive project and are available to researchers. The ongoing project to process and make available 10 collections from the National Death Penalty Archives is funded by the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) as part of its Cataloging Hidden Special Collections and Archives program. Finding aids to the Bill Pelke Papers, Murder Victims' Families for Reconciliation Records, and the Victor Streib Papers can now be found on the M.E. Grenander Special Collections and Archives webpage. Visitors may now request to see any part of these collections in the Marcia Brown Reading Room on the third floor of the Science Library. The Bill Pelke Papers contain the records of political activist Bill Pelke and document his efforts toward the abolition of the death penalty in the United States from the...