Behind the Shelves: A Librarian Spotlight Interview with Jennifer Waxman

From adopting Airtable to the impending threat of saltwater intrusion, there are a lot of elements to Head of Collection Management Jennifer Waxman's job. Hear all she has to say in the newest installation of our series, Behind the Shelves: A Librarian Spotlight Interview...

  • What does Collection Management mean to you?

To me, as an archivist that works in a department which includes four archival repositories, collection management means ensuring long-term access to all our archival collections. It is a simple charge, but it is a complex thing to carry out. To ensure long-term access, we (me and the other members of the collection management unit), focus on two important things. The first is preservation, or creating the best possible conditions to mitigate the risk of damage, theft, and loss of information in our collections. We do this by ensuring collection materials have proper protective enclosures and identification, a stable climate, security, and guidelines for handling to prevent damage. The second important thing is access, or creating and maintaining information about these collections. Meaning, we create and store information (also known as metadata) about our collections in our collections management database. Some of this metadata is for internal administrative purposes (such as the who, what, when, and why about the acquisition) and some of it is for public use via our online catalog where you begin your research within our collections.

  • Can you discuss a recent trend or technology that you find particularly intriguing or believe will have a significant impact on the future of library collections?

Something that will and has already had a significant impact on the future of library collections is the collecting and preservation of born-digital records, whether it’s a cache of digital documents and photographs on a hard drive, an email account, websites, or even digital art and software. But when it comes to my every day, a recent tech trend that has a significant impact is the uptake of Airtable as a collection management tool. Airtable is a flexible, cloud-based data management system that enables users to store and organize data and provides features like relational databases and collaboration tools. It’s geeky stuff! But, in all honesty, Airtable gives us the ability to see our collections through a wider lens and run projects through a pipeline to get collections safely to the hands of staff and researchers. For example, we categorize and group collections based on need within Airtable, such as those needing descriptions for the online catalog or upgrades to protective housing, or maybe both. We then create workflows that involve several people (curators, archivists, staff, student employees, and sometimes conservators) to get collections to the finish line. It’s very gratifying and makes working with a huge amount of physical “stuff” and data much easier.

  • Could you share a project or initiative related to collection management that you are particularly proud of?

Since TUSC became one department that unifies operations for four archival repositories (where previously each repository operated separately), we have been working towards creating a unified locations system for our collections. Our archival collections are stored in thousands of boxes across thousands of shelves (we have close to 18,000 storage locations represented in our collection management system!). To implement a project like this I had to take into consideration everything from data management to graphic design. Plus, this project got interrupted by the pandemic and went through several fits and starts before we could claim any victories. But persistence is everything, and with the diligent work of staff, several interns, and student employees, we’ve managed to make a unified locations system a reality. And I thank everyone involved, whether you printed and posted signage on the shelves, recorded the locations of every box on those shelves, or quality-checked the data in our system after we imported it. It isn’t glamorous work, but it is important work. From this project, we learned a lot about our holdings and have several offshoot projects that will continue our work to safeguard these collections.

  • What are the advantages and challenges of working as the head of Collection Management in a city rich in culture and history like New Orleans?

One of the advantages of working with collections in a city with such a rich culture like New Orleans is that I basically get a front-row seat to its history and people. I’m a local native so I also love being a part of the preservation of it. The challenge is having to work against time in a city where decay is both a part of its charm and an inherent vice. But what is really on my mind today is climate change. Climate change is real, and it is changing the conversation around collecting practices and preservation as we know it. For example, preserving collections for long-term access requires significant energy consumption in Southeast Louisiana. And for a summer like the one we just had, where our heat index reached over 100F for 2+ months, that puts even higher demand on our systems which were not built for such extremes. We face more major hurricanes than in previous decades and have added tornadoes to the list of weather threats. And what about new issues like saltwater intrusion in the Mississippi River? For those of us with a background in disaster response, this was not part of our training! How will this affect the smaller cultural heritage organizations, such as grassroots museums, local performance arts groups, and neighborhood associations, that don’t have the resources or staff to handle this? These are some of the very real and new challenges we are facing.

 

10/2/2023

Interviewed by Jasmine Young | Tulane Libraries Social Media & Marketing Assistant

Jen