Hello everyone! My name is Lisa Sjoberg, and I have the good fortune of serving as the College Archivist & Digital Collections Librarian at Concordia College. I hope that you have enjoyed the Humans of the Archives blog series this September and the Student Worker Highlights published last spring on this blog. We get a great deal of work done up here in the Concordia College Archives, and it would not be possible without the hard work and dedication of the amazing students that are the humans of the archives. I absolutely adore each and every one of them and am so grateful for the opportunity to work along side of them. All of these blog posts have discussed what we do in the College Archives, so here's my story. In the land of archives, I am known as a lone-arranger, who is an archivist that works in a solo shop where only one or two archivists are on staff. As a lone-arranger, I have primary oversight of all things archives including assisting patrons, processing and preserving collections, supervising staff, digitizing materials, teaching classes, managing public relations/outreach initiatives, working with donors, and more. My daily work is always an adventure with great variety, and that is an aspect of my job that I really love. In addition to my work in the Concordia College Archives, I am actively involved in professional organizations by serving on various committees and presenting at conferences. Since there are not any other archivists on Concordia's campus (and just a handful in the Fargo-Moorhead community), I have found the connections that I have made through participation in these organizations to be valuable. I'm very grateful for my archivist friends and colleagues across the nation. What I love most about my work is exposing people to archives and helping them understand why archives matter. Nate, Luke, and Gillian's recent posts certainly expressed this theme in terms of understanding the present in the context of the past. It truly is an awesome privilege to be an archivist because our facilities house information that documents the origins and developments of so many important changes in history: the Civil Rights Movement, numerous wars, immigration, the Great Depression, and so many more. These documents help us understand the impact national and international events have had in our community, which would go undocumented without local archives. We also collect documents of local individuals, so we can tell the story of our communities throughout time. Archives are in the business of remembering and honoring the people that have come before us, and some of my favorite people that I get to work with are those individuals in Concordia's history that I get to read about and see photographs of. These people shaped the college into what it is today, and I love having them in my company on a daily basis. I could go on and on with stories about Concordia's history and the value of archives, but what it boils down to is that I love my work. If you ever are curious about Concordia's history or would like to learn more about being an archivist, let me know! Comments are closed.
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