Guest Post: The Ronald Raven Annual Award, Winter 2018

Guest post by Anita Millers
I am honored to be chosen as the most recent recipient of the Ronald Raven Award. I have a Master’s Degree in Library and Information Science from Wayne State University (WSU) and am enrolled in the Graduate Certificate Program in Archival Administration. With a background in Political Science and Law, I have done a lot of research and writing, and enjoy the investigative and detail-oriented aspects of piecing together information to process a collection and prepare a finding aid. I spent the first couple of weeks looking through files on Wayne State’s Alumni organizations as I began to process the collection of an incredibly dedicated and hard-working alumna, Olga Gorup Dworkin. She was a member of WSU Alumni Association’s Board of Directors, an active member of Wayne State’s first sorority, Alpha Theta Sigma Papers, and former President and officer of the Wayne State Fund. The lovely landscaped pedestrian walkways on campus are a tribute to the seventeen years that Olga served as head of the Campus Beautification Committee.

I also processed, in part, the collection of Dr. Theodore D. Rice (pictured above with his wife in India), which came to the Reuther Library from the University of South Carolina’s Museum of Education. The Museum’s curator, Craig Kridel, Professor of Educational Studies, strongly believes that the Reuther Library represents the ideal space for Dr. Rice’s collection, since Dr. Rice was a Professor at WSU’s College of Education for fifteen years (1957-1972). Dr. Rice brought a wealth of experience regarding secondary education to Wayne State. He came to Wayne shortly after spending a year as a Fulbright research scholar in India conducting workshops for headmasters of secondary schools together with his wife Dr. Chandos Reid Rice (both pictured in the left-hand side of this picture). The collection contains information about his research and his involvement with the World Education Fellowship, and his wife’s research and educational consulting work. The collection also includes an impressive amount of black and white and color photographs (one street photo pictured on the right), and color slides of the Rices’ time in India as Fulbright scholars (1953-54), as well as from Dr. T.D. Rice’s sabbatical year in New Delhi (1964-1965). The collection has two boxes of audiovisual materials, including audiotapes, and rehoused photographs and slides.

This internship gave me the opportunity to apply some of the practical knowledge that I gained in my Archival Administration and Audiovisual Collection courses to prepare, research and process a collection. I was also fortunate to acquire additional knowledge in the use of ArchivesSpace to prepare finding aids for the collections and navigate other collections.

My work was supervised by University Archivist Alison Stankrauff, whom I’d like to thank for her assistance, and for providing me with the opportunity to contribute to WSU’s Archives and be a part of its sesquicentennial celebration. Throughout the internship, I could rely on the expertise of Reuther Library’s staff, including: Brandon Carter, Elizabeth Clemens, Dr. Louis Jones, Alexandra Orchard, Kathleen Schmeling, and John the page, who were happy to answer any and all of my questions, and provide me with assistance when required. I enjoyed being part of and contributing to the Reuther Library team, and am especially thankful to Ronald Raven for providing me and other students with this invaluable hands-on experience.

The Ronald Raven Award in Archival Administration includes a stipend and a semester internship at the Walter P. Reuther Library of Labor and Urban Affairs; it was first awarded in 2013 on a semester basis to a WSU graduate student in the History and/or Library and Information Science Departments with an interest in archival administration. Anita Millers is the recipient of the award for the Winter 2018 semester.