Nicole H. Garrett

On April 5, I became the College Archivist at Albion College.  I’ve been there two months and I have to say, I really like it.   Being a lone arranger has it’s challenges, but also many perks.  Plus, the college is a very friendly and relaxed place to work–plus and plus.

Albion’s Archives and Special Collections is unique because the archivist is actually in charge of three areas: the College Archives, Rare Books, and the West Michigan Conference of the United Methodist Church.  Right now, I’m only working with the first two and I’m really enjoying it.  There are a lot of treasures just waiting to be discovered.

So far, I’ve done quite a bit of reference requests on past students and organizations.  I’ve also accessioned a few collections from fraternities and sororities on campus, which is fun.  I love that part of my job is documenting life on campus–from lectures and events to student organizations and activities.

I haven’t started too much of a web presence for the Special Collections yet.  I have a few blog posts in mind, but I know I have to come up with a schedule and stick to it before I begin.  I don’t just want to drop off or be sporadic (as I am on this one).   I’m thinking of starting in August with the return of school.  Wish me luck!

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Last night, I attended DemoCamp Lansing held at Harper’s in East Lansing.  It was my first “un-conference” and I had a great time!

It was fun and interesting to learn about new applications and tools being developed in my local community.  Some were more useful for me than others, but overall, it was a very well done event.  I’m very excited to try out snagit for my next presentation.

I have taken web design classes using HTML, CSS and Javascript, and so I was a little worried that the presentations would be too complicated for me to follow; I was glad to find that they were not.  I learned new CSS tricks to create custom fonts that I’m looking forward to playing around with.

There was also a demo of Seeking Michigan.  It was great to see “techies” excited about our website and what we have done.  One of the goals of the site was to make it sleek and integrate Web 2.0 technologies, and it was rewarding to get such great feedback.

The cutest part of DemoCamp?  The cupcakes! How can you beat eatable iPods?

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