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Edward Connery Lathem '51 Special Collections Fellowship

The Edward Connery Lathem ’51 Special Collections Fellowship offers recent Dartmouth graduates an opportunity to work in Rauner Special Collections Library and gain valuable experience with archives, manuscripts and rare books. The fellow will work on a major project or several smaller projects tailored to his or her skills and interests while gaining a general overview of a career in special collections.

Past fellows have done a wide variety of projects that included processing collections, conducting surveys of materials in Rauner, working on exhibits, and assisting with teaching and outreach. A recent fellow had a major project to reprocess the Robert Frost papers, another conducted a survey of digital materials in the collection, and a third focused primarily on teaching and outreach efforts (including the creation and maintenance of our Instagram account). In addition to working on projects and getting a sense of working with archives, manuscripts and rare books, fellows are encouraged to attend professional meetings related to the field, or to a specific aspect of the work they are conducting.

Successful applicants will be highly motivated individuals with an interest in working with libraries, archives, or museums. Intellectual curiosity and strong interpersonal and communication skills are the most important qualifications for this position.

Eligibility

This fellowship is open to recent Dartmouth graduates. Please note: candidates must have completed their Dartmouth degree (graduate or undergraduate) before July 1 of their fellowship year.

Compensation, Benefits, and Tenure

This is a one-year, full-time (37.5 hrs/week) paid fellowship with Dartmouth benefits that runs from July 1 to June 30. The Fellow will be paid $20/hr.

Application Process

Applications for the 2023-2024 fellowship have now closed. The application process for the 2024-2025 fellowship will begin Spring 2024. 

If you have any additional questions regarding this fellowship, please feel free to contact Julia Logan, Assistant Archivist for Acquisitions: Julia.w.logan@dartmouth.edu

Past and Present Fellows

2023-2024

woman in 3/4 profile outside with tree in backgroundElizabeth Hadley ’23 is a Classical Languages and Literature major and English/Creative Writing minor from northern New Jersey. Since her freshman year of college, she loved being a Learning Fellow for undergraduate Latin classes and a tutor for high school students. During her undergraduate career at Dartmouth, she worked on a 15th-century Book of Hours from Rauner's Collection, combining her studies in Classics and Paleography. Elizabeth's passion for seeing the intersection of multiple disciplines culminated in her Honors Senior Thesis, A Metamorphosis of the Metamorphoses, a collection of poems inspired by Ovid's Metamorphoses. Elizabeth wants to further explore the interconnectedness of Dartmouth's digital archives, the Hood, and Rauner's collections and is invested in bringing more students from multiple backgrounds into Rauner to make Rauner's collections more accessible to all. In her free time, Elizabeth enjoys reading, skiing, dancing, and spending time with friends and family.

2022-2023

woman with pink sweater and white shirt in front of buildingSydnie Ziegler ’22, (Mohegan Tribe), was a Native American and Indigenous Studies major at Dartmouth. She was inspired to apply for a library fellowship after conducting extensive research on Dartmouth’s institutional history in Rauner’s archives during her senior year.

Sydnie pursued numerous projects during her time as the Edward Connery Lathem ’51 Special Collections Fellow. She curated and installed two exhibits: a single-case display on Indigenous student advocacy at Dartmouth, and three-cases on the misrepresentation of Indigenous peoples in archival materials. As a member of Contextualization and Repair at Rauner, she identified harmful content in the archives and helped to draft statements for reparative description efforts. Sydnie also reprocessed the Gordon Day Papers and created the collection’s first comprehensive finding aid to ensure items from the collection could be retrieved effectively. She often incorporated her skills and passion for photography into her work, collaborating with the Hood Museum of Art to complete photogrammetry on Indigenous artifacts, including a basket created by Samson Occom. Finally, Sydnie managed the Rauner Instagram, which gained a couple hundred new followers during her tenure. After her time as a fellow, Sydnie will pursue her Master of Arts in Public Humanities at Georgetown University. 

2021-2022

ValWerner21HeadshotVal Warner ’21 was a Computer Science major at Dartmouth. He started at Rauner as a student worker during his first year, then as the Historical Accountability fellow during 20S, and finally as the Lathem fellow after graduating. During his fellowship year, Val has worked on appraising and digitizing Rauner’s existing vertical files. He has also focused on web archiving: both researching and appraising student organization websites captured by the Wayback Machine between 1996 and 2016, and describing existing collections of web materials. In the fall of 2021, he curated an exhibit for a Queer History Month event.

2020-2021

There was no fellow for this academic year because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

2019-2020

Headshot of Alexander Cotnoir '19Alexander Wayne Cotnoir ’19 was an Environmental Studies major with a concentration in Ecology at Dartmouth. He became interested in working at Rauner Special Collections library while working as an Undergraduate Teaching Assistant for ecology classes, where he used Dartmouth’s natural history collection of bird specimens for class instruction on migratory birds. As an aspiring educator, Alexander has focused on creating new and innovative ways to engage students with historical documents and archival materials, with a particular emphasis on connecting more students from STEM backgrounds with Rauner’s collections. Along with his STEM-based education projects, Alexander processed a collection of WWI documents belonging to Dartmouth alumni Howard B. Lines, grew Rauner’s Instagram community to surpass 3,000 followers, and designed and instructed classes ranging from Sports and Society to a paleography class for Women’s 19th-Century Literature. Given Alexander’s dual passion for social activism and Dartmouth history, he pioneered several projects during his fellowship in concert with undergraduate and alumni groups to highlight historically underrepresented aspects of the College’s past. Alexander also collaborated with fellow Rauner staff to form a re-envisioned First Year Trip leader training program to critically examine Dartmouth’s relationship to the surrounding lands and indigenous communities. In the fall of 2021, Alexander was recently admitted to George Washington University's prestigious Museum Education Program and will soon begin his pursuit of a Master of Arts in Teaching in Museum Education.

2018-2019

JaimeEeg18LathemFellowHeadshotJaime Eeg ’18 was a Philosophy and Environmental Studies double major at Dartmouth. Jaime was inspired to apply for the Lathem fellowship after working in Rauner as a term-long research fellow her senior year. She explored Rauner’s collection on Ledyard Canoe Club, of which she was the Vice President, and curated an exhibit on the club’s history. As the Lathem Special Collections Fellow at Rauner, Jaime chose to work on a number of projects instead of focusing on one major project. Among these, she helped to create and facilitate classroom experiences for undergraduates, advised one of our Historical Accountability fellows, worked on student outreach initiatives, processed a collection of original illustrations, helped complete the Frost Digitization project, conducted research for the uncatalogued realia project, managed Rauner’s Instagram accountand began a collaborative project with Sherman Art Library to provide a digital resource for Artist Books. 

2017-2018

Sara Holston '17 Lathem Fellow 2017-2018Sara Holston '17 was an English major at Dartmouth and is especially interested in the history of Dartmouth College: she has written two articles about this topic that were published in the student periodical Apologia and is currently researching and writing a book on the spiritual history of Dartmouth. At Rauner, Sara curated a single-case exhibit, processed a collection of Civil War correspondence, and assumed oversight of the library's Instagram account. She was also a major contributor to a podcast series on the history of Dartmouth, Hindsight is 20/19, that is a part of the to the college's 250th anniversary celebrations in 2019. In addition to this significant project, Sara also developed a series of short video segments that serve to highlight underutilized collections at Rauner while providing personal connections to the many exciting items in our stacks.

2016-2017

Hannah Hye Min ChungHannah Chung '16 was a history major at Dartmouth with a focus on 20th-century imperialism. She became interested in working at special collections library after participating in Dartmouth's Foreign Studies Program in London where she conducted a research project using archival materials from different libraries across the city.

As a Lathem Fellow, Hannah initiated the Uncatalogued Realia Project, in which she is used a digital media management platform to create visual finding aids for hundreds of previously undiscoverable realia items. She also organized events for the local community, both within and without Dartmouth, and designed and facilitated undergraduate active learning sessions that utilized Rauner's primary sources. She also managed our Instagram account, improved finding aids for several student letter collections, and curated both one-case and three-case exhibits. In her remaining months, she worked on a digital project related to the Dartmouth Vietnam Project. After completing the fellowship, Hannah returned to her hometown of Seoul, South Korea, to work for a year before pursuing a master’s degree in education at the University of Pennsylvania.  

2015-2016

Bay Lauris ByrneSim headshotBay Lauris ByrneSim '15 was a History and Art History double major at Dartmouth. She didn't have one major project at Rauner, but instead initiated and maintained a number of successful tasks, including assisting the Special Collections Education and Outreach Librarian with primary source education, creating and assuming primary responsibility for the library's Instagram account and designing and implementing an online exhibits page and then managing the student workers assigned to data entry for the project. She also curated and installed both a single-case and three-case exhibit. In addition to these many responsibilities, Bay contributed significantly to a digital humanities project using Rauner's Brut manuscript.

After her time at Rauner, Bay spent a year traveling and researching John Heartfield, a German communist photomontage artist, and his exile experience in Prague and London after he fled from Nazi persecution. She conducted researched in art archives, museums, and the national archive in Berlin, among others, and was funded by the H. Allen Brooks Traveling Fellowship through Dartmouth's Scholarship Office. Bay is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Art History at Harvard University.

2014-2015

Maria Fernandez headshot Maria Fernandez '14 majored in History and minored in Latin American Studies while at Dartmouth. As an undergraduate, she worked as a circulation services student assistant at Paddock Music Library and an archives student assistant at Rauner Special Collections Library. As a fellow, Maria was able to continue processing the Grenville Clark papers (ML-7), a project that she had begun at Rauner as an undergraduate. She also completed a survey of all born-digital materials found in Rauner’s archival collections and assisted with the library’s education and outreach program by designing and facilitating several undergraduate class sessions.

Following her fellowship at Rauner, Maria went to the University of Texas at Austin and received a dual master's degree in Information Studies and Latin American Studies. During her time in graduate school, she worked as a digital scholarship graduate research assistant at the Benson Latin American Collection and a public services graduate research assistant at the Harry Ransom Center. Currently, Maria is a cataloguer in the Fine Books and Manuscripts department at Leslie Hindman Auctioneers in Chicago.

Maria says, "The flexibility and open-ended nature of my fellowship at Rauner allowed me to pursue and further develop my interests in history of the book, archives, digital preservation, and teaching with primary sources. It also exposed me to how archives and special collections libraries carry out their missions to serve both general and academic audiences. But the most valuable aspect of this fellowship was the unparalleled mentorship I received from incredibly insightful and compassionate colleagues. This mentorship from leaders in the fields of archives and special collections has helped me forge the professional and academic paths I am currently on."

2013-2014

Shermaine Waugh headshotAt Dartmouth, Shermaine Waugh '13 majored in English, with a concentration in creative writing, and minored in psychological brain sciences. As a fellow she had the chance to take charge of a number of projects, from curating an exhibit on Elezear Wheelock’s Moor’s Indian charity school, to the digitization of a series of 19th-century travel journals by George and Anna Ticknor. Shermaine produced an EAD-encoded finding aid for the journal series to help make them accessible in the collections for future use. She also learned about the art of the reference interview, and how what a patron says they want isn’t always what they need, and how asking the right questions could help broaden their use of our collections.

Inspired by her year at Rauner, Shermaine recently went on to receive her Master’s degree in Library and Information Sciences from City University London, in England, and wrote her dissertation on how best to design to support serendipitous discovery in library OPACs.  Currently she's pursuing a second master’s in Human-Computer Interaction, and works part-time as a freelance User Experience Architect for a digital design agency in London, and as a UX consultant for her university’s interaction lab. There, she conducts usability studies and produce deliverables such as wireframes, site maps, personas, and user journeys which help inform the design of digital technologies.

Shermaine says, "Rauner’s fellowship gave me a taste of how the work in libraries - forms a larger part of how needs, emotion, and technology can come together to satisfy user goals. I’ve now become an advocate for innovative library and catalogue design – these spaces are more than just repositories for information, and the way they are structured and how they make users feel is just as integral to learning as the information they hold."

2012-2013

Crishuana Williams headshotCrishuana Williams '12 focused her time at Rauner on processing the Erskine Caldwell collection (DO-92), all ninety boxes of it. She also worked with the College Archivist to curate an exhibit on the history of skiing at Dartmouth that helped her connect her love for design with her interest in information curation.

Currently, Shan is working as an associate reference librarian of Adult services for the Nashville Public Library. She primarily helps with career and resume guidance by connecting young adults with higher education and technical education resources. Most recently, she has begun to work on programs for wellness and healthy living for underserved communities that focus on mindfulness practices, active habits, and whole foods. Also, serving as the Seed Librarian for the North Nashville region, she encourages patrons to grow their own food from free seeds donated by local farms.

Shan says, "By far, my favorite experiences as a Rauner intern were working with the Special Collections Education and Outreach Librarian to teach primary source investigation and working with the Oral History Librarian to add some underrepresented voices to the 'Dartmouth Communities' oral history project. As a part of that effort, I worked with the Black Alumni of Dartmouth Association to collect interviews from some of the founding members about their time at the college. This collaboration led to a peak in interest about the history of black students on Dartmouth's campus and I had the opportunity to work with Woody Lee '87 to help complete a working timeline of black students at Dartmouth. Both allowing underrepresented voices to tell their stories through oral histories and helping to encourage scholarship at the primary source level gave me a strong set of skills to work with in the public libraries in Nashville."

2011-2012

Anne Peale headshotAnne Peale '11 was an English major and Spanish minor during her undergraduate days at Dartmouth. As the inaugural Lathem Intern, she primarily worked on processing the Robert Frost collection (MS-1178), a daunting task that required her to locate and bring together all of the various Frostiana items that until then were strewn throughout the collections.

After her year working at Rauner, Anne moved to Scotland for a master's degree in Material Cultures and History of the Book, followed by pursuit of a Ph.D. in Historical Geography at the University of Edinburgh. She studied the publication of books about travel and exploration in the later 19th century. While in graduate school, Anne also worked a few evenings a week supervising the University's special collections reading room, and helped a local private collector manage his books and cataloguing. Currently, Anne is a special collections librarian at Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts.