The Archivist

Peter Carini explains how he helps to preserve the College's historical treasures and why you can't use a pen in Rauner Library.

PETER CARINI BECAME THE COLLEGE archivist in January 2004. A graduate of Marlboro College in Marlboro, Vermont, with a master's in library and information science from Simmons College in Boston, Carini previously worked at Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Massachusetts. DAM spoke with him in his office in Rauner Library.

What does your job entail?

As most archivists do, I oversee and acquire institutional records of historic value. I also work with Dartmouth's manuscript collection—cataloging materials we receive. In Rauner Library I introduce students to primary sources as research tools and teach them how to use them. It's a good way to show people some of the skills they need to use when they are looking at stuff on the Internet. It's a very different way-of doing research; nobody is interpreting this for you.

What's in the archives?

The student newspaper. Minutes from the board of trustees' and other groups' meetings. Correspondence. Photographs from the College photographer. Manuscripts can be anything, really: letters written home to mother, diaries, journals, photo albums, cassette recordings or video or audio tapes. We also get some things that are cloth (like a T-shirt from a protest or a banner) but we try to collect those sparingly.

How much stuff are we talking aboutand where did it come from?

About 39,000 linear feet of material—or about 110 football fields lined end-to-end—roughly 190,000 volumes of rare books and about 900,000 images. Institutional records come right from the offices or through the College's office of records management. For manuscripts, we rely primarily on donations. The more famous the donor, the more complex it is. You might work with someone for 20 to 30 years before the stuff arrives. I also go through a stack of catalogs every month just to see if there is anything relevant. We probably ac-quire 400 things a year; one might be a book, another might be a 30-box collection.

Where is everything kept?

About 80 percent of the archives is in the underground stacks here in Rauner. We also have storage in the library and the box out in the main room of Rauner that's mostly books. Then there are the underground stacks between Baker/Berry and Rauner. We're running out of space and we're just going to need more. It's kind of like being an undertaker when cemeteries fill up. The problem with storage is that it's just not very sexy—who's going to donate a large storage space?

Who uses the archives and SpecialCollections?

Most users are in Rauner for academic purposes. But there are a fair number who are researching their fraternity, a student organization, that kind of thing. Alumni are always using this facility. A lot of them haven't seen the inside of this building since it was renovated, so some come in out of curiosity when they're on campus for another purpose.

Are there any special requirements foraccessing collections such as these?

We want people to work with pencils. Materials cannot leave the facility and you can't bring a bag in. We do ask people to wear gloves when dealing with our older documents, but if you've got a really old piece of paper, it's way better than the paper we have nowadays, so the damage you're going to do is really minimal unless you rip it. There's no point in keeping stuff forever if no one gets to see it, use it, touch it, feel it.

What are some of the most interestingthings you've found while exploring thearchives?

We have several ledger books from the Civil War period that show name for name who bought their way out of the war. We have the actual receipts. We have some correspondence of Eleazer Wheelock's—a man who corresponded with just about everybody of note in Colonial America—that is fascinating. He was trying to get this area of New Hampshire around Hanover as a part of Vermont. When he tries to hire a printer for the Dresden newspaper he promises this guy all kinds of things: "The College will give you money." The College had no money. "The state will give you money." The state hadn't been formed yet. But the printer comes; we have one of the first issues of this newspaper. On the back there's a sort of ad: "For sale, in the printing office, tea, coffee, tobacco," all sorts of things. Clearly this guy was not making ends meet as a printer.

Can you predict how the archives will change in the future?

Looking ahead, it's interesting to plan for digitization of materials, which is really just a way of protecting the material and making it more accessible for remote users. Digitization will also alleviate the wear and tear that results from users handling materials. You have to be careful, though. My greatest fear is the manuscript collection that comes to us on disks. It makes my hair stand on end just thinking about it. We have a huge problem with software compatibility: how long the disks will last, how we will store them and where we will store them, that sort of thing. Also, if someone sends me a photo, how do I know that it's the original? How do I know if it's been tampered with in some way? Computer science professor Hany Farid here at Dartmouth is working on algorithms that will allow us to check these kinds of things. Some of this is being pushed by outside forces bigger than we are—such as the law. We're all sort of caught in this technological cycle that is exciting and scary at the same time.

Will the entire collection be digitized atsome point?

It's extremely expensive. It ends up costing somewhere around $75 to $100 per image. It's not going to be in my lifetime that we digitize everything. I'm not worried that my job is going to become obsolete.

Do you have any tips for someone whowants to make a personal archive?

Don't glue things. Don't use tape. Scotch tape is the bane of all preservation in existence because it just destroys everything. Try to keep materials away from light and dramatic humidity shifts or places they're going to get wet. The basement is not such a good place. Keep the collection in acid-free boxes and folders if you can. These are easily available through Internet resources now. Be careful with digital materials.

Do you take your work home with you?Is your house organized and labeled?

A lot of archivists are anal people because their work drives them in that direction. I'm not like that. The last thing I want to do when I get home is organize documents. I kind of have piles. And I tend to take a long time to get to them.