Interview Questionnaire for Seattle Area Archivists for Gergana Abernathy
Gergana Dimitrova Abernathy is a Seattle-based archivist with 10+ years of experience working in special collections and private archives. She is currently serving as the project archivist for the Paul Dorpat Collection at The Seattle Public Library. During this two-year project, which started in August 2023, she aims to process, preserve and make available the extensive assortment of photographic materials in all formats, research files, ephemera and much more donated by local historian, author and photographer Paul Dorpat.
Questions:
- What sparked your interest in the archival profession?
- Can you share a memorable experience or project you’ve worked on?
- What’s one piece of advice you’d offer those new to the field?
- Outside of work, what are some of your hobbies or passions
- Are there any particular topics within archiving that you’re keen to explore further?
- What’s the most challenging aspect of being an archivist, and how do you navigate it?
- What’s a common misconception people have about your job?
- What’s one archive for collection you wish more people knew about?
What sparked your interest in the archival profession?
My mother worked at a library across the street from my elementary school in Bulgaria. Every day after school, I’d get into library nonsense – books, records and tapes, card catalogs, the kid’s section, visiting her coworkers’ offices. It was a second home for me, and as I grew up with many ambitions for careers, ultimately, I realized libraries and archives were always going to be the place for me.
Can you share a memorable experience or project you’ve worked on?
One of my favorite parts of the job is not knowing what new information I’ll learn over the course of a project. Since starting work on the Dorpat Collection, I’ve learned a lot about downtown Seattle buildings, how to build custom glass plate negative sink mats for broken plates, and which adapters to use for 30-40-year-old hard drives.
One of my favorite projects I’ve worked on is digitizing rare materials for University of North Carolina’s Special Collections including letters by Edgar Allan Poe, Leon Trotsky, and Langston Hughes.
What’s one piece of advice you’d offer to those new to the field?
Try to spend time finding opportunities to expose yourself to various aspects of archives like acquisition, processing, reference, and preservation. Find out what you really enjoy doing and if you want to specialize in any specific area. There are lots of ways to be an archivist, so explore them all! And join a union!
Outside of work, what are some of your hobbies or passions?
I am always learning how to do new things. Over the years I’ve picked up wall weaving, cross stitching, digital art, birding, kayaking, and learning new languages. I do whatever looks fun to me!
Are there any particular topics within archiving that you’re keen to explore further?
I think it’s been pretty clear that putting things on the internet does not, in fact, last forever. It’s actually quite a dire situation for preserving political and cultural resources. Companies are selling publications for scrap parts, resulting in huge losses to our digital history. Most recently, the MTV News website closed down, taking with it its entire 30-year archive, which notably hosted vast historical hip-hop content. The same company has likewise shut down the CMT, home of extensive country music journalism, all Daily Show and Colbert Report clips from the past 25 years and others. In 2018, Freedom of the Press partnered with Archive-It to launch an archival collection focusing on preserving “Threatened Outlets” before they are taken down or manipulated.
As most information bypasses a physical medium, digital preservation, particularly preservation of online content, is imperative to fund and build. The burden on the Internet Archive to be the sole platform for internet preservation is significant and they are facing major concentrated efforts to destabilize it, including lawsuits from publishers and DDoS attacks.
It is especially pertinent to provide access to primary sources with the prevalence of Artificial Intelligence (AI) mis- and dis-information circulating regularly in online spaces.
What’s the most challenging aspect of being an archivist, and how do you navigate it?
For me, it can be the swing between tedium and intellectually challenging work not matching up to my mood that day. Some days, I don’t have the mental capacity to do the intellectually demanding work of reading, researching, writing, and arranging materials. Other days, the banality of rehousing or spreadsheet work has me longing for a complicated box. It helps to have multiple projects or parts of projects to do so I can focus on what task is the right fit for me that day while still moving projects forward.
What’s a common misconception people have about your job?
The most common remarks I get are that people don’t actually know what an archivist is, what we do or that it’s a job at all. I usually bring up the National Archives because that’s sort of common knowledge (thanks, National Treasure!) and then explain that one needs people in order to have an archive. For those who do know what archives are, I find that there’s an underestimation for how much time and effort goes into preserving, processing and providing content.
What’s one archive or collection you wish more people knew about?
The Tatreez Archive is a crowd-sourced archive for traditional Palestinian embroidery motifs to preserve Palestinian identity across generations. Those submitting motifs can add context by specifying the villages or cities, themes, history, or other aspects of life that the motif represents. The motifs are traditionally passed down from mothers to daughters and can vary widely to tell specific stories in the design. Tatreez is recognized by UNESCO as an Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity and reminds me of the many cultures who use textile arts, mostly created by women, for storytelling, community and identity, such as the Hmong’s Paj Ntaub needlework, the deep history of Black and Indigenous quilters in America*, and my own Bulgarian culture’s embroidery practices.
*Check out the recently acquired quilt “Home of Good: A Black Seattle Storyquilt” by Storme Webber, a Two Spirit Sugpiaq/Black/Choctaw poet and interdisciplinary artist, at the Douglass-Truth library branch!
Gergana working on the Dorpat Collection. Photo by Sean Lanksbury.
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