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 By Melissa Pankuch On October 3rd, SAASC was honored to have Lynn Downey in conversation to share her experiences as an archivist, historian, and author. After an early position as an archivist for the real estate developer Mason-McDuffie, Lynn spent over 20 years as the corporate historian for Levi Strauss & Co., the iconic American institution famous for its denim jeans. During her time at the company, Downey sought out a variety of opportunities to hone her writing skills. Her position included marketing activities such as working with reporters who were researching the company. She also learned to embrace social media as a tool for sharing the heritage of Strauss & Co in short form entries such as Facebook posts and tweets. Downey traveled the country to promote the company at events and on television, including a spot on Oprah! Most importantly, Downey had strong communication with company leadership, and was able to pursue a lot of writing that she had personal interest in by illustrating its connection back to the company. This communication was certainly a factor when Downey negotiated to write the official Levi Strauss biography after her time with the company. Downey also provided quality advice for archivists who are looking to become writers. She explained that she processes a book project much like she would process an archival collection. She first studies and reads as much as she can about the subject, and uses that information to create an organizational structure for the book. This compilation of materials can often be a tricky task. When writing the Levi Strauss biography, Downey hit a roadblock in the process because many of Strauss’ personal records were destroyed in the San Francisco 1906 fire. Therefore, she traveled to Germany and Panama to gather information from other sources to complete the organizational structure for her book. She also stressed the importance of creating a timeline in order to see the topic develop over time. For the Strauss project, Downey’s timeline is over 100 pages long! She also stressed that aspiring writers should read and write as often as they can, citing Stephen King’s On Writing and Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life as transformative texts in her journey as a writer. Downey also recommended that authors seek to work with university presses as opposed to seeking representation from a literary agent and working with larger publications. With university presses, the author-archivist is able to maintain a level of ownership over their project that other publishers may not provide. Her current project, Life in a Lung Resort, tells the story of her grandmother’s time in Arequipa, a tuberculosis sanitorium, in 1920’s California. The site of the sanitorium is now the home of a Girl Scout camp. Downey tracked down the institutional records that were saved by a man who kept them in his shed so they would not be thrown away. Downey obtained the records, processed them, and donated them to the Bancroft Library (finding aid can be found here.) We look forward to reading Life in a Lung Resort, set to be released in the fall of next year, and to reading more from Lynn Downey in the future! 
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 Are you interested in writing? Would you like to add publication to your resumé? Archeota is looking for original articles to publish in our upcoming issue. We invite you to send us your ideas. If you’re interested in submitting something, but need some suggestions for what you could write, here are some ideas to get you inspired:
Or find inspiration in any of our previous issues, archived on our website, at: http://sjsusaasc.weebly.com/archeota.html. Please note, you DO NOT need to be a member of SAA to contribute to Archeota. Submission deadline: Friday, November 16, 2016 @ 11:59 pm PST Submit your idea or article to: sjsusaasc@gmail.com  October is American Archives Month! It’s an entire month dedicated to spreading awareness and bringing attention to archival institutions. Whether it’s your first semester learning about records and retention schedules, finding aids and metadata, or it’s your last semester and you’re looking forward to beginning your career, you probably already know that there is not a lot of understanding out in the world about what archivists do. There seems to always be confusion when I say to someone, “I’m studying to be an archivist.” Common responses I’ve gotten range from, “What’s that?’ to “Hasn’t the Internet made it so we don’t even need archivists anymore?” This gap in understanding and awareness needs to be bridged.
In 2006, the Society of American Archivists created this month-long celebration to provide the “opportunity to tell (or remind) people that items that are important to them are being preserved, cataloged, cared for, and made accessible by archivists.” Archives Month is so important because it gives us a chance to spread the word about what we do, what we’re studying, and why archives are necessary. It also gives us the chance to feature some incredible archives doing important work! This month we will be posting items using #ArchivesMonth and we hope you’ll search through the hashtag on Twitter and Facebook. Spend some time exploring what archives are doing across the country to celebrate and educate. On October 3, we’ll be taking part in Ask an Archivist day, where we’ll be asking questions of archivists and sharing responses. We’ll also be featuring 10 archival institutions this month that we think should be getting attention and praise for the work they do. Follow along as we explore our featured archives and spread awareness of the archival profession. We’re hopeful that activities like these can change minds, create inspiration and foster excitement in archival institutions, and maybe (just maybe) next time you say to someone, “I’m studying to be an archivist” they’ll say, “Archives are essential parts of our collective cultural and historical memory. We should be supporting them as much as we can. I love archives! |
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