Eliz Breakstone, Sarah Knox, Michelle Kroupa, Jess Lehr, Laurel Sandor, Michele Saunders, Jenny Selby, and Ryan Steinberg spent their Spring Break at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History Archives Center in Washington, D.C. working on a variety of archival projects.

Coming from all of SI's specializations, the graduate students set about quickly learning archival processing techniques and impressed the Archives staff with their versatility and skills. To some, this was an introduction to archival work, while to others it was a chance to further develop skills learned at the School. In addition to rehousing pictures and papers, creating finding aids and creating collection level processing plans, the students had the opportunity to talk with Smithsonian archivists and discuss their work.

Eliz Breakstone worked on the Groucho Marx Collection, processing, rehousing, and organizing the photographic materials of the collection. She completed the processing of the photos and moved on to working with correspondence and scripts.

"The ASB has really allowed me to apply some of the concepts I've learned in class. Also, my DFE at the Labadie Collection has proved to be extremely helpful!" - E. Breakstone

Ryan Steinberg developed a processing plan for the collection of Benny Carter - America's leading jazz band leaders, composers, and trumpeters between 1930's and 1990s. He worked with a collection of original music manuscripts, clippings, photographs, recordings and other ephemera. He began the week by pulling materials from shipping boxes and transferring them into record storage boxes. As materials were shifted, Steinberg created a preliminary inventory of the collection that will later serve as a processing road map. Later in the week a Smithsonian intern joined him and he met and talked with the man who is in charge of the Benny Carter collection. Ryan was then charged with the creation of a processing plan for the collection, including series descriptions, scope and content notes, and an estimation of materials needed. By week's end, he completed the processing plan, which will supplement the preliminary inventory.

Jenny Selby and Sarah Knox (WSU) worked with the Grepke Paper Doll collection. This collection has over 4,000 paperdolls collected over several decades and dating from 1890 - 1991. Selby and Knox physically sorted the collection according to about 30 broad categories, eventually narrowing the categories to 15 and reclassifying many of the dolls. The final step of this process was to folder the dolls and house them. At the week's end they had enabled access to this very special collection.

Link to read about more projects at the National Museum of American History:

• Telegraph That!
  Inventory, sort, identify and propose arrangement for materials from Western Union dating from 1950 - 1960.
• Ice Cream Cakes
  Work with photographic materials from the Carvel Ice Cream company.
• African-American Studio in Washington D.C.
  Work with the Scurlock Studio Collection (photographs and business records from an African-American family-operated business, 1911-1994, whose subjects included famous famous African Americans, the Washington black community, Howard University). Help to plan for a future exhibition and publication