By: Isabella Rozzi
Jennifer Pelose has spent time working her way up and around Harvard’s archival repositories since finishing graduate school in 2002. Starting as a grant processor in Harvard’s Countway Library, to her current position as head archivist in charge of archival projects and technical services at Harvard’s University Archives, Pelose has learned a lot of lessons and has wisdom to share about the field.
While getting an undergraduate degree in history, Pelose had an active role in editing and writing for her college’s student newspaper, but after working in an archive she got a new perspective that she felt better suited her. Archival work matched her personality as someone who liked quiet environments behind the scenes, rather than “in the public eye.” Jennifer knew she did not want to be a teacher and thought she could a place in library sciences. Pelose attended Simmons College in Boston, where she received. Her Masters in Library Science and an MA in History.
We got to talking about trends and movements across the field. Pelose identified the More Product Less Process movement, a phrase coined by Mark Green and Dennis Meissner in their article by that same name, for its importance in the field. The article called for archivists to reconstruct the way they process their collections by focusing on reducing backlog and opening collections rather than describing their contents at the item level. Pelose says this article caused quite the movement and continues to do so today. Pelose cited the article as “a lightning rod” for the time, changing to minimal processing and getting collections out there for the public, even if it meant reducing user services. It also shifted resources to public services rather than processing archivists, another big change. Pelose told me she’s known people who have shown up for their first day of work to find a copy of this article sat waiting for them on their desk. Still, despite having embraced this movement in her past positions across different archives, Pelose considers this only one “method,” suggesting that it’s best to look at the needs of the individual archive rather than adhere to a movement.
Pelose also addressed the movement towards digitization; the “digital tsunami,” she joked, is here.. The rush to digitize introduces more challenges in making highly requested records available, such as the WWII records at Harvard. Digitization has forced archivists to start thinking differently about their collections. She says archivists need to treat these records as if they are any other record, but then the added perspective of putting them online. The Harvard University Archives, according to Pelose, plans to have their entire backlog, including all twenty repositories of the university, processed by 2026. Digitization is a great start for making Harvard’s previously restricted records more accessible.
On a more personal level, I asked Pelose to share her favorite object or collection that she has worked with. Delighted, Pelose identified two documents, both relating to founding father, John Hancock. She mentioned the letters between him and his sister around the time of her engagement, which revealed typical brother-sister bantering. Hancock complained that his sister hadn’t told him about her engagement in time, and then signed the bottom of the letter with his famously large signature. Pelose laughed and said he must’ve been practicing. She said her other favorite collection were those of Hancock as Harvard’s treasurer during the American Revolution. At that time, he had brought all of the finance books from the university to Philadelphia. This collection reveals that the University sent Hancock letters begging him to pay attention to the books and to pay people accordingly. Unfortunately, John Hancock never answered. Perhaps, Pelose suggested, Hancock was too occupied to care. She said she loved the records of a man having to go to Philadelphia on horseback, take the records from him, and then establish a new treasurer.
Talking to Jennifer Pelose gave me a great opportunity to learn about the journey of an archivist, from the day-to-day to the looming trends and movements within the field as well as the personal narrative of an individual in the field. Pelose’s reflections offered important insight to how career archivists work and think about their and think about their work in the field, and it only made me more interested in the possibility of working in archives. My conversation with Pelose was useful for a brief discussion of Library Science vs. Public History in archives that we had in my class, HIST 626, Introduction to Archives. Pelose also reassured me that many of her colleagues, past and present, have come from Public History; Archives is not an exclusive club.
Tags: Archives, Archives Student, Informational Interview, Jennifer Pelose, Harvard University Archives, More Product Less Process, Library Science
