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Alice E. Brown papers part 1: The beginning of the processing journey

Guest blogger: Mariecris

Serendipity has been the catch phrase in the archives these recent months. All sorts of serendipitous events have occurred within this past year, one of which is the accession of the Alice E. Brown Papers. Rebecca Lyon came into the Archives to do some research on her grandmother, Alice Brown, in order to nominate her to the Alaska Women’s Hall of Fame. During her visit, Arlene Schmuland, head of Archives and Special Collections, expressed an interest in one day being a home for Alice Brown’s papers. Alice was involved from the beginning of the AFN as a member of their Board of Directors. As with most discussions with possible donors, we hoped that eventually those discussions would result in the collection becoming a part of the archives collection and made available to researchers. So we prepared to patiently wait for that day. To our surprise and excitement, Rebecca donated her grandmother’s papers on December 18, 2009. In addition, Alice Brown was also elected into the Alaska Women’s Hall of Fame, class of 2010.

As Arlene re-foldered the collection, copying any descriptions onto the folders, Arlene came up with the brilliant idea to seek grant funding to process the Brown collection at a more detailed level. Serendipity once again came along (mainly through Rebecca’s hard work) and Arlene was encouraged to apply for a grant from The CIRI Foundation (TCF) to do the processing. To make a long story short, we got the funding! I have been working on the Alice E. Brown papers for three weeks now and we have a basic finding aid online right now. I will be adding more detailed information as I continue to process so check the finding aid often to see if any updates have been added. Also I’ll be doing my best to document my processing journey through Alice’s papers on this blog. So please check in once in a while for the latest on my Alice E. Brown processing journey.

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