The Urban Matters Lab is excited to share 3 volunteer opportunities with the City of West Lafayette’s Public Library and Archives collections. Honors College students will be working with city archivist and historian Devon Roddel under the mentorship of Dr. Krishna.
Students also have the option of taking this for HONR credit over Spring 2023 or Summer 2023 through:
- An independent study (HONR), OR
- HONR course Exploring Place
See Mr. Roddel’s description of the positions below:
Collections Management Assistance
I will be going through our Library’s archive collections this year to make sure the collections are being stored properly as well as to appraise things such as whether rearranging stored materials is necessary, whether the appropriate amount of storage space was accorded to certain materials, and whether more action needs to be taken for any given collection. This would be a good opportunity for someone to see what goes into collections management work. Far too many archived collections in various places are mismanaged over the years, and this leads to deterioration and possibly even destruction of these fragile materials. At WLPL, we use top-quality archival preservation materials to do our work and make sure that the materials stored here will have the best possible chance of existing into longevity. This position would have provided training, and would be unpaid. The hours are flexible, but would likely be whatever the students have time for.
Digitization Assistance
I will be starting on a long project of digitizing as much of our collection as we can manage. This is a tedious job that requires a bit of attention to detail and some ability to work with technology. I’d have the student operate our CSUR scanner to digitize various materials over the course of their time here. We are trying to expand access to our collections via the internet, and this would go a long way to helping us to reach that goal. Kind of a boring job, but very important and easily able to listen to music and whatnot while underway. This position would have provided training, and would be unpaid. The hours are flexible, but would likely be whatever the students have time for.
Museum Docent Volunteer
I will be running the upcoming West Lafayette History Museum at Grandview Cemetery in West Lafayette this Spring. I’ll be there often throughout the week to allow people to come into the recently renovated Caretaker’s Cottage to observe the fluctuating exhibitions and historical contents. This will be a good opportunity for students of historic preservation to be in a position to both learn more about that subject at the local level, but it will also help me to not have to be the only person there to interact with guests all the time. It would be a very simple job, not as complex and involved as the previous few, but still a very good opportunity to learn about historic preservation in this community. This position would have provided training, and would be unpaid. The hours are flexible, but would likely be whatever the students have time for.
Please email Dr. Krishna at krish191 at purdue.edu if you are interested in any of these positions.
Urban Matters Lab 