Year in the Life: Emily Vigor, Pt. 1

We’d like to introduce a new series on the SNAP blog today. For this series, we will be following archivists in their first professional position, checking in monthly for a year. The archivists may share their success/troubles/questions/resources/advice with the rest of us as they transition into their first professional position. If you would like to contribute to this series, even for a guest post and not a yearly commitment, please email me. Let’s meet our first contributor, Emily Vigor. We will be following Emily for a year.

Name: Emily Vigor
Position: Archivist
Institution: Environmental Design Archives, University of California, Berkeley
Years at position: <1
Education: California Polytechnic State University (BS – Sociology), Richmond University (MA – Art History), San Jose State University (MLIS – Archives emphasis)

I work at the Environmental Design Archives (EDA) as the Project Archivist for the Ernest Kump and Warren Callister collections. The EDA serves the College of Environmental Design at UC Berkeley, and holds nearly 100 collections documenting built and landscaped environments. My position is funded through a National Historic Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC) grant for a project titled, Living and Learning: The Architecture of Housing and Schools – Providing Access to the Records of Two Architects. I started at this position in October 2012, and have spent the last month assessing the collection of Ernest Kump, preparing a processing plan, and working with my manager to hire an Assistant Archivist and student workers. As the project advances, I will be processing these collections using the Standard Series for Architecture and Landscape Design Records, written by Kelcy Shepherd and Waverly Lowell.  I’m also utilizing Mark A. Greene and Dennis Meissner’s MPLP approach to ensure that the Kump and Callister collections will be processed within the one year allotted by the grant. Professional interests include working with digital records, visual resources, and their associated metadata. I currently serve as the chair-elect for the Northern California chapter of the Visual Resources Association, Outside of work, I spend my time working with yarn (and contemplating possible yarn bombing projects), reading, watching far too many cat videos, and visiting galleries and museums.

We will check in with Emily again next month!