About

I am an archivist and historian based in the Midwest.

My passion is sharing overlooked, underappreciated, and forgotten stories. I focus primarily on women’s history, American culture, and the history of entertainment. I believe strongly in engaging and accessible storytelling.

My archives and library experience spans public, academic, special, and nonprofit cultural institutions. I am currently the Genealogy Services Librarian for the Wisconsin Historical Society, where I get to help people connect with their past. I also review books and write the occasional feature for Booklist.

At previous jobs I have done everything from recording patrons’ stories about their beloved public library to building custom boxes for Barbara Walters’ Emmys to telling audiences how U.S. customs agents finally caught the king of glass eye smugglers. I have learned (and forgotten) more about talk shows, Pyrex, and 20th-century physicists than I ever imagined I would.

In between running genealogy programs for quilters and teaching curators to edit Wikipedia, I have gained a decade-plus of experience in public services and collections management. This includes managing outreach, programming, and marketing initiatives; curating exhibitions, processing archives, and running oral history programs; and providing lots and lots (and lots) of reference to anyone who emailed, called, instant messaged, wrote, faxed, or came up and asked me for help. I’m still waiting for my first reference question via carrier pigeon. You can learn more about my professional experience on my CV (PDF).

I earned my MA in Women’s History from Sarah Lawrence College and my MLIS, specializing in Archives & Records Management, from the University of Maryland, College Park. My BA in history, English, and German, with a minor in Medieval and Renaissance Studies, is from Augustana College (IL).

Currently I live with my cat, books, and ever-expanding collection of cardigans. Sometimes I wear glasses too.

Photo: Mickey Dann for The Corning Museum of Glass