Dan's Fellowship in Review

Written by Dan DelViscio

I’ve spent a wonderful nine months here at Delaware State University, but my fellowship is unfortunately winding down now. So I want to take this opportunity to thank everyone here at the William C. Jason Library for being such great working colleagues. It was truly a pleasure to meet and work in the same environment as all of you.

I’m happy to say I will be walking away from this job with a better understanding of archives and archival work. I’ve learned that it takes much more than just knowledge of processing collections and organizing them into nice neat document boxes. It’s having the ability to juggle multiple projects. It’s corresponding with colleagues and doing the proper research to ensure all the right information is available to researchers using the collections. And it’s working in an intelligent manner that ensures accountability and integrity.

I didn’t know much about Delaware State University before I came here from Philadelphia, but having immersed myself in the collections and reading about the history of the university I can definitely say I’m better for the experience. My main responsibilities were to process two major collections transferred to the archives by the Office of Public Relations and the Office of Alumni Relations. Both collections are photographic in content and contain depictions of some of DSU’s earliest students, faculty, and presidents. The collections will definitely be integral resources in the DSU archive’s holdings and I’m truly proud to have worked on them.   

I will definitely be using the things I’ve learned here in my next job, but I hope to come back some time and see how everyone is doing, and hopefully to see the new archives space complete with an archival exhibit. I wish Rejoice the best going forward, and hope the archives at DSU continues to grow in its new location on the first floor of the library. Thanks everyone!