News
February 2008
An Archivist's Passion: "Giving Order to Our Documented Universe"
In order to help individuals navigate the School of Nursing’s three archived collections, Gabe Angulo produced a finding aid, which contains specific information on each document, as well as describing the collection in general, including any chronological gaps in the records.
What trips the trigger of an archivist? For Gabriel "Gabe" Angulo, MS, archivist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Nursing, "it's unlocking information for other people. It's giving order to our documented universe."
Angulo was hired by the UW-Madison School of Nursing in January of 2006 while working on his master's degree in library and information studies on the UW campus. His charge was to process a collection of stockpiled records—research documents, nursing faculty and student notebooks, audiotapes and manuscripts, pamphlets, photo scrapbooks about nursing throughout Wisconsin—all chronicling nursing education and culture at the School of Nursing from 1923 to the present.
Overseen by the Ebling Library within the Health Sciences Learning Center, the project presented opportunity for Angulo. "It was the practical experience I had been looking for," he says. "Processing a manuscript collection after you've studied how to do so is when archival education comes full circle."
As Angulo began drilling down through countless piles of historical information to select, he notes, "those with the highest archival quality and research value," he determined the existence of three collections: School of Nursing (SoN), Nurses' Alumni Organization (NAO), and Continuing Nursing Education (CNE) records.
The groupings were driven by two archival principles: provenance, or origin, and respect for the original order of the pieces. "Records are grouped together based on the individual or agency that created them," Angulo says. "For example, the records created by the NAO are related to those created by the School of Nursing, yet, they have distinct provenance." And if one paper is clipped to another, Angulo adds, the order needs to be respected.
In processing the materials, he sought the guidance of Professor Emerita Signe Skott Cooper, Cert.'43, BS'48. Because of her sixty-year affiliation with the school, beginning in 1946, Cooper could supply him with background and context for numerous photos and historical pieces that she had acquired as a nursing faculty member.
Angulo worked to master the contents of the collection, selecting only the materials relevant to the school's mission. Once processing was completed, Angulo determined that the three amassed collections measured forty cubic feet.
Angulo's historical interests were cultivated as a teenager growing up in Chicago. Angulo sought to better understand the rural Mexican traditions of his parents compared with the urban culture that surrounded him. While in high school, he spent Saturdays at the Newberry Library in Chicago, attempting to reconstruct his family history.
"I worked extensively with nineteenth- century Mexican church records," reports Angulo. "My eyes became attuned to the script used during that time and the formulaic wording of each of the record types. This is when I got my calling; more alluring than the records themselves was the organization of those records."
As an undergraduate at DePaul University in Chicago, he spent a semester in Madrid, Spain. This sealed his future academic pursuit: a career in librarianship.
Although Angulo focused on making the three collections readily accessible as soon as possible, he did take time to admire their value. "The School of Nursing collection includes primary source materials," Angulo explains, "that is, pieces that were produced during the time they are describing. The school's nursing notebooks are written by the students in the class and, therefore, capture first-hand what nursing education was like in the 1940s and 1950s."
In May of 2007, Angulo completed his master's degree while concurrently finishing the school's archival project. He then spent most of the summer at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., working in its Hispanic Division.
In the fall of 2007, Angulo began a Fulbright Scholarship in Spain. He is very well-prepared in languages—fluent in Spanish and German with two years of undergrad work in modern Hebrew and an understanding of the basics of Biblical Hebrew.
After taking courses in Biblical Hebrew at the Universidad Complutense in Madrid, Angulo will assist two renowned Spanish manuscript cataloging scholars in processing Hebrew manuscripts from the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries at the Cathedral Archives of Toledo and the Santa Cruz Library at the University of Valladolid. In tandem with the coursework, Angulo will work on a paper explaining how Hebrew manuscripts currently existing in Spain were acquired.
Where some might view his endeavors at the School of Nursing as planets apart from cataloging done in Spain, Angulo does not: "Many of the basic principles I learned in Wisconsin can be applied to archival materials in Spain."
Furthermore, Angulo adds, his archival experience at the School of Nursing brought a great sense of fulfillment. "It's a concrete example of how I've contributed to the preservation of the school's heritage," he explains. "It also speaks to the larger mission of all archivists: to connect people with the information they seek in order to facilitate further research."