Contributors

Rachael Acheson

Rachael Acheson is sort-of-kind-of originally from central Iowa, but recognizes that the legitimacy of this statement hinges on your definition of the words “originally” and “from.” Born in Genesee County, Michigan, and relocated for a number of her formative years to the Oklahoma Panhandle, she and her family eventually landed in Iowa Falls, IA. Consequently, Rachael and her siblings spent a fair amount of time in Ames while growing up. Rachael took harp lessons from an ISU instructor, and she and her sister both performed multiple times in the annual Cy Stephens Center Nutcracker ballet. She left for college in 2008 and spent the next 8 years accumulating various degrees in various states with varying climates. She completed her Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) in English from Hillsdale College in Michigan in 2012, and then completed both her Master of Arts in English (M.A.) and her Master of Library and Information Science (M.L.I.S.) from the University of South Carolina – Columbia in 2016. Having finally exhausted her tolerance for both frozen tundras and muggy swamps, Rachael returned to Iowa and took up a 9-month temporary position as the Special Collections and University Archives Librarian at University of Northern Iowa in Cedar Falls, IA, where she initiated several popular outreach events, which are still ongoing, and presented a poster on these at the American Library Association 2017 Annual Conference. Her current job as the Assistant University Archivist at Iowa State University’s Special Collections and University Archives keeps her busy with classes, exhibits, oral history programs, accessioning, and working with student donors.

Cassandra Anderson

Cassandra Anderson was a student employee with the library during her undergraduate years at Iowa State (2016-2019). Cassandra is currently a graduate student in the dual library science and history program at Simmons University in Boston, Massachusetts. After graduation she hopes to work in the rare books and manuscripts preservation field.

Zoë Bardin

Zoë Bardin graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Psychology at Iowa State University in 2018. She was a student employee at SCUA and processed collections, paged boxes, and even covered a shift on the reference desk once a week.

Amy Bishop

Amy Bishop is the Rare Books and Manuscripts Archivist at Iowa State University Library Special Collections and University Archives. In this position, she works with donors of archival collections and selects rare books. She also teaches classes, answers reference questions, and curates exhibitions. Her favorite part of the job is exposing students and visitors to the joys of rare books. Even though she is a literary nerd, she loves working with the science-focused collections at ISU, and she has a special passion for books with moveable parts. Outside of work, she enjoys cooking, dancing, and wilderness canoe trips.

Shaina V. Destine

Shaina V. Destine is a Humanities Librarian with a specialization in History and Medieval and Renaissance Studies at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville.  Ms. Destine received her Master’s in Library & Information Science from the University of Maryland in College Park with a concentration in Archives and Digital Curation.

Shaina Destine identifies as a Black Queer woman and was born and raised in the South Bronx in New York City.  She’s the oldest of seven siblings and a perpetual optimist. She is the descendant, as well as the ancestor, of a long line of resilient and powerful women. She has an interest in increasing archival holdings by including narratives that are traditionally excluded. She also uses her institutional knowledge and positions to increase students’ access to information despite systemic disenfranchisement. #GoLadyVols

Luis González-Díaz

Luis González-Díaz is a Political Science and Sociology undergraduate student at Iowa State University. At the university, Luis is a NCORE-ISCORE Scholar, McNair Scholar, and Student Success Leader for the BOLD Learning Community in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. Luis was an undergraduate research assistant for Iowa State University Library Special Collections and University Archives from 2018–2019 academic year, where he curated the LGBT+ Student Life at Iowa State University: 1970-1999 digital exhibit.

Rosalie Gartner

Rosalie Gartner is the Lead Processing Archivist at Iowa State University’s Special Collections and University Archives. She joined the department in 2017, where she oversees arrangement and description of both University Archives and Special Collections.  Prior to ISU, she worked at Emerson College in Boston, MA as the Archivist and Records Management Associate for 4 years. She earned her MS in Library and Information Science from Simmons College. In her free time, Rosalie enjoys traveling, sewing, and spending quality time with her dog Odin.

Ashley Harris

Ashley Harris majored in History at Iowa State University and graduated in spring of 2020. In her time here she had been a part of the History Club for three years, two of which she served as the president. She had also been active in Phi Alpha Theta. Ashley worked in SCUA for the past two years, the majority of which she worked on the Knowles Blunck Architecture Collection.

Bradley Kuennen

Bradley Kuennen started working in Special Collections and University Archives when he was a student attending Iowa State in the 1990s. He was hired fulltime as a Library Assistant in the department in 2003 partly because of his height and ability to retrieve boxes from high shelves. He worked in the department for nearly 15 years, eventually serving briefly as University Archivist. He is currently the Veterinary Medical Librarian at the Veterinary Medical Library located in Iowa State’s College of Veterinary Medicine building.

Amanda Larsen

Amanda Larsen was a Criminal Justice major with Psychology and History minors at Iowa State University. She curated the Women’s Experience at Iowa State from 1960-1979 digital exhibit. She hopes with her posts and the exhibit that people take time to learn the history of different places and all the amazing people that changed society.

Katie Prout

Katie Prout is a Midwest-based writer whose work has been featured in Longreads, Lit Hub, and elsewhere.

Rosie Rowe

Rosie Rowe is the Audiovisual Preservation Specialist at Iowa State University, designing and implementing Audiovisual (AV) preservation infrastructure and workflows for the University Library. She has built an in-house AV preservation lab for researcher requests and small preservation projects, and she is Co-PI on a newly-finished CLIR Recordings At Risk grant for preservation of the National Farmers Organization film collection. Previously, she was the AV Preservation Senior Advisor for the New Zealand National Archives, where she advised on the procurement of Peter Jackson’s film lab for a massive film-to-film preservation project and built the in-house AV preservation lab. Her main professional focus is designing realistic AV preservation infrastructure and workflows, which are friendly to smaller institutions that may have fewer resources and narrower available skill sets, and she has consulted on and built labs for colleges throughout the US. She is also focused on inclusion and actively recruits students of color and LGBTQ students into the AV lab at ISU.