Leaving a Trail: Personal Papers and Public Archives Part Two – The Archivist’s Story: Personal papers and public archives part two – the Archivist’s Story

Archives reveal multiple ways in which a person or institution’s path intersects with public interest. New generations can gain insight from the legacies of others’ ideas, actions, and influences, studying the past to affect the future. What those generations conclude will depend on the footprints left for them to follow. In this collaboration, an emeritus professor of storytelling, folklore, and children’s literature joins with an archivist for faculty papers to preserve the evidence of the former’s lifetime work. Although they approach their tasks differently, both narrators draw on long-term research experience to inform and describe the process with which each is involved. The importance of their interaction emerges through mutual references in their respective articles, as does the extent to which their personal stories affect the nature of their work and self-reflective approach. This connectivity allows them to portray what archiving means for a particular donor (Part One) and what working with a donor means for a particular archivist (Part Two). Their intent is to think in a visionary way about why and how donors and archivists do what they do, engaging readers to connect personally as well as intellectually along the way. This is the second article in a two-part sequence in this issue.