Name: Helene van Rossum

Title and Duties: Spe­cial Col­lec­tions Assis­tant. Pro­cess­ing col­lec­tions, orga­niz­ing exhi­bi­tions, and “all other duties as assigned!”

Recent projects: I processed recent addi­tions to the John Van Antwerp Mac­Mur­ray Papers , which included about 1500 pho­tographs taken by Mac­Mur­ray while Sec­re­tary to the U.S. Lega­tion in Peking (1913–1917) as well as 16 mm films that were shot in 1928 and 1929, when Mac­Mur­ray served as a min­is­ter to China (1925–1929). Dan Linke and I curated an exhi­bi­tion about MacMurray’s years in China, which included selec­tions of the pho­tographs and films, as well as doc­u­ments and let­ters from the John Van Antwerp Mac­Mur­ray Papers (Octo­ber 20, 2007 through Jan­u­ary 18 2008).

Worked at Mudd since: 1997

Why I like my job/archives: Han­dling the papers that peo­ple left behind is as if you are look­ing over their shoul­der. It is like trav­el­ing in time! I love find­ing the sto­ries behind the papers and pass­ing them on to others.

Inter­est­ing work anec­dote: Through my ten year old son–a dinosaur expert since he was four–I knew of Roy Chap­man Andrews, the famous explorer who found dinosaur fos­sils in Mon­go­lia and on whom the char­ac­ter of Indi­ana Jones was loosely-based. When I started prepar­ing for the exhi­bi­tion on John Van Antwerp Mac­Mur­ray in China, to my aston­ish­ment, I found that Mac­Mur­ray had not only accom­pa­nied Andrews’ 1928 expe­di­tion out of Kal­gan (China’s gate­way to Mon­go­lia), but actu­ally filmed the event. The movie revealed a quite spec­tac­u­lar entourage: a crew of 37 peo­ple, eight cars, and 150 camels–and because Mac­Mur­ray had made arrange­ments for Andrews’ safe pas­sage with the local warlord–they were escorted by 50 Chi­nese cav­al­ry­men. Still, my son found it all a bit under­whelm­ing. He offered me a small model dinosaur skele­ton to liven up the pho­tographs on display.

Favorite item/collection: Louis Fis­cher Papers

Other infor­ma­tion:

Out­side my Mudd hours I am a children’s book writer and a shadow puppeteer