Meet Mudd’s Brandon Joseph

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Brandonsm

Name: Bran­don Joseph ‘12

Major: His­tory, with Cer­tifi­cates in African Amer­i­can Stud­ies and Amer­i­can Studies
Title/Duties: Project Archivist Assis­tant. It is my respon­si­bil­ity to help the archivists at Mudd arrange and process col­lec­tions. My duties include col­lect­ing details related to the con­tents of col­lec­tions, rehous­ing and arrang­ing col­lec­tions, and cre­at­ing folder lists for find­ing aids that guide researchers. Occa­sion­ally, I mon­i­tor the wel­come desk, read­ing room, and page mate­ri­als for patrons.
Recent projects: For the past year, I’ve been work­ing with Adri­ane Han­son on the Amer­i­can Civil Lib­er­ties Union (ACLU) records pro­cess­ing project. Before the ACLU project, I worked on the George S. McGov­ern Papers and the James V. For­re­stal Papers.
Worked at Mudd since: Jan­u­ary 2009, the begin­ning of the sec­ond semes­ter of my fresh­man year.
Why I like my job/archives: Mudd is a relax­ing place with a great staff. I enjoy com­ing into Mudd and engag­ing with the library’s col­lec­tions in the mid­dle of a hec­tic day of class. Also, as a his­tory major and researcher, I am fas­ci­nated by some the mate­ri­als that are unearthed as I help process a col­lec­tion. At times, some of the mate­ri­als that I come across at Mudd haven’t been seen or touched in decades. It’s fun to be a part of the recov­ery of lost infor­ma­tion as I comb through the col­lec­tions at Mudd.
Favorite item/collection: The col­lec­tion of His­tor­i­cal Pho­tographs, which pro­vide a visual time­line to cam­pus events of the past. It’s inter­est­ing to see how the build­ings I live and work in on cam­pus have devel­oped over time. The Daily Prince­ton­ian Col­lec­tion is another favorite of mine. I enjoy read­ing about how Prince­to­ni­ans from dif­fer­ent eras digested and dealt with the social and admin­is­tra­tive issues that arose on campus.

Stu­dent Ques­tion: What is the favorite part of the col­lec­tions at Mudd? I love to check out the let­ters sent to the pub­lic offi­cials and orga­ni­za­tions that have col­lec­tions at Mudd. I feel as if the let­ters from the gen­eral pop­u­la­tion in par­tic­u­lar serve as a great way to mea­sure pub­lic opin­ions related to a given topic. While pro­cess­ing the McGov­ern papers, for exam­ple, I found hun­dreds of let­ters from con­cerned cit­i­zens from across the nation. Some asked the pres­i­den­tial can­di­date to endorse a par­tic­u­lar opin­ion, some praised McGov­ern for his work and wished him well dur­ing his cam­paign, while oth­ers blasted McGov­ern because of his poli­cies. There were even tons of let­ters and draw­ings from school chil­dren orga­nized by teach­ers from around the coun­try. The let­ters in col­lec­tions pro­vide access to per­spec­tives that may have been lost over time.