When someone asks me to explain my job, my go-to answer is that I work in a book warehouse. Admittedly, it is flawed as explanations go. First, the book part is not strictly accurate. The department’s holdings are far more eclectic than just old books. Photographs, fanzines, old pamphlets, newspapers, and papers from scientific associations are a few examples of the items I work with. Second, the labor involved varies beyond the purely physical. Though much of my job involves moving, storing, and organizing objects, it also requires non-physically intensive duties like data entry, office work, and writing blog posts.

So why do I always start with physical labor when explaining my job? There are two reasons. First, it surprises people. Truthfully, it surprised me too when I started working here. When people think about archives, they do not think of physical labor. Archivists are professionals; people who work with their brains rather than their hands. Yet I worked with my hands just as much—if not more—than I talked to our researchers. Indeed, the customer service aspects of the job directly relate to physical labor. Researchers come to our reading room to read something, something that needs to be found, retrieved, and prepared for public consumption. Second, I enjoy physical labor more than any of my other duties. There is something satisfying about tracking down a single item in a sea of others, filling up a cart with all the items needed for a class, or reorganizing a shelf so that a new edition can fit in its proper location. 

The importance of physical labor in archival work raises essential questions about keeping the job accessible. Since 2010, the profession has strongly pushed to ensure the rights of archivists with disabilities. The Society of American Archivists (hereafter the Society)—the leading professional association for archivists in the United States—published a series of guidelines to make the archives an accessible workplace. The Society recommended reforms to the hiring process, building space, and employee policy to prevent discrimination against people with disabilities. Though these guidelines are certainly a step in the right direction, two significant factors limit the full implementation of these reforms: space and technology.

Regarding space, Special Collections only has limited rooms available to store items. This means that certain storage areas are narrow, particularly in one room. This would likely make it difficult for someone in a wheelchair to navigate. Compounding this is the older nature of the technology we use to retrieve and store items: hand cranks to move certain shelves, slightly rickety step stools to retrieve objects on higher shelves, and push carts to move items across the complex. These tools are hardly the most accessible for archivists with physical disabilities. Given the financial resources of the archive and the university, these are the resources we need to work with. 

As someone with a diagnosed disability, I have some firsthand experiences with the frustrations that sometimes come up on the job. One of the stronger parts of being autistic is never quite knowing where I am in space. The way I like to explain it is that everything I see is tilted at a 25-degree angle. So, everything always seems either closer or further away than it is.  This spatial distortion is problematic when trying to ensure I do not crash a loading cart into the main room door. Likewise, physical writing is difficult for me. Even something as simple as filling out a series of call slips to mark an item’s location can become painful. That said, I have no plans to change my duties at Special Collections. These tasks are essential for the archive’s functioning, and I enjoy them. However, the ability to power through a disability is a privilege not everyone possesses. Thus, UMBC Special Collections must continue to do all it can to ensure that the work remains accessible to every potential archivist, student worker, and volunteer.

This post was written by Yoni Isaacs, ’22, history, M.A. ’26, history, a graduate assistant in Special Collections. Thank you, Yoni!

Take a study break and get creative with a set of hands-on photography workshops in the Library Gallery! 

• Explore historic photographic equipment like stereoviewers and stereographs, zoetropes, and other viewers from the 20th century
• Learn about the photography and recording equipment available for student use from the Library’s Digital Media Lab
• Sit for a vintage-style instant film portrait made with an early 20th century studio camera
• Make your own cyanotype print with artist and instructor Hannah Brancato! 
• Pick up limited edition cyanotype and vintage camera buttons,  and custom 3d printed bookmarks from the Library Innovation Lab!

All this and more in the back of the Library Gallery, part of the annual Relax and Refuel Study Con. 

The Walter Orlinsky collection of Baltimore Public Works Municipal photographs is now available in the UMBC Digital Collections. The Walter Orlinsky collection contains 196 photographs on lantern slides showcasing the city of Baltimore at the turn of the century. The digital collection includes 147 of the 196 images from the Walter Orlinsky collection, featuring political campaign advertisements, public works, city improvements, Baltimore cityscapes, and drawings of Union soldiers. The total collection encompasses the 1890s to 1930s. The bulk of the materials, including those in the digital collection, highlight work undertaken by and propaganda for James H. Preston (March 23, 1860 – July 14, 1938), the 37th Mayor of Baltimore. Preston served as mayor for two terms from May 1911 to May 1919, extending the boundaries of Baltimore and expanding the population.

Preston’s tenure as mayor occurred during the Progressive Era, typically defined as spanning from the 1890s to the 1920s. Following waves of mass migration and immigration, the era was rife with social and political reform, including an interest in “cleaning up” and modernizing cities. Preston’s time as the mayor of Baltimore was no different, with civil works improvements and the modernization of roads and infrastructure as major goals, as highlighted in many of the images in the digital collection. Photographs of people, buildings, and construction promote the development of Baltimore in the early twentieth century and the political campaigning that went along with these changes.

The political campaign advertisements in the Walter Orlinsky collection highlight improvements under Preston, using words such as progress and efficiency to entice voters to support him for mayor. However, much of Preston’s “progress” involved racist housing covenants and the forceful removal of African Americans. In 1917, during Preston’s time as mayor, the Supreme Court ruled that residential segregation ordinances like the one adopted by the previous mayor in 1910 were unconstitutional. According to the Supreme Court, such ordinances were unconstitutional because they restricted the freedom of homeowners to sell to whomever they wanted, rather than any infringement on the rights of African Americans to reside wherever they wished.In response to the ruling, Preston instructed city inspectors and health department investigators to cite anyone who rented or sold to Black people in predominantly white neighborhoods for code violations. Preston Gardens is one site where Preston’s policies and “improvements” led to the destruction of African American communities in the 1910s. Explore Baltimore Heritage provides more information about the impact of Preston Gardens and the St. Paul Street improvements on the Black Baltimore community.

Special Collections holds other materials that provide more information on the development of Baltimore in the twentieth century. The Baltimore Book, part of the Arnold Collection of the UMBC Special Collections, was published by the City of Baltimore in 1912, during Preston’s first term as mayor. As a “response to the demand for accurate information concerning Baltimore, its resources, its general development, and its municipal activities,” The Baltimore Book provides a report on a variety of topics, including Baltimore’s sewage system, parks, industries, living conditions, markets, and history. This report from the Baltimore government is a perfect resource to learn more about the people, places, and work highlighted in the Walter Orlinsky collection.

The Walter Orlinsky collection is now available online for browsing through the UMBC Digital Collections. The Baltimore Book and other sources on Baltimore’s development throughout the twentieth century are available by appointment and walk-in through the UMBC Special Collections reading room, which is open Monday through Thursday. If you have any questions, contact Special Collections at speccoll@umbc.edu.

This post was written by Annyah St. Louis, ’23, history, M.A. ’25, history, a graduate assistant in Special Collections. Thank you, Annyah!

Sources:

Coyle, Wilber Franklin. The Baltimore Book; a Resume of the Commercial, Industrial and Financial Resources, Municipal Activities and General Development of the City of Baltimore. Baltimore: Summers Printing Co., 1912.

Lieb, Emily. “The ‘Baltimore Idea’ and the Cities It Built.” Southern Cultures 25, no. 2 (2019): 104–19. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26696401.

Maryland State Archives. “James H. Preston (1860-1938).” Archives of Maryland (Biographical Series), MSA SC 3520-1703. https://msa.maryland.gov/megafile/msa/speccol/sc3500/sc3520/001700/001703/html/1703bio.html 

Pietila, Antero. Not in My Neighborhood : How Bigotry Shaped a Great American City. Ivan R. Dee, 2010.

 On December 9, 1910, the Baltimore government passed an “ordinance for preserving order, securing property values and promoting the general interests and insuring the good government of Baltimore City.”

– “…innovation was the use of government legislation to achieve systematic, citywide race separation.” (23)

Rothstein, Richard. “From Ferguson to Baltimore: The Fruits of Government-Sponsored Segregation.” Journal of Affordable Housing & Community Development Law 24, no. 2 (2015): 205–10. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26408163.

Ware, Leland. “Plessy’s Legacy: The Government’s Role in the Development and Perpetuation of Segregated Neighborhoods.” RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences 7, no. 1 (2021): 92–109. https://doi.org/10.7758/rsf.2021.7.1.06. 

Across the span of three years, I have repeatedly turned to archival work as a method in my academic research. As a sophomore at the University of New Hampshire, I sat in the library’s basement, combing through Seacoast newspapers in search of public opinion on a proposed oil refinery project. Now, as a second-year master’s student here in the Geography and Environmental Systems department, I use Baltimore City newspapers to assess who was portrayed as at fault for the Baltimore lead poisoning crisis and how mothers were often unjustly blamed for the poisoning of their children. After all of this research experience, I realized there must be something about the archives that keeps me crawling back.  

This lightbulb moment gave me the idea to volunteer at UMBC’s Special Collections, where instead of using archives as a research methodology – I can be on the “other side,” learning how archivists work to make historical materials accessible to the public. I ended up under the advisement of Mark Breeding, Maryland Traditions Archivist, where my primary responsibility was archival processing. I combed through a few boxes of Collection 348 – the Oella Company Records – and inputted their contents into a container list. I recorded housing applications, nearly 70 folders on Oella, Maryland restoration efforts and town happenings, and – strongly related to my master’s thesis research – processed a box on lead paint materials. Processing the latter was especially meaningful, thinking about the possibility of someone using these records to reclaim stories, as I have done with newspapers.

When I first started volunteering at Special Collections, I never imagined reading so many financial documents, learning about water treatment plans for nitrate-contaminated wells, or seeing pretzel-related crimes documented in such detail. Because of it, though, I have realized why I keep coming back – the ability of archives to tell stories lost to time. I now possess a deeper understanding of the work of archivists and the power they hold to preserve and share people’s lived experiences. This experience of volunteering at Special Collections was invaluable and will no doubt sway my future path. 

_{This post was written by graduate student volunteer, Samantha DiNatale, M.A. ’25.}

Photographs from the John G. Bullock collection are now available in the UMBC Digital Collections. Bullock was an American photographer who lived from 1854 to 1939. His work spanned four decades and is associated with the “New School” of photography, which placed an emphasis on soft-focused images. Bullock’s photographs showcase his life and surroundings as they were in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

About John G. Bullock

John Griscom Bullock was born in Wilmington, Delaware in 1854. When he was only a child, he printed and published his own newspaper, City Journal. After graduating from Haverford College and receiving his Ph.D. from the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy, he took an interest in photography in 1882. He joined the Photographic Society of Philadelphia in the same year and would go on to become its president.  

His earliest photographs were taken with a small view camera that used 4×5 inch Carbutt dry plates while his earliest prints were made on albumen paper. Later on, Bullock switched to platinum paper which allowed him to manipulate the images. He would make these changes by retouching the negative to either change the images’ tonality or add clouds onto a blank sky.  The Vienna Salon, an international photography exhibition, showcased two of Bullock’s photographs. Afterwards, he worked with photographer Alfred Stieglitz on CameraWork, to forward their cause of art photography or pictorial photography. More information about Bullock’s life can be found in UMBC’s online exhibition about Bullock’s photography and the finding aid for the John G. Bullock collection at Haverford College Quaker & Special Collections.

About the collection

The John G. Bullock collection contains 1,154 images. UMBC Special Collections holds his original glass plate negatives and photography prints, in addition to some commissioned or made by UMBC. The collection comprises photographs that are divided into three sections: landscapes, portraits of family and friends, and rural scenery. Bullock’s daughter Marjorie, is a recurring subject of his photography. His work is a prime example of pictorialism, with a greater focus placed on composition than truly representing reality.

You can help us enrich the John G. Bullock collection by providing additional details about the images. If you recognize a building, a person, or know further information about an image, please email Special Collections at speccoll@umbc.edu.

This post was written by Special Collections student assistant Jaiden Roda. Thank you, Jaiden!