Peter Carini, college archivist, can show you Daniel Webster's socks or shards from the goalpost that exuberant fans ripped down when Dartmouth beat Yale in the famous Jinx game of 1935. On any given day, he might be digging up information on a long-passed alum or attempting to acquire new (or rather very old) materials for the College's extensive archives in Rauner Library.
What did you do before coming to Dartmouth?I was the head of archives and special archives at Mount Holyoke College.
How did you become interested in becoming an archivist?I was working in photography and I got interested in old photographic processing. I wanted to look into that through another discipline other than photography, so I started to look for a job as an archivist.
Did you have to go back to school?Yeah, I went back to grad school for a library science program with a concentration in archival studies at Simmons [College].
Was that program hard to come by?Yes it was. At the time there were only six or seven programs in the country for this. Now most major library information and science programs offer a concentration in archival studies.
Why did you decide to come to Dartmouth?Well, I'd been at Mount Holyoke for eight years, and I was kind of at a point in my career where I wanted to work at a different institution that would support archival development more than Mount Holyoke was it's a great place but it's a smaller school, and Dartmouth is able to give its archives a great deal of support. Plus, [Dartmouth] had a brand-new facility and a great collection.
What do you do on a day-to-day basis?Which day? Every day is different that's the beauty of the job and the challenge of the job. I teach class sections, I work the reference desk or I meet with potential donors on any given day, it varies a lot. For example, it was really busy with inauguration, with people coming and looking for old inauguration speeches.
Are most of the people who come to Rauner students who come to do research for classes?No, people come from all over the place like a guy from Canada came in and he was interested in Samson Occom and the first Native American students at Dartmouth. Or we'll have guys who want to know about the history of their fraternity come in. People come in saying, "My grandpa went here and I want to look at his file." Everyone who goes here has a file and after they die it eventually ends up here. Or they heard a story about something interesting about the school's past and want to look it up. Or they can come here and actually put on Daniel Webster's hat I wouldn't do it, but it's kind of fun.
So you guys have physical objects along with books here?We don't collect them actively but when they add to a collection we'll take things in. Like we have a collection on a baseball player that went here he pitched a perfect season, six for six and he had a baseball that he wrote all the names of all the players on the team on. In this case the object becomes a document. So we'll get objects that are kitsch or have interesting meaning. We look for things where social interaction and social history are wrapped up in the object.Do you have a favorite item in Rauner?That's a very tough question. It's usually the thing I'm looking at at that moment. I like the horning horns, for example. But it's hard because as soon as I start thinking of one thing it makes me think of so many other things. I guess I would also say the Wentworth Bowl because of what it symbolizes for the College. You know that was the bowl that was passed from Jim Wright to Jim Kim at inauguration?
Yeah, I read a little about it.Yeah, well it's really interesting because only a gentleman would have it. But it was given to Eleazar Wheelock while he was living in a log cabin out in the woods in New Hampshire by [John] Wentworth and it shows what he thought this institution could be. So it's really interesting in its significance to the history of the College.
And you mentioned the horning horns? What are those?Yeah, they were tin horns that students had, and if they were upset with a faculty member, 200 students would gather outside their house at two in the morning and let them know what they thought of him.
I hadn't heard anything about that! When was this going on?Yeah, I'm sure the faculty doesn't really want to see that return. We think that it started around 1773. There's a student in the records who got fined for "blowing the horn," and we don't know what else that could be in reference to.
So those are some of your favorite items here, what's your favorite thing about the job?My favorite thing is that I don't have a favorite thing. There are always so many things to do; I can pick what I want to do every day. I can say, "there's no way I can deal with that today I'll do this instead." I like all the aspects of the job. They're all interesting, but not always interesting.
Is there any part of the job you really don't like?The thing I really don't like is when students fall asleep on the couches and I have to wake them up when the library is closing. I hate to wake people up anyway, but it's worse when I don't know the person.
That's not too bad for a least favorite part of the job.No, not bad at all.
