“The documents relate to her work and activism on behalf of people with disabilities. For example, she’s been active in promoting the use of captions for people who are deaf,” Strauss said. “I took three classes with her, so it’s cool to see a different side of her work.” 

Next to him, senior Leland Fong reads through a decades-old proposal on microwave amplifiers, written by the late Stanford physicist Marvin Chodorow, for NASA. 

Strauss and Fong are student processing assistants at Stanford Archives. They help organize and describe materials related to Stanford’s history. Their work supports teaching and learning as part of the larger Department of Special Collections and University Archives, and even university decision-making. 

“Being a processing assistant is cool because it quenches your intellectual curiosity and you get to work with a lot of really interesting, and sometimes weird, stuff,” Strauss said. 

Between worlds

Established in 1965, Stanford Archives documents the university’s history by collecting records related to institutional leadership, campus planning, departmental activities, and faculty research. In recent years, they’ve also begun archiving records related to student groups and community centers. The team works with materials that are no longer in use but still have enduring historical value. 

“We kind of live between worlds, where the past is present for us,” said Assistant University Archivist Hanna Ahn. 

Some of the records the team acquires are digital. Most, however, are physical and often arrive in boxes, typically donated by Stanford affiliates such as a retired faculty member. Items may include reports, journals, hand-written memos, photographs, and other media. Archivists will identify the dates they were created, organize them into archival folders and boxes, write descriptions and summaries to aid researchers, and then catalog them for discovery and access. 

You might open a box and say, ‘What is this?’ But at the end of the process, it’s going to be a reasonably well-organized collection available to support research.”

According to Assistant University Archivist Claudia Willett, the collections are used by the current administration and by faculty and students at Stanford and around the world to contextualize current events and help them navigate contemporary challenges. 

“You might open a box and say, ‘What is this?’” said Ahn. “But at the end of the process, it’s going to be a reasonably well-organized collection available to support research.”

Not everything makes the cut. “Part of the job is determining what's of research value and what isn't,” Strauss said, adding that there are often sensitivities to consider. “Sometimes you'll come across stuff that shouldn't be in the collection, maybe for privacy reasons.” 

Once processed, collections are listed in Stanford University Library’s catalog, Searchworks, and the Online Archive of California, a statewide repository for research guides to archival collections. 

Death cast, QWERTY, & UFOs 

Each year, Stanford University Archives employs five to seven part-time student processing assistants who commit to the job for an academic year. Assistants can choose from several collections to work with, often selecting ones that align with their academic, professional, or personal interests. 

In the three years that he’s been on the job, Strauss, an economics major, has assisted with many collections, including one containing the personal files of former Stanford President Richard Lyman. Another contained files from the late economic historian Paul David that detailed many topics, including the history of fertility, the dominance of the QWERTY keyboard, the economics of “open source,” and other components of economic history. 

Recently, staff from the Department of Economics donated materials they’d stumbled upon in an office closet. “They found old administrative records related to the formative years of the department, including files documenting a debate among faculty about whether Stanford should be on the quarter or semester system,” Stauss said.

A marble figure of Jane Stanford’s hand, created from a cast after her death.  | Andrew Brodhead

In addition to supporting teaching and learning, archival materials often aid campus decision-making and administration. For example, the Faculty Senate and university task forces may look to the archives for history about an issue they are debating. And campus planners may dig into the archives for background on a building that needs updates. 

The team sometimes acquires materials that are unusual, but nonetheless offer rare glimpses into Stanford’s past. For example, the Archives hold materials about Jane Stanford’s interest in spiritualism. They also have a marble figure of Jane Stanford’s hand, created from a cast after her death. 

A few months ago, student assistant Isac Fernandez processed research papers belonging to Peter Sturrock, the late applied physics professor. The collection covered a breadth of topics, including Sturrock’s secondary interest in UFOs, or unidentified flying objects. In the 1970s, he began advocating for UFO cases to be taken more seriously by the scientific community. 

“During the time I spent with his collection, I enjoyed reading his personal thoughts on a subject that most scientists refuse to entertain, and I quickly found myself agreeing with his personal view,” Fernandez wrote in a blog for Stanford University Libraries.

Community and skills for life 

Working with physical records offers students a rare respite from screens during the busy academic quarter. “They’re having formative experiences and making intellectual connections without the pressure of writing papers and solving problem sets,” Willett said. 

The job also helps students prepare for careers after Stanford. Strauss, who is interested in economic consulting and museum curation, said processing archival materials is highly detailed and, at times, complicated work that requires organizational skills, focus, and consideration of sensitive information. 

“Archival records are just another form of data. And as a processing assistant, you’re trying to make something meaningful out of it,” he said. “That’s applicable to a lot of fields.” 

For the students who started during the COVID-19 pandemic, the job has also provided continuity and community. “The importance of that can’t be overstated,” Strauss said. 

Strauss, like many other student assistants, chose to stay after their academic year commitment. The student assistants’ time working in the archive has led to deep connections with their peers and the archivists, who not only mentor them but have often served as sounding boards for them during their college journeys.