From Nina Schneider, Head Cataloger

This week we focus on Daniella Aquino, the second intern in our 30-week program. Graduating summa cum laude with a B.A. in Anthropology from Cal State Fullerton, Daniella will be working on our extensive collection of Hannah More materials. More (1745-1833) was smart and well-educated. Early in her career as a writer and teacher she was friendly with Garrick, Johnson, Montagu, and others in the blue-stocking clubs. More later settled for a life of religious and societal reform, setting up Sunday schools, writing and publishing numerous moral pamphlets, as well as helping create the Religious Tract Society in 1799. The Clark owns many hundreds of More’s publications, published as the Cheap Repository Tracts and at the time selling for about a penny. Most of these tracts were printed on inexpensive paper, in two columns with a woodcut illustration on the first page. Each story included a moral lesson that proved so popular that each pamphlet was produced in thousands of copies.

Daniella will focus on these tracts, many of which have been languishing uncataloged for years, while also cataloging More’s correspondence. Daniella’s experience working as a Parish Secretary for Saint Columban Catholic Church in Garden Grove, as well as her research experience in anthropology will enable her to put More’s work into the cultural and religious milieu of the long 18th-century in England, as well as glean lessons that can be used in her coursework and portfolio.

As she explains:

Through the MLIS program at UCLA, I have worked with rare books, special collections and archival materials. This hands-on work has inspired me to share this experience with others. In January, I began researching ways in which primary sources and rare materials can be used in K-12 education. Over the summer, I participated in a collaborative project involving local archivists, librarians, and elementary educators, exploring ways that primary source materials may be utilized in schools to promote inquiry and develop critical thinking skills. I want to incorporate my work at the Clark by developing a project that could be implemented into an elementary program.  The challenge will be making the highly abstract and theoretical materials in the Hannah More collection relevant and understandable to young children, and I am excited to see how this project will evolve. With my experience here in a special collections setting, I also hope to explore different ways of promoting greater collaboration between libraries, repositories and educators.

By cataloging individual letters, processing larger archival collections, and collectively cataloging printed tracts, Daniella will have the chance to make decisions about how and why materials are cataloged in a variety of ways. Her ability to read music and her fluency in Spanish are advantages for the rare materials cataloger and her goal of working in a special collections library or in a museum are certainly aided by these skills.

The next time you visit the Clark, please take a moment to welcome Daniella Aquino and Gloria Gonzalez. We are very glad they are here!