Students

Makeda Barr-Brown describes the student interns' contributions to the historical record of the Stanford Libraries and shares their reflections and the lessons learned.

I was able to document and archive monumental parts of Stanford history during the Vietnam War Era and the COVID-19 pandemic without ever having been on campus.

Perhaps the greatest discovery made during the internship was that of John J. Johnson’s unpublished manuscript titled Foreign Images of the U.S.: 1860-1992: A Cartoon History.

A silver lining of the pandemic was the ability to engage a whole cohort of interns, spread across the country, in the effort of documenting the many aspects of Stanford history.

I also now know the significance of oral history. I think most of the time we take stories for granted until they’re no longer available.