About The Project

Project Origins

In 2019, Clara Drummond, then curator and exhibitions coordinator at Penn State’s Eberly Family Special Collections Library, and Ben Goldman, then archivist for curatorial services and strategy, started research for an exhibition they co-curated on environmental histories found within Penn State’s collections. This process required searching extensively and creatively for diverse materials, spanning disciplines and formats, that could tell stories of early climate research, climate change, and human impacts on the environment. 

One focus of this search was for materials related to Arctic and sub-Arctic regions, as these regions and the peoples living there are unevenly impacted by human-induced climate change. During this initial searching, George Nelson’s diary from the 1899 Harriman Alaska Expedition and the Indigenous art objects he acquired during that journey came to the curators’ attention. Nelson’s diary, with its drawings of Alaskan glaciers, was included in their exhibition to demonstrate that historical narratives and visual accounts offer compelling evidence of climate change: many of the glaciers that were recorded by Nelson have shrunk significantly and will eventually disappear completely.  

But thinking beyond the exhibition, Clara recognized that the collection needed revisiting and redescription. The existing description of the diary in the archival finding aid and catalog record was brief and incomplete, and there was only a brief mention that the collection also included some “Alaskan Native” objects (an attribution that was not only overly general but was later proved to be inaccurate). The items themselves needed new storage boxes and physical supports; they were organized loosely with only some sheets of tissue paper as protection.

The diary had not been digitized or transcribed at this point, but in reading bits of it, she realized that there was much yet to be understood about the expedition’s meetings with Indigenous peoples and artisans on the route.  

The next steps were two-fold: to work with library colleagues to digitize the diary to facilitate access, both for further research and engagement; and to find and fund a partner who could dedicate focused time to understanding and interpreting the materials with the end goal of improving the description and creating new pathways for access and engagement.  

Knowing Professor Hester Blum from her past teaching with Special Collections on polar regions and primary sources, Clara Drummond reached out to see if there was interest in collaborating. Together they secured funding from both the English Department and the University Libraries to support a Graduate Assistantship in Special Collections for one year who would focus on the 1899 Harriman Alaska collection. Grace King, a PhD student in English, was offered and accepted the position.

The project then took place in two phases. First, Grace would attend to the immediate needs of the collection and prospective collection users by digitizing the diary in the collection, revising the description of the Harriman Alaska Expedition collection in the library catalogue, and securing new housing for the Indigenous artworks. Second, she would design a digital space to showcase some of the project findings and further increase access to the collection.  

Phase one: Digitization, Description, and Rehousing

A transcription of Nelson’s diary was produced in 2022-2023 that yielded new information about Nelson, the Harriman expedition, and some of the Indigenous artworks in the collection. This underscored the need to revise the existing description of the collection that was available in the library catalog and the collection finding aid. In late 2023, a new description was published that reflected a new arrangement of the artifacts based on Grace’s provenance research; the revised description was also more transparent about the known and unknown details of the Indigenous artworks’ origins. We reflect in more depth on the process of re-description in the introduction to a classroom or workplace exercise that we designed for the Teaching page of this site.     

Once Nelson’s diary was transcribed, preparations also began to publish the transcription to Penn State’s digital collections with high-quality images of the diary prepared by the Preservation and Conservation Department. During this process, Grace, Clara, and collaborators from across University Libraries discussed possible methodologies for organizing the metadata that would accompany the diary, drawing inspiration from critical metadata studies included in the Project Bibliography.

The launch of the Harriman Expedition Diary and Artifacts digital collection made it possible for users to engage with the digitized diary and souvenir photo albums. We thank all who were involved with these processes in our Acknowledgements section at the bottom of this page.  

Another component of this phase of our project was the creation of new boxes for the Indigenous artworks in the collection. In fall 2023, after research into the provenance of the Indigenous artifacts within the collection was complete, a process began to transition the artifacts from their old boxes into new housing that would offer more support and protection. Jacque Quinn, Bill Minter, and the entire Preservation and Conservation Department were essential to this rehousing project.

In the image gallery below, we provide photos showing the “before and after,” with the hopes of encouraging other libraries—especially those which specialize in the stewardship of mostly print materials, like Penn State’s Eberly Family Special Collections Library—to consider similar rehousing needs within their collections.

Phase Two: Making Harriman Recollected

From 2022-2023, Grace transcribed Nelson’s diary and, in the process, located provenance information for some of the Indigenous artworks in the collection. However, there were still items for which provenance remained unknown; further research revealed their likely geographical and/or tribal origins, but new questions then emerged about their inclusion in the collection (how did Nelson acquire a Pueblo rain god figurine or a Sioux pipe on his trip to Alaska?). These mysteries and other new findings in Nelson’s diary related to his missionary activities in Alaska convinced Grace and Clara that their work with the collection was not yet complete.  

With support from the University Libraries again for 2023-2024, they decided to produce a digital project that presented selections from Nelson’s diary alongside profiles of the Indigenous artworks. This digital project would also narrate the story of the collection’s reinterpretation and redescription, contributing to an ongoing conversation about the opportunities and challenges of anti-colonial, reparative description and curation practices. John Russell, Digital Humanities Librarian, was an essential interlocutor from the first stage of project planning; his knowledge of contemporary digital archival project design greatly influenced our editorial principles and data protocols.

The poster designed for Dr. Jen Rose Smith’s lecture at Penn State on March 28, 2024.

Rachael Dreyer and Ben Goldman, interim heads of Special Collections, provided generous support for travel to training institutes and conferences where project ideas were developed.

Lexy deGraffenreid, former Head of Collections Services at the Eberly Family Special Collections Library, advised on the re-description of the Harriman Expedition Collection items.

Without the assistance of the Preservation, Conservation and Digitization Department this project simply would not have happened.  Jacque Quinn, Bill Minter and their team created beautiful new boxes to rehouse the collection items and provided the photographs of the non-print items featured on this site.

Bethann Rea, Digital Collections Management Librarian and interim co-head of Preservation, Conservation, and Digitization and Sarah Bildner, Digital Production Supervisor, ensured there were beautiful scans of the Nelson diary and expedition photograph albums.

Linda Ballinger, Metadata Strategist, and Kevin Clair, Digital Collections Librarian, were both instrumental to the creation of the Harriman Alaska Expedition Diary and Artifacts digital collection that accompanies this website.

The Center for Humanities and Information awarded us a grant that allowed Grace to attend the Digital Humanities Summer Institute in summer 2023.

The Indigenous Peoples Students Association at Penn State welcomed us to discuss our project at their community meeting, and our conversation illuminated many important questions and concerns for the stewardship of the Indigenous artifacts in the collection.

Erica Smithwick of the Earth and Environmental Systems Institute kindly invited us to present on our project at EESI’s annual Earth Day event in 2024.

Our work has also been strengthened through conversations outside Penn State: Grace has shared research on Nelson’s diary and the Indigenous artifacts at the New York Public Library, as part of their April 2024 symposium, Visual Cultures of the Arctic, and at the Technical University of Braunschweig, Germany, as part of the Modern Expeditions Network workshop series.