The following is an interview with Ramon Jr. Salado Romo, Stanford in Government Liljenquist Fellow in the Prints & Photographs Division.
Melissa: Thanks for talking with us. Can you describe your background and how you came to this internship?
Ramon: I grew up in Southern California in the Coachella Valley region. After high school I headed off to Stanford University where I’ve been studying political science and philosophy. I’ll be a junior this coming year.
My introduction to cultural heritage work has been through my extracurricular activities on campus, including working for the Cantor Museum as a docent. More recently, I was an archival intern with the University Archaeology Collections, and that was where I first saw myself potentially seeking out this kind of work outside an academic context. Those experiences led me to this position, which kind of combines my interests in political science and library science. The work here has given me a great perspective on behind the scenes work in archives.
Melissa: You’ve been working on a few projects related to the Liljenquist Family Collection, which includes a lot of Civil War photographs. Could you tell us about your work here at the Library?
Ramon: One of my main projects has involved adding data to a Story Map that another intern had been working on last summer, specifically geolocating portraits of individuals who were involved with different battles or activities. This enables people to view an image on a map and associate it with a specific location, mainly places within the eastern United States. It’s been rewarding going through some of the cataloged portraits of soldiers and doing the work that pinpoints that portrait on the map where they may have fought or even died.
During my time working with the Liljenquist collection, I stumbled across a carte de visite photograph of a young Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. in his Union uniform. I learned he led an illustrious life following the war, having been appointed as an Associate Justice for the Supreme Court. This singular photograph led me down a rabbit hole motivated by my own interest in the law and the extensive and complex legacy Justice Holmes developed throughout his time on the court.
Another aspect of my internship has involved learning about the work of acquiring and processing a collection from beginning to end. In my first few weeks I met with Mr. Liljenquist, the donor of these photographs, and was able to hear some of his stories about how he found some of the images.
I’ve been able to see some aspects of how a new accession is taken in, to help inventory some of the photographs, including some cartes de visite, tintypes, and ambrotypes, and to help catalog some of the images — all necessary steps to bring these images to the public.
Another project we’ve been working on is to create a “thumbnail” image to adhere to each cased photograph box in the Liljenquist collection. Each of these photographs has its own call number that is visible on the box, but when we are retrieving a specific photograph, it is also helpful to see a copy of the photograph on the container to help us locate it more efficiently.
Melissa: In addition to the work you have been doing for your internship, you mentioned that in your spare time you browsed the Prints & Photographs Online Catalog and came across some images that were of personal interest. Would you like to tell us more about that?
Ramon: Sure. When I was exploring the catalog in my free time, I was searching for images related to my hometown in the Coachella Valley — the hot California desert — and I found some matches.
I was initially drawn to the two photographs below by Dorothea Lange because of their personal resonance to me having grown up in the area. I was fascinated by the stories they tell of migrant farmworkers in the Coachella Valley region through their documentation of American life as part of the Library’s Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Collection and the inherent aesthetic qualities in their composition.
I think my eye is drawn to images that are visually attractive, maybe in part because of my prior work interning at a museum. A photograph can obviously have both historical and aesthetic value, and it can be powerful to consider why we might be drawn to a given image.
Being from the community shown in the images, it brings into focus the work that the Library of Congress does to preserve this history. And it reminds me a bit of the work that I have been doing on the Faces of the Civil War Story Map, focusing on what took place in a particular geographic location and who was involved. Finding these materials sparks so much excitement.
Learn More:
- Explore the Faces of the Civil War Story Map.
- Read about and view images from the Liljenquist Family Collection of Civil War Photographs.
Comments (6)
“Learning about the work of acquiring and processing a collection from beginning to end. In my first few weeks I met with Mr. Liljenquist, the donor of these photographs, and was able to hear some of his stories about how he found some of the images”. we appreciate this statement, particularly if the photographer or his family is donating the photographic archive, we learned much when examining the economics, communications, and costs of photograph from the photographer himself. This is implemented in studio photographers and amateurs.
It sounds like Mr. Romo was a great pick for this internship. I’m thrilled to hear about young people (I’m beginning my 33rd year of teaching middle school) who are excited by history. I also appreciate that he mentioned the aesthetic qualities of the photos, for “my eye is [also] drawn to images that are visually attractive.” Carry the torch!
Great job Ramon! Thanks again for all of your hard work this summer!
Insightful as always Ramón! This sounds right up your alley — so glad I got the chance to read a little about your reflections 🙂
The young man deserves praise for his work, but I am stunned to read that a Stanford University student was unfamiliar with Oliver Wendell Holmes until he began this project. What is the state of high school history and college history education for this situation to exist?
Terrific job, Ramon! I didn’t learn about Holmes in high school, fifty years ago. Even in college the only thing I remember about him from a class was his opinion supporting forced sterilization in Buck v. Bell – “Three generations of imbeciles is enough.” Despite this, I later read an extraordinary bio of him that turned me into a fan of this extraordinary Renaissance man.
I did teach some local high schoolers about him on a class tour of the Library of Congress when I showed them his library, which is astoundingly eclectic. They were particularly entranced with his joke collection, “Boners and More Boners.”