The Fales' staff include a visual librarian for printed book matter and a media archivist for the huge AV collection. Director Marvin. And a Senior Archivist in Lisa Darms.
As expected in any, but particularly in smaller repositories, Lisa wears several large hats. As a go-to reference librarian, she works directly with scholars and sets up research remotely when necessary. She work with donors, assessing collections on site, managing the bureaucracy of collection transferral. She teaches. She supervises the staff: most of the archival work is done by students from NYU's humanities and archive courses. Their internship usually spans 1-2 years.
She oversees various conservation projects. Their digitisation program is ramping up as the increasing drive for use and conservation of the collections has required thousands of media files to be shifted, physical files transferred, and various objects rehoused in the preservation shuffle.
Lisa's favourite, and I suspect more feathery hat is as the keeper of the Riot Grrrl Collection.
The Fales cache is a comprehensive collection of the zines of the collective, but more importantly aims to document the development of the movement through the papers, correspondence, artwork and source material of the scene.
The awesome, interdisciplinary, feminist punk behemouth of the Riot Grrrls started in DC and Olympia, Washington, and Lisa went to Greens College in Olympia with many of the women involved.
While she never attended the meetings nor identified herself as a Riot Grrrl, as a zine reading, punk feminist librarian with a shared local and cultural history, Lisa in uniquely positioned to maintain and grow this collection, working with the various members and providing rich intel on the documents obtained.
Fales holds collections acquired from Tammy Rae Carland, Johanna Fateman, Kathleen Hanna, Milly Itzhak, Kelly Marie Martin, Molly Neuman, Lucy Thane, as well as the Outpunk Archive (which covers both the zine and queercore record label).
