Becoming Part of University History
By Meredith Eliassen (B.A., ’88)
As a child, I had a recurring dream about an alligator following me home. This was not Mary with her little lamb. A giant alligator with big teeth was stalking young Meredith! Fortunately, I didn’t let that nightmare gator scare me away from what would become my academic and professional home.
I’ve always had a connection to Bay Area history. I’m a fifth-generation Californian. My great grandmother was the special collections librarian at Oakland Public Library who handled questions about Oakland history, and my grandfather was a radio engineer and news reporter at KMBY (Monterey). When I came to SF State as a student in 1986, I had library experience, but I planned to study broadcasting like my grandfather.
I had internships at KFTY (Santa Rosa), yet history kept calling to me. Libraries were always a place of sustenance for me: I remember my mother taking my sister and me to our local library, telling us nobody can take away the knowledge garnered there. In the spring of 1986, I got a student assistant job working in the J. Paul Leonard Library. I learned about community history in real time when SF State’s AIDS Coordinating Committee rolled out an HIV/AIDS Awareness educational campaign. Librarian Ann Kennedy taught me how to do searches using LexisNexis for an internship at KGO Radio. Though I learned about interpreting ratings data in a broadcasting research course, I found myself more drawn to historic research.
After graduating in 1988, I volunteered in Special Collections to catalog a collection in SF State’s Bay Area Television Archive. The collection featured Emmy Award-winning programs from the Northern California chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, so I analyzed the best of the best in local broadcasting. The project was the first step in learning media history and critical thinking, resulting in a finding aid (archive description) that was accepted by the Library of Congress. When I was offered a staff job as a Special Collections assistant in August 1989, I took it. Less than three months later, the Loma Prieta earthquake closed the department for nine months. While I worked with University Archivist Helene Whitson to reopen the department, I applied to library schools. My work as an undergraduate at SF State garnered me a prestigious scholarship from the Special Library Association, and I received a Master of Science in Library and Information Science from Simmons University in 1991.
Returning to SF State, I started on a second master’s, this time in History. Professor Paul Longmore transformed how I interpret community history, but I didn’t complete the degree. Instead, Marguerite Archer, who donated a historic children’s book collection to SF State, encouraged my writing about collections. When Whitson retired, I worked more with the University Archives exploring and sharing our campus history.
Today I’m a Special Collections librarian and University archivist in the J. Paul Leonard Library. I spend my day working with collections to making sure they’re accessible and broadcasting SF State’s unique history in our community and beyond. It wasn’t my dream job when I first came to SF State, but that’s the funny thing about dreams. They can transform (and transform you). I’m thankful life changed the menacing alligator of my childhood into my mascot chum!
Meredith Eliassen recently established the Meredith Morgan Eliassen Fellowship in Women Shaping California Communities, which will support undergraduate student scholars as they engage in grassroots research into the lives and impact of notable California women. You can support these students and their research, too. Donate online to the Meredith Morgan Eliassen Fellowship in Women Shaping California Communities.