Rose Sliger Krause, recipient of the Sylvia Lake Finley Multiethnic Fellowship for 2006-2007, says receiving the scholarship was one of the main factors in her decision to pursue her Master’s of Library and Information Science (MLIS) at the University of Washington Information School. More than the stipend appealed to her.
“This fellowship is especially meaningful to me, not just as a person with a diverse ethnic background (of Spanish and American Indian descent), but because I work directly with ethnic groups in my professional duties as curator of special collections at the Northwest Museum of Arts & Culture in Spokane,” explains Krause, a distance MLIS student. “Because of our strong American Indian collections, I work closely with an American Indian collections curator as well as with American Indians who use our research library and archives.”
This fellowship to aid racial and ethnic minority students was established in 1976 following fund-raising efforts among alumni of the then Graduate School of Library and Information Science, one of whom was Sylvia Finley. After Sylvia passed away, her family made a substantial contribution to the fund with the request that it be named in her honor.
Krause’s desire to improve her skills at managing museum information in many formats led her to the Information School. “I am very interested in cataloging of diverse materials and language usage in descriptive practices,” she says. “A current grant project to catalog our American Indian photograph and object collections tested my knowledge of descriptive standards and practices, so I am excited about gaining more tools in these areas at the iSchool.”
Her other recent collecting efforts at the Northwest Museum (www.northwestmuseum.org) have focused on ethnic diversity in the Inland Northwest. She recently helped acquire a collection from a Japanese-American family from Spokane, including a set of letters written from a Department of Justice camp during World War II, and is currently working with staff and community members to acquire collections related to Spokane’s gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered community. “I strongly believe that acquiring primary source materials from diverse communities is one of the ways we can ensure that these communities are remembered,” Krause says. “History is written from primary sources. If there are no sources--documents, oral histories, audiovisual or other materials--communities can be forgotten.”
Krause recently completed her master’s in history at Eastern Washington University with a thesis entitled “Beyond the Evacuation Zone: Japanese Evacuation and Resettlement in Spokane, Washington.” “Spokane’s Japanese-American population jumped from 300 to 2,500 during World War II,” Krause explains. “This was because Spokane functioned as a ‘safe’ zone or ‘straddle’ area for evacuees and resettlers seeking refuge from internment camps, including students from the University of Washington who transferred to Spokane colleges in order to continue their educations.”
Krause says one of the best parts of her iSchool experience since she began in Spring 2007 is applying her coursework to real-world situations. “Both of my current courses involve group projects, and I’m able to volunteer my institution as the professional setting in which to apply the theory we’ve learned in class,” she says. “In Management for Information Professionals (LIS 580), our group is studying and making recommendations regarding access fees for the museum’s library. In Information Resources, Services and Collections (LIS 520), our group is developing a reference collection for American Indian museum curators. Both projects will benefit my institution as well as my iSchool colleagues and I.”