After taking the summer off, the LREI archives team is back in action!

Martha Foley, our consulting archivist, has been coming in over the past few weeks to look through our files and photos. She has worked with the LREI archives in the past, so she is very familiar with our history and our collection. Martha is currently in the process of writing up an overview of the collection that will include recommendations for next steps and plans for arranging and cataloging.

Also, last Thursday, I had a visit from Nick O’Han, former high school teacher and school historian. Nick and I discussed LREI’s treasure trove of clippings and photos related to Elisabeth Irwin and the founding of our school, documents that he knows by heart because he is in the process of writing the definitive history of LREI that includes an in-depth study of Irwin and her circle. I am so pleased that he has agreed to write the historical note for our collection once it has been processed.

And lastly, I’ve been over at our offsite storage space tidying up and organizing our boxes and boxes of photos, VHS tapes, banners, T-shirts, posters, brochures, and yearbooks into groups so that they will be ready for volunteers to sort through. We have thousands of photographs dating from recent years to way back that need to be identified and protected.

We’re off to a great start this year. I’m looking forward to working with the LREI community to build an institutional archive that documents a century of progressive education. If you are interested in volunteering to work with our archives team, please contact L.J. Mitchell at ljmitchell@lrei.org.