Notes--Experiences at the James Iredell Papers

Authors

Donna E. Kelly, State Archives of North CarolinaFollow

Date of this Version

Winter 2005

Document Type

Article

Citation

Documentary Editing, Volume 27, Number 4, Winter 2005. ISSN 0196-7134

Comments

2005 © the Association for Documentary Editing. Used by permission.

Abstract

I would like to give you a little background on how I came to be in documentary editing. I've loved history ever since fifth grade. Then in the summer after eighth grade my father and I took a genealogy class. I decided to research my great-great-grandfather, who served as a captain in the Civil War. For the research I went to the State Archives. Once there, I was enamored with it all. On my sixteenth birthday all I wanted to do was to spend the day researching at the Archives in Raleigh. I declared that "I'm gonna work there some day." Sure enough, after getting my undergraduate degree at Wake Forest University and working at the Archives during the summer and on Saturdays, I was lucky enough to become a full time archivist in 1984. Shortly thereafter, I became a certified archivist. I then decided to obtain an MA in Public History at North Carolina State University. As part of that program I took a documentary editing class, taught by Jeff Crow. I decided then and there that that was really what I wanted to do. It was the perfect blend of research, writing, and working with original records. I graduated from the program in 1988 and tried three times to get a job with the Historical Publications Section, to no avail. Finally, in 1996, I was hired as the editor of the Iredell Papers. In 1998 I became a certified public manager, which essentially served as a death knell to my hands-on editing. In 2001 I was promoted to administrator of the section where we publish North Carolina history, just like university presses. I am in a unique situation in that I have the luxury of editing, being paid by the state to do what I love, and I also decide what Archives and History will publish, with help of course. I am extremely fortunate to be a history major and actually working in my chosen field.