Staff Q&A: Meet Dorothy Hazelrigg, Modern Political Collections

Name: Dorothy Hazelrigg Title: Curator of Modern Political Collections Department: South Caroliniana Library How long have you been at USC? I’ve been in this position since January, but I got undergraduate and graduate degrees here. I was a history major and started working with Modern Political Collections as a graduate student. When I finished my degree, I was the Ernest F. Hollings Papers project archivist. During 2003, I was at the University of Hawaii as a contract archivist, working with the papers of the former U.S. senator from Hawaii, Hiram Fong. He was one of Hawaii’s first senators. During my college years, I worked in Senator Fritz Hollings’ office as an intern. So when I saw the advertisement looking for someone to work with political papers, I found that to be very interesting. When my time in Hawaii was up, then I went through the application and interview process for this job. What are your job responsibilities? Our division was established to collect and preserve collections of papers relating to government and politics in South Carolina. We process those papers so they are available for research. We also have an oral history program that provides additional information for researchers studying the history of the state. We have a lot of researchers who come in to use the collection and we assist them in finding what they need. We also provide a reference to the collections for our donors. For example, if one of our donors gives us his papers and at a later date he needs a copy of a photo from his trip to China in 1988, we’ll make a copy of that and provide the item to him. We have about 50 to 60 collections, but of course an individual collection can have thousands and thousands of boxes, or it can be one. What is in a typical collection? A typical collection would have correspondence and photographs. If you are talking about material from a legislator or a governor—which are two of the main kinds of collections we have—then we’d also have speeches and campaign materials. Are collection items available on the Web? No, but we do have our finding aids on the Web. The aids are a directory of the collection that gives a folder-by-folder list of what is in each box in each collection. Researchers often do come here having looked at our Web site and knowing what it is they want to see. Are most of the researchers from South Carolina? We get them from all over the nation. We have a lot from South Carolina, a lot from USC, and a lot from schools within the state like S.C. State University, Winthrop, and the College of Charleston. We also have researchers from other states; we recently had visitors from California and Nebraska. We also get journalists from national publications. You worked with the collection as a student. Do you have students working with you now? We have graduate students who are in the history program or library science or the joint program where you can get a degree in both and working here is typically an internship for them. We have had other students who were just interested in the materials and they volunteer to work with us. What are your goals for the collection? To continue to build on what has been ongoing here with a wide variety of collections representing different facets of politics in the state and to make those as available as possible to researchers. Also to continue attracting quality collections and make sure people know about them. Are you a South Carolina native? I was born in Columbia but grew up near Lexington, Kentucky. My mother is from Columbia, and she got a nursing degree from USC. When I started to think about college, I was attracted to the Honors College at USC and I already knew the area because I visited so often when I was a child. Now my whole family has moved back to Columbia. We’re a family of Gamecocks. My middle brother, Charlie, graduated from USC last year and is now in dental school at MUSC. My younger brother, Bobby, is a student here now. He’s majoring in biology and looking to go to medical school. 9/04