When asked why she chose to enrol in the Master of Library and Information Studies degree at Dalhousie, Jannaya Jensen answers, “It felt natural.”

“I’ve always loved the educational environment of libraries,” says Jannaya, who has experience in both academic and public libraries, and now, in archives. With a Bachelor of Arts in history, Jannaya says working in the Dal Archives makes a nice connection with her educational background.

She is fascinated by the sheer variety of materials held in the Archives, and also by all the steps involved in making these materials available to people. “It can be very complex, processing these materials so they can be found and accessed by researchers and other archive users,” she says.

Jannaya has been spending her summer migrating accession records (the initial records created for newly acquired materials) from Microsoft Access to Archivist’s Toolkit, cleaning up the data in resource records (the larger and more detailed descriptions of archival materials), publishing them online to create finding aids, and describing issues of the Dalhousie Gazette, which was first published in 1869. “Right now, I’m describing issues from the 1890s. There is so much interesting content in them, so it’s exciting to be involved in the process of making the issues more accessible,” says Jannaya.

Coming all the way from Saskatoon, Jannaya says she was drawn to Halifax because she loved the idea of living in such a different area of Canada. She’d also heard great things about the MLIS program at Dalhousie.

“My time at the Archives has been so valuable to me.  It’s been a hugely educational experience and one that I recommend to any student interested in working in this field,” says Jannaya.