As part of the Summer in the Archives Program funded by the Center for the History of Political Economy, Matthew Panhans and Nori Takami spent several weeks during the summer of 2011 organizing and cataloging the papers of Juanita Kreps (1921-2010). They recently posted biographical information about Kreps—information they had learned from the materials in Kreps's archives—on the blog of Duke University's David M. Rubenstein Rare Book and Manuscript Library, where Kreps's papers are held. Kreps was an economist at Duke University and the U.S. secretary of commerce under President Jimmy Carter. She was the first woman to hold that cabinet position.
"The summer in the archives was a wonderful experience," says Matthew. "It was a great chance to not only see some interesting collections, but also to see the process and people behind the collections, and then to be a part of it. I appreciate in a whole new way the importance of logically organizing a collection and creating an effective finding aid that describes the contents and organization of each collection. And also, I certainly learned a whole lot about preservation issues that archivists need to consider: for example, I had no idea that newspaper was highly acidic and could therefore be so damaging to other materials!"
Nori says that the documents in Kreps's archive cast light on how the Carter administration functioned. "The volume of letters she exchanged as secretary of commerce is quite extensive. There are also excellent photographs that were taken when she visited foreign countries as a cabinet member."
Matthew is a graduate student in economics at Duke University. Nori was a fellow of the Center in 2010-11 and is currently a JSPS fellow at Kobe Univesity in Japan.