Commencement is almost upon us! Special Collections & Archives is thrilled to spotlight Student Assistant Zaidi Babcock, who will be graduating from Northern Arizona University next week.
Zaidi will receive her Bachelor of Arts in Anthropology. She minored in Italian, though the COVID-19 pandemic foiled her plans to study abroad in Italy. Zaidi has served as an SCA Student Assistant since fall 2021, helping staff with projects including re-processing the Northern Arizona University photographs and inventorying and re-housing materials in the Historic Route 66 Association of Arizona records and the Angel Delgadillo papers.
SCA staff caught up with Zaidi before commencement to ask about her career in Cline Library and her plans for life after NAU!
SCA: What is your best memory from your time working in Cline Library?
ZB: My best memory working in Cline Library certainly has to be finding a faculty photo of my Great-Great-Grandpa Cliff Harkins in the unprocessed NAU Archives photos collection!
SCA: What surprised you most about working in a library or archives setting?
ZB: I was honestly surprised at how much fun I have had here! Looking over old documents for nearly two years has been significantly more fun than one would expect.
SCA: What is a fun historical fact you learned from your work projects in Special Collections & Archives?
ZB: In the last few months I have been working with our Route 66 Collection / the Angel Delgadillo Collection. It was super interesting to learn that Angel Delgadillo worked so tenaciously to create the Historic Route 66 Association of Arizona!
SCA: What skills did you learn here that you can take to another job?
ZB: I became really comfortable with communication and inputting information, which I think will travel well to another job!
SCA: What are your [tentative] plans after graduation?
ZB: I fell in love with Flagstaff, as I am sure many do, so I plan to stay in Flagstaff and either work for a Cultural Resource Management company or do lab work!
Special Collections & Archives thanks Zaidi Babcock for her excellent work as an SCA Student Assistant over the past two years and congratulates her on her upcoming commencement as a member of the class of 2023! We wish Zaidi continued success in her post-college life in Flagstaff, and encourage her to come back and visit!