Kassidy Schiavi, ’25, has loved libraries ever since she was a youngster taking stacks of books home from the Oxford Public Library.
Now she works there part time, while preparing to graduate this spring as an English major with a concentration in creative writing. She plans to pursue a master’s in library and information science.
But it’s her minor in arts administration and cultural advocacy (AACA) that has brought her an internship in one of the world’s great research institutions: the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University.
“It’s amazing, no exaggeration, [it] changed my life, of what I want to do with my career, because I knew I wanted to go into librarianship, but I didn’t know exactly where I wanted to be placed,” Schiavi said.
Located on Wall St. in New Haven, the Beinecke provides access to one of the world’s largest collections of rare books, manuscripts, and related materials.
The arts administration minor is what has given Schiavi and other students the chance to intern at the Beinecke. But this is Schiavi’s second stint. After Schiavi shone as a Beinecke intern in the fall, Meghan Freeman, fellowship and internship librarian at Beinecke, created a second chance for Schiavi to work with the rare manuscripts during the spring semester, earning Schiavi a total of three credits. The fall internship was one credit.
Schiavi is “the kind of student that is so good that people create new opportunities for her, because we want to continue working with her,” Freeman said.
This semester, Schiavi has been working on a research project about an LGBTQ activist, Jeanne C. Barney, who was active in the 1970s. The Beinecke recently acquired Barney’s papers.
The library has been the perfect place for Schiavi, who has been “a big bookworm” since she was very young.
“I think it’s wonderful,” she said of the Beinecke. “Everybody that I’ve met there has been absolutely amazing and supportive, and just the institution itself, the services they provide — it leaves me speechless.”
Schiavi pointed out that the Beinecke now has “a gorgeous, gorgeous exhibit” of Islamic manuscripts, open to the public, titled “Taught by the Pen.”
In her first internship this past fall, Schiavi and two other students “visited pretty much every department in the Beinecke system,” including its off-site storage location in Hamden. They “basically saw the entire special collections process, from getting materials to processing them, to … letting people use it for research,” Freeman said.
“The idea is that each step of the way they’re following the material, and then, [during] their last few weeks of that internship, they then met with the different areas of the Beinecke, with the different people who help interpret the materials to different publics,” Freeman said.
Schiavi said of all the departments, “personally, I get drawn to cataloging, which is taking the materials and putting them within the systems, like database systems, all their information, so that they’ll be accessible to people to look at online.”
But this semester, “I’ve been diving into research a lot more, and that’s been a process that I’ve always really enjoyed,” she said. “I’ve always really enjoyed doing the research part of things, but not so much the publishing it as a work kind of thing. So being able to help other people do research for their projects and let them put together the final piece has been that … sweet spot for me.”
“This was a perfect internship experience for Kassidy, because she was already, in many ways, a librarian in training,” Freeman said.
Schiavi is ready to take that training farther. She applied at and was accepted to master’s in library science programs at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, the University of Washington, Simmons University, and the University of Alabama. She committed to Simmons University after the university awarded her a scholarship and will be attending its online program beginning in the fall.
“Kassidy is an amazing ambassador for the AACA minor,” Freeman said. “Honestly, Kassidy is exceptional, and she has been just such an interested and engaging collaborator this semester. … Her enthusiasm for learning about what we do has made us, in turn, look at our own work with fresh eyes and a renewed excitement.”
The Beinecke is one of a number of arts and cultural organizations that take on Southern interns under the auspices of the AACA minor, including the New Haven Symphony Orchestra, Long Wharf Theatre, and the New Haven Free Public Library, according to Craig Hlavac, associate dean of liberal arts in the College of Arts and Sciences.
Yale, which offers other internships as well, has been “a really great partner with Southern at offering some really unique internship opportunities for our students. And the Beinecke is about as unique as it gets,” Hlavac said.
Joel Dodson, associate professor of English who spearheaded the creation of the arts administration minor in 2019, said the goal was to introduce students to the “applied humanities.”
“We not only are doing traditional arts administration, arts management, but also trying to place students who are majoring in English and history and communications and philosophy etc. into … the larger cultural ecosphere,” he said.
He praised Schiavi as “one of those gems that we get at Southern who’s just a top-notch student and A-plus in every category.”
Southern’s relationship with the Beinecke does more than give students opportunities to work with rare manuscripts, Dodson said.
“One of the things that I have been trying to show the community, as well as Southern, is that there’s a hunger for this, and that this is a chance for Southern to assert our identity as a regional leader in career preparation in the arts,” he said. “And I think we are showing that there’s a hunger and a desire for that among Southern students.”
