I have a confession to make.
I am unabashedly addicted to Pinterest. And this is a little surprising
for me because I never jumped on the paper scrapbooking craze that’s swept
through the U.S. in the last ten years.
But Pinterest, so easily accessible on my phone, has me glued (no pun
intended) to my screen far too often. I
can spend (read this as “waste”) way too much time organizing boards and
pinning posts. There’s something
gratifying in finding quotes, recipes, home décor, fashion, images, art, articles,
stories and everything in between and then organizing them onto pages. There’s no mess, no scissors or glue, no
paper cuts and most importantly, I’m not forced to admit how much artistic
skill I lack because this is all electronic and involves no creativity.
As an archivist who has spent the majority of her career in
history, I recognize that what I’m doing is nothing new, though. Pinterest, is
for all intents and purposes, a digital scrapbook. And scrapbooking has always been
popular. Both women and men have kept
scrapbooks for centuries. People like to
save things that catch their eye. They
like to be able to go back and reference a poem or an article or a quote. They like to be able to go back admire a
pretty image. But most of all, people
like to create something that is representative of who they are. Looking through someone’s scrapbook (or
Pinterest page) can tell you just as much about a person as reading their diary
because what people choose to keep….what they find important enough to save can
give you a very accurate look into a person’s soul.
At the History Commission, we have numerous scrapbooks. I came across one today that I thought would
be fun to share. It’s part of the Sarah
Stillwell Huffman Papers (MS.000104), which also contains a diary and a
photograph.
The scrapbook, itself, is full to the brim of everything
imaginable – articles, stories, poems, artwork, pictures, etc. Sarah clearly loved words. There are hundreds of poems scattered
throughout. She also loved brightly colored images as there are brightly
colored advertising cards, images of flowers, animals and people on page after
page. There are also several clippings and
images related to Arkansas. In the
middle of the scrapbook are obituaries of family members. It’s interesting that she chose to save those
in the middle of poetry and pretty pictures.
I think the thing that stands out to me the most, as always,
is that people don’t change throughout time.
Sarah chose poems and images that I, today, would like and would pin on
Pinterest. What moved her and what she
found to be compelling enough to save isn’t really all that different from what
women today might pin. I know looking
through other scrapbooks kept by women, that fashion and home décor often reign
supreme. These definitely dominate my own Pinterest boards. I also have a board of nothing but compelling
quotes because, like Sarah, I love words. And the brightly colored images she
clipped? I have an entire board of
vintage images, a number of which are old ads.
We often assume that people in the past were different from
us and are very removed from us today, but really they aren’t. Working in the world of history and, more
importantly, in an archives keeps that in the forefront of my mind. It’s a constant reminder of the importance
of the work we do.
Below are some images from the scrapbook. It can viewed in its entirety at our research
room Monday through Saturday from 8:00 a.m. until 4:30 p.m.
