Archivist

I am the Processing Archivist of Visual Resources at Yale University’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, where I have worked since 2004. My practice centers on photographs and other visual materials, along with manuscript collections and selected printed and cartographic resources.

I approach archival description as both a technical and interpretive responsibility: preserving evidence, making collections discoverable, and providing researchers with enough context to ask better questions.

Archival practice

• Arrange, describe, and manage single items and collections of photographs, artwork, manuscripts, maps, and printed materials.
• Create detailed catalog records and finding aids using MARC, EAD, and ArchivesSpace, with legacy experience in Voyager.
• Develop processing and cataloging practices for complex visual resources.
• Collaborate with creators, donors, conservators, curators, educators, and researchers to improve preservation and access.
• Plan and review the work of archivists, archives assistants, and student employees.
• Support exhibitions, class sessions, public programs, and scholarly inquiry.

Selected finding aids

My finding aids document collections across photography, visual culture, literature, and Western Americana. The following selection reflects the range and depth of this work:

• Meserve-Kunhardt collection
• Gordon Parks Study Sets of Photographs
• Carl Van Vechten Papers
• Carl Van Vechten Papers Relating to African American Arts and Letters
• Critical Indigenous Photographic Exchange Collection
• Peter Palmquist collection of women in photography
• Peter E. Palmquist collection of photography and photographic formats
• Julia Driver collection of women in photography
• Western Americana card photograph file
• Early Cameras Collection
• Fliers for Punk Rock Music and New Wave Music Shows in the San Francisco Bay Area, California
• Photographs of the Manzanar Concentration Camp, California
• Photographs of Migrant Agricultural Laborers in California
• Chris Felver photographs

Explore all Archives at Yale results for Matthew Mason

Experience at scale

Before joining Yale, I worked with archival collections at the Wisconsin Historical Society and at Montana State University. At Wisconsin, I served on two National Historical Publications and Records Commission projects that cataloged and rehoused more than 2,000 photographic collections, totaling approximately 750,000 images.

At Montana State, I arranged, described, and created digital surrogates for the August “Gus” Ludwig Hormay Photographs and Papers: 43 linear feet of research records and approximately 100,000 photographic prints and transparencies documenting rangeland study areas across the American West.

Areas of expertise

Photographic archives, visual resource description, history of photography, archival arrangement and description, collection access, material culture, Western Americana, descriptive standards, teaching with primary sources, and the ethical interpretation of images.