We look forward to welcoming you to Special Collections.

Please don't hesitate to contact us if there is any way we can help you. Our staff members are listed alphabetically by name and by department. The personal name listing includes department, phone, and email. The department listings include the full mailing addresses for each department.

Bruce Raeburn
Interim Director
Special Collections, Jones Hall
Tulane University Libraries
New Orleans, LA 70118
ph: 504-865-5685
fx: 504-865-5671
raeburn@tulane.edu 

Staff News

In addition to her duties as Assistant University Archivist, Ann E. Smith Case (left) is the newly elected Recording Secretary of the University’s Staff Advisory Council.  She also provides computer support for Special Collections by functioning as an Area Technical Liaison.

Leon C. Miller, Leon C. Miller, Manuscripts Librarian, organized the session "The Curatorial Curse: Understanding, Recognizing, and Avoiding Conflicts Between Archival, Library, and Curatorial Methods" at the annual meeting of the Society of American Archivists, August 18, 2005, in New Orleans. The session included David Gracy from the UT-Austin School of Information, Michael Fox from the Minnesota Historical Society, and Sue Hodson from the Huntington Library. As part of the session, Miller presented the paper "The Allure of Wine and Cheese: Exhibits and the Dilettante Ethic." A survey of meeting participants ranked it among the highest-rated meeting programs

Lee also co-chaired the Local Arrangements Committee for the Society of American Archivists annual meeting in New Orleans and is a nominee for SAA Council.

Lee received the Academy of Certified Archivists Distinguished Service Award at the Academy's August 2004 annual meeting in Boston. The award recognized Lee's work as past president and past Regent for Outreach of the Academy.

Lee presented the paper "The Allure of Wine and Cheese:  Exhibits and the Dilettante Ethic" May 23, 2003, at the Society of Southwest Archivists' annual meeting in New Orleans. Lee also served as co-chair of local arrangements for the annual meeting.

On November 15, 2002, Lee spoke about online archival exhibits at the annual meeting of the Louisiana Archives and Manuscripts Association (LAMA) in Lafayette. In August 2002, Lee ended his term as president of the Academy of Certified Archivists. The Academy is an international organization that promotes fundamental standards of archival practice. 

In August 2001, Lee presented the paper "The SAA Mentoring Program 10 Years Later: The Founder's Perspective" at the annual meeting of the Society of American Archivists in Washington, DC.

Also in 2001, Louisiana Governor Mike Foster appointed Lee to the state's Historic Records Advisory Board. The board coordinates efforts to preserve and make available historic state records.

Susanna Powers has been working as a librarian in Howard-Tilton Memorial Library since 1980, for many years with serials and electronic resources and more recently with manuscripts collections and other Louisiana materials. Her personal and professional interests are brought together in the blog angels and people / life in new orleans which features original photographs concerning conditions in post-Katrina New Orleans. She is a contributor to Manuscripts at Tulane University and the Hurricane Digital Memory Bank. Current library issues of most interest include digitization of unique collections and open access. Other community activities include volunteering with newborns at Children’s Hospital, and participating in the local Tulane chapter of Phi Beta Kappa.

Bruce Boyd Raeburn, curator of the Hogan Jazz Archives, has returned from a sabbatical which ran from May through November 1999.

Bruce recently published three articles:

• "Menage a Trois New Orleans Style: King Oliver, Jelly Roll Morton, and Sidney Bechet," in Jazz: A Reader’s Companion, ed. Bill Kirchner (New York: Oxford University Press, forthcoming)

• "The Atlantic New Orleans Jazz Sessions," liner notes booklet for boxed set, Mosaic MD4-179 (April 1998)

• "The Musical Worlds of Bill Russell," The Southern Quarterly, vol. XXXVI, No.2 (Winter 1998), 10-18.

He also recently published reviews in the Journal of Southern History and the Gulf Coast Historical Review.

Bruce maintains an active schedule of presentations. In November he gave an audio-visual presentation to the Algiers chapter of AARP, and in October presented "Jazz: The Sicilian Connection" at a conference sponsored by the New School for Social Research and La Centrale dell’Arte in New York.

In September Bruce was invited to participate in the Tulane’s new "Freshman Experience Program," for which he gave the audio-visual presentation "Second Lining in the City of Dreams." Also that month, he served as moderator and commentator for the program "Louisiana’s Forgotten Blues Scene—Thibodeaux, Louisiana," as part of the Roots Music Gathering, Cutting Edge Music Business Conference, in New Orleans.

Lori Schexnayder joined the Special Collections staff in June 2009 as Assistant University Archivist. She received her MLIS in 2006 from the University of Southern Mississippi and was most recently employed as an Historian at the Mississippi Department of Archives and History. After four years in Mississippi, Lori is very happy to return home to New Orleans.

Eira Tansey came to the Special Collections library in 2008 as a manuscripts processor for the Louisiana Research Collection. She graduated from the University of Cincinnati in 2008, where she wrote her undergraduate thesis on the history of Cincinnati’s Carnegie libraries. She is currently pursuing her MLIS through San Jose State University.