Maryland students work to preserve a unique bit of animal history about Greenbelt

A partnership between the University of Maryland and the Prince George s County Library system is working to preserve a piece of history about Greenbelt Maryland When Greenbelt was founded in as a planned cooperative public in the New Deal era residents were forbidden to own and keep pets That was the rule for years For the last three years archival studies students in UMD s College of Information Studies have been preserving and digitizing old newspaper articles photos and other materials from the original establishment of Greenbelt Now that research includes materials on the town s pets They re preparing the materials for display in the Greenbelt Branch Library on Crescent Road On Wednesday students in the scheme along with Prince George s County Library employees sponsored Greenbelt Best Friends Fest an event that brought pet owners to the Greenbelt Branch with their pets to have photos archived and talk about the history of Greenbelt This is a project done by my district archives class mostly students in the Master of Library and Information Science campaign UMD professor Eric Hung declared My students have been working with this collection They ve been processing it They have been appraising new things that have been donated The students will work to process material for the Tugwell Collection at the Greenbelt Branch Their topic this semester is the history of pets in Greenbelt Students are getting hands-on experience working with a region archive It s really powerful to have that tangible connection into history and it s something personally that I hope to pursue after graduating Shom Tiwari a apprentice in the NFO undertaking explained I looked through particular poetry books from the s and there were a lot of elementary schoolers who were writing very beautiful poems about their cats their bunnies their dogs All of the pieces are now digitally preserved in the archive We detected the history of pets in Greenbelt pretty fascinating apprentice Anna Jones explained We all have pets and are passionate about them and care for them Jones revealed This was something we were interested in showcasing because we have such a love for pets and we know other people do too Source