Leonora Gidlund
PER
Leonora Gidlund Leonora Gidlund
The job hunter, Leonora Gidlund, with her master's degree, was frustrated that she had not landed anything. Twenty-one years later, and 15 months after becoming director of the archives, she has been named the recipient of this year's Sloan Public Service Awards. She was cited for turning the archives into what the Fund for the City of New York called "a well-known, accessible symbol of public service excellence." Historians who use the archives for their research credit her with striking a balance between their scholarly demands and the needs of amateur researchers who are trying at genealogy. She has been able to mix the skills of preservation and access in a way that very few people have figured out. She began work on a master's degree at Georgia State University, where she developed a finding aid, a detailed index to a collection, for the papers of the lyricist Johnny Mercer. Director of the archives, Mrs. Leonora Gidlund has been named the recipient of this year's Sloan Public Service Awards. She was cited for turning the archives into what the Fund for the City of New York called "a well-known, accessible symbol of public service excellence." Historians who use the archives for their research credit her with striking a balance between their scholarly demands and the needs of amateur researchers who are trying their hand at genealogy. She has been able to mix the skills of preservation and access in a way that very few people have figured out. She began work on a master's degree at Georgia State University, where she developed a finding aid, a detailed index to a collection, for the papers of Johnny Mercer. It was the first finding aid, she said, that the history department had accepted as a master's thesis.