Background: I was born in the chimney of the detached kitchen at the Oldest House. Even though I was the runt of the litter, the chimney got a little tight once I got older, so I headed out in search of a new home. After a long walk and putting in a solid college application, I found myself at Flagler College, reading through all sorts of cool stuff that I could get my paws on… and there was some pretty good food. Once I finished up there, I decided I wanted to stick to the history thing. It felt like a neat change of pace for a raccoon like me. I mean, how many trash pandas do you know who like to do research and hang out in archives? I did get homesick, though, so I went back to the Oldest House again, where I made a new nest in the bushes. I found out that the whole complex was run by a group of humans called the St. Augustine Historical Society, and they were really nice. In fact, they even gave me a job, and some scratch paper and boxes to make a new nest!
Education: I graduated from Flagler College with a history degree. I was their first non-human student, and the first in my family without a background in waste management or environmental science.
How did you get started at SAHS?: Instead of rooting through trash, I wanted to go through and organize useful materials. I made an appointment with the St. Augustine Historical Society Research Library to look into the Oldest House’s history and to see if they needed any volunteers or had any positions. Imagine my surprise when they said I was just what they were looking for! They brought me onto the team to help inventory new collections and to highlight some of our old ones on social media. In fact, I’ve now been chosen to be their mascot and to head the Research Library’s outreach. Digital Collections Librarian Nicole Diehm keeps calling me the “Rascot,” which admittedly is pretty funny, because that’s also my last name! As the “Rascot,” I get to write cool blogs and take pictures and travel and look at all sorts of neat stuff!
What projects are you currently working on?: At the moment, I’m helping to inventory a series of collections and I’m generating social media content! Take a look under our Blogs tab to see some of my work, and feel free to browse our Instagram and Facebook. You can follow all of my adventures on there, and see what I’m working on and what events I’m at. Please come by and say hi! I love meeting new people.
What projects are you looking forward to?: I really can’t wait to finish up working on inventorying and updating our collection finding aids. I love being able to help make things here more accessible for our visitors. Plus, it means I can have old outdated papers and binders for my nest! I’m also really excited to get to travel to some of our events and meet new people. I had a lot of fun at our Annual Meeting at the Classic Car Museum, and I can’t wait to do more things like that.
What do you like about working at the SAHS?: Helping and meeting new people. I love getting to work alongside the other staff to assist patrons at the library. I also really like getting to see our members and meet speakers at events. The eventual hopes of internet fame make me very happy indeed, as does the promise of all the scratch paper in the world for my nest. They did tell me I could only have the scrap paper, though.
How can SAHS improve going forward?: I think we definitely could make things better by continuing to “make history accessible,” as Mr. John Versaggi said at our annual meeting. More digitization of collections and finding aids I think would be a great start, and would give me plenty of old outdated paperwork to sleep on. It would also allow us to move items off site to a more secure facility, in case we get any bad storms going forward. Protecting our resources while still making them accessible is key.