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Preserving History for Duke and Beyond

Craig Breaden inventories an array of recordings that capture history and culture

Craig Breaden and Radio Haiti Archivist Laura Wagner give some love back to NEH, sponsor of the Voices of Change: Radio Haiti grant. Photo courtesy of Craig Breaden.
Craig Breaden and Radio Haiti Archivist Laura Wagner give some love back to NEH, sponsor of the Voices of Change: Radio Haiti grant. Photo courtesy of Craig Breaden.
Interviewed by Bryan Roth

Name: Craig BreadenPosition: Audiovisual archivist, David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript LibraryYears at Duke: 4

What I do at Duke: I work with curators, donors and archivists to preserve and describe the audiovisual resources in the library, including rapidly growing digital collections. It entails everything from creating inventories of material from donors, which could be hundreds of audio or videotapes or films, to shepherding the digitization process by coordinating the description of materials to put it online throughout our guides. 

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If I had $5 million, I would: I would like to build an ice rink in Durham because I’m a hockey player and there’s one in Hillsborough, but Durham should have one, too. My wife and I also went to Spain in 2005 and discovered the cava bar (a type of sparkling wine). It’d be great to open something like that in Durham where you drink cava and eat grilled things. It’d be hard not to do crazy stuff like that. 

My first ever job: I flipped burgers at a Dairy Queen in Fort Worth, Texas. I wanted to buy a car because I was 16 and the Dairy Queen was close by. It was an amazing place because of the characters I got to work with. I stayed there for a year-and-a-half working after school and weekends. 

My dream job: Something with music. It’s the reason I started being an archivist in the first place. Maybe I’d be a rock journalist. I occasionally post to a blog about music, progarchy.com. I like writing about music because there’s some universality there and maybe if I share that, it’ll turn somebody else onto music or they’ll turn me onto music I haven’t heard. 

If someone wanted to start a conversation with me they should ask me about: My record collection. I have thousands of records and I’m still buying new music. My collection dates back to 1971 when I was 5-years old. My first one – and I still have it in there – is John Denver’s Rocky Mountain High.

What I love about Duke: I get to work with an incredible diversity of collections, which reflects Duke’s commitment to the libraries and the kind of scholarship that happens here. I can go from working on the Radio Haiti archive, one of the most important resources in modern Haiti history, to the H. Lee Waters film collection, one of the most important cultural collections of North Carolina history in the 20th century. 

When I’m not at work, I like to: Hang out with my family. My kids remind me that it’s good to be a kid and help me relive my childhood. My sons are 8 and 10 and getting into sports. I love shooting basketball with them or going out and playing street hockey. We like to go on weekend trips around North Carolina. It’s great to live in a state that has mountains and beaches.

An interesting/memorable day at work for me: When we first put the H. Lee Waters film collection (which documents North Carolina communities in the 1930s and 40s) online it crashed the Libraries’ website the second day it was up, because people found out about it and it got so many hits. It was a great victory because so many people worked on it and it spurred such a public response.