Meet AIHP Staffer Elizabeth Preboski

At AIHP, we believe that our people are what make us truly special. Today, we’re excited to introduce you to one of the amazing individuals who help keep everything running smoothly behind the scenes. Meet Elizabeth Preboski, our Archives Assistant and Editorial Assistant for the History of Pharmacy and Pharmaceuticals (HoPP) Journal, whose dedication, positivity, and unique talents make a big impact every day.

Elizabeth started working at AIHP in October of 2021. She began as a volunteer during the fall semester and joined the team part-time when upon returning after winter break. While at AIHP, she worked on creating a folder-level inventory of the entire archive, helped design and install exhibits, assisted at AIHP-sponsored/attended events, worked on digitizing our artifact collections, designed educational tools and interactive elements for members and events, helped put together our annual calendar, and much more! Elizabeth also serves as the Editorial Assistant of AIHP’s History of Pharmacy and Pharmaceuticals journal, which she’s been assisting with for about 2 years.

Elizabeth is a Spring 2025 graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she double-majored in History and Educational Studies and completed certificates in Educational Policy and European Studies.

Get to Know Us: An Interview with Elizabeth Preboski

What is your favorite project that you’ve worked on at AIHP?

One of my favorite projects to work on at AIHP is creating interactive and educational tools for members and the public to engage with during AIHP-sponsored events! I’ve enjoyed creating quizzes, Kahoot! games, Canvas course modules, Jeopardy! Boards, and more that allow people to interact with pharmacy history and the materials AIHP holds in a more engaging way. I find this is a great way for people to more closely examine some of our artifacts and ephemera – while often competing for a chance to win a free AIHP prize!

Another project I’ve enjoyed working on while at AIHP is the design of our annual member calendar. I love getting to see which items from the collection make their way into the monthly spreads! My particular favorites are photographs from the Drug Topics collection. Here’s one example from the 2025 Calendar for the month of December (below):

Have you encountered anything in the collections that you found to be particularly exciting to work with or want to share with the public?

I think one of the exciting parts of the collection (particularly as a Badger-alum) is our plethora of materials from the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Pharmacy. These include not only conference and meeting notes, course evaluations, exams and assignment outlines, and other more ‘formal’ academic materials, but also photos of young pharmacy degree-seeking badgers from decades ago! While searching through the UW School of Pharmacy materials for their 1974 class reunion, I was able to find a photo that contained an alumni from Antigo, WI – the place where I grew up! I was able to share that photo (see below) with them and introduce them to the AIHP archive. I think having the opportunity to make personal connections to our material is one of the most special parts of the work I do in the archive!

The AIHP is over eighty years old, and you can still see the traces of people who have contributed time and effort to its mission. What mark do you hope to leave on this institution?

Everywhere in the collections at AIHP you can see traces of people who have spent many-an-hour working to develop our collections. As I’ve worked in the archival materials, one of my favorite ways to see this – in the simplest form – is by reading entries from previous and current staff on our out-cards (which we use to mark the place in the filing cabinet where we have extracted materials for research or exhibit purposes, in order to ensure we accurately return the materials to their rightful place in the collection). I think these small reminders of those doing work ‘behind the scenes’ in the archive is so special – and I hope one day when the future staff of AIHP is sifting through the collection that they can see my (many) entries on the out-cards and be reminded of the work I’ve contributed to making our collections more organized and accessible for generations of pharmacy historians to come.