This is the first of an ongoing series in which we will profile library and archives professionals who are using their skills in an uncommon and intriguing setting or circumstances.

Growing up, Rebecca Cline adored the film Mary Poppins, but as a budding Disney fan, she had no idea that one day she would have an up-close view of the carousel horses that the titular nanny and her charges ride, or the snow globe that Mary holds as she sings “Feed the Birds.” The director of the Walt Disney Archives, Cline now has access to these props and many others, but her path to librarianship was almost accidental. After graduating from college as a theater major, she had difficulty finding employment in her chosen field, so by chance she took a job as a library assistant at the Huntington Library, Art Museum and Botanical Gardens, San Marino, CA, in 1987. For two years, she fetched and carried rare books—and “fell deeply in love with library work.”

Soon Cline found the opportunity to marry her passion for Disney and her love of librarianship. A friend who worked for Disneyland told her about a job opening for a file clerk in the Walt Disney Archives; though she didn’t get it, she was hired by Disney for its Home Video Group in 1989. In 1993, she became secretary of the Walt Disney Archives. From there, she worked her way up to her current position, becoming director of the department in 2010 after Chief Archivist Dave Smith, who founded the archive, retired.

Though she didn’t have formal training as a librarian, Cline picked up a lot by “osmosis” and from Smith. “I learned everything I could about library sciences and how to work in an archive, how to handle collections, how to handle rare materials.” Her theater background has served her well—working on sets and with costumes and props was superb preparation for creating Disney-related exhibits, while performing on stage primed her for the many interviews she gives as the public face of the Disney Archives: “I don’t have any stage fright because I have that training.”

Both an entertainment and a business archive, the collection spans all aspects of Disney, from its corporate history to its films and TV series to the theme parks and cruise lines and beyond. And as Disney has acquired companies such as Marvel, Lucasfilm, and, most recently, 20th Century Fox, materials associated with those brands have become part of its archive as well.

The collection is enormous, encompassing several buildings in Burbank, CA. The main offices are on the Disney lot, though there are satellite offices in Glendale, where the photo library is located, and Culver City, where the Fox library is housed (eventually it will be merged into the main Disney Archive). The archive consists of multiple warehouses. One houses costumes; another contains vehicles including armored tanks, spaceships, and pirate ships. Walt Disney’s correspondence collection is another highlight; so is the 1923 contract that Disney signed with M.J. Winkler to produce the Alice Comedies, a series of live-action films—the document marks the date of the company’s founding.

Working in the Disney Archives is unpredictable but rewarding. “Every day I come into the office with a plan for what I’m going to do,” says Cline. “It usually gets shot out of the water within 15 or 20 minutes.” Sometimes the job entails helping filmmakers working on documentaries and historians and authors researching books. Cline has also written her own books, including The Walt Disney Studios: A Lot To Remember (coauthored by Steven Clark) and Holiday Magic at the Disney Parks: Celebrations Around the World from Fall to Winter (coauthored by Graham Allan and Charlie Price).

One of the projects she remembers most fondly is helping to restore Walt Disney’s original office on the studio lot. In 1970, several years after Walt’s death, his brother Roy O. Disney, then chairman of the company, hired Smith to inventory the late founder’s offices. Everything, from the furniture to the drapes to the pieces on his desk, was stored away; in 2015, those items were taken out of storage to re-create the space. It’s “been hugely popular with the employees of the Walt Disney Company for inspiration, and also a wonderful place to take visitors,” says Cline.

One of Cline’s favorite parts of the job is fan outreach, which includes providing content for D23: The Official Disney Fan Club and its yearly convention, D23 Expo. She also helps create exhibits to showcase elements of the collection. Examples include Heroes and Villains: The Art of the Disney Costume, currently showing at Seattle’s Museum of Pop Culture, and Inside the Walt Disney Archives, at Graceland.

Though many large corporations have extensive archives, she feels that few companies engender the same love as Disney. “For us, it’s an opportunity to share what we have in our collection with the people who love it the most.”