Archiving AK Episode 1: Introduction to us

Welcome to the first episode of Archiving AK. In this episode, your three hosts, Veronica, Gwen, and Arlene, interview each other and answer questions about Archives. In the first part of the episode, we explore some broader questions: What do archivists do and how do they differ from librarians and museum curators? What does the UAA/APU Archives and Special Collections have? What types of people use our collections? In the second part of the episode we take turns interviewing each other about our own experiences of being archivists and how we see the profession. Thank you for listening!

For each episode we will post a list of links to things we mention in the podcast. We will include things like explanations of terms you may not have heard before and specific collections that we mention.

Mentioned in today’s episode:

• For a deeper dive into what archivists do, check out this blog post following the a day in the life of an archivist.
• Gwen mentions finding aids at minute 1:20. Finding aids are descriptions of archival collections that are often available online or in paper format. For more information about finding aids, take a look at this blog post, which goes through a finding aid piece by piece.
• Arlene mentions the Anchorage Garden Club records at minute 4:25.
• She also mentions that we have the Fur Rendezvous records.
• At 8:53, Veronica mentions that the oldest item in our collections can be found in the Frederick John Date papers.
• At 9:05 Veronica talks about the oldest item we have from Alaska, in the Richard Tighe Harris family papers.
• The newest items we have can be found our collection of Women’s March documents, which Veronica Mentions at 9:15. We have since received a collection of March for Our Lives documents, which date to 2018 March.
• Arlene talks about a specific xkcd comic at 13:42.
• Information about alligator ownership in Alaska can be found in the Max Gruenberg papers. 14:20
• The ice point research appears in the Carl Hild papers. 14:50
• Gwen talks about our social media accounts from 15:55-16:00. You can follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
• Gwen mentions our Omeka exhibits at 16:00.
• Arlene mentions the Alaska State Archives at 25:50.
• Veronica brings up group runs at the Society of American Archivists Annual Meeting. The Society of American Archivists (SAA) is the national professional organization for Archivists.