October, which also happens to be Archives Month, has come to an end, which means it’s time to post about what we did over the last month. Alaska’s Digital Archives is undergoing a change in hosting, so we have been unable to upload files to the site. We kept busy helping researchers, including 24 different students from the two English classes we taught this fall. We talked to, and even visited, several donors, which resulted in us taking in seven new collections or additions to collections. Last month was also packed with events. In addition to our usual table at STEM Day, we held a book enclosure workshop in celebration of Archives Month and had the first of a series of virtual meetings with archivists from all over Alaska.
Our annual archives portrait, traditionally taken on Halloween.
Collections described:
EPH-0414: Knik Knak Fort Richardson Officers Wives Club newsletter; 1961 May. 0.01 cubic feet.
EPH-0402: Alaska Tourism pamphlets addition
EPH-0409: Valdez Breeze addition
EPH-0296: The Northern Limelighter; 1967. 0.01 cubic foot addition.
HMC-0121: Greater Anchorage, Inc. Fur Rendezvous records; 1938-2005. 0.2 cubic foot addition. 1964 King Regent sash won by Bill Rager.
HMC-0434: Wiseman Trading Company records; 1925-1999, bulk 1940-1945. 0.35 cubic foot addition, which includes property information. Business records of a general store on the Middle Fork of the Koyukuk River.
A map of the town of Wiseman from the Wiseman Trading Company Records
HMC-0879: Catherine Stadem papers; 1927-2015. 0.1 cubic foot addition. Papers of an Anchorage author and local theatre critic.
HMC-0932: Walter Johnson papers; 1902-2016, bulk 1961-1978. 0.3 cubic foot addition. Personal and work related papers of an Alaskan public health physician.
HMC-0945: Norman Rokeberg papers; 1974-2007. 9.2 cubic foot addition. The papers of a commercial real estate broker and member of the Alaska State House of Representatives from Anchorage.
A campaign flyer for Norman Rokeberg from 2002
HMC-1268: League of Women Voters of Anchorage records; circa 1950-2014. 0.01 cubic foot addition (Ballot Review from 2014). Records of an Anchorage civic organization that works to ensure voters have easy access to participate in political elections at every level.
UAA-0132: UAA. Native Student Services records; 1979-2017. 4.5 cubic feet.Records relating to the creation and operations of an educational support office for Native students.
People dancing at a Native Student Services graduation ceremony
Classes and events:
ENGL A351: Poetry. Instructor: Toby Widdicombe. 22 students. October 6. Students learned about where to find poetry in the Archives (it’s not always where you would expect) to use in an annotated bibliography.
UAA STEM Day. Once again we brought the stereoviews and Euclid’s Elements. New this year was data from the Audubon Society’s Christmas Bird Count and a display of computer storage media through the years. October 6.
A crowd gathered around the Archives table at STEM Day
Alaska Archivists inaugural meeting. Alaska has a small number of archivists spread over a large area, and we have never been able to sustain the type of active statewide professional group that some states have. Thanks to generous funding from Northwest Archivists for continuing education, we were able to purchase a subscription to the video conference software, Zoom, to hold virtual meetings for people who work with archival materials as part of their jobs (whether or not their official job title is “Archivist”) to discuss issues facing archivists and archives in Alaska. The first meeting took place on October 11 and had 23 attendees.
Archives Month book enclosure workshop. 5 attendees. October 20. With funding from Northwest Archivists, we held a workshop where participants learned to make enclosures for their books out of cardstock and Velcro.
Blog and podcast
Arlene wrote a blog post about her experiences digitizing the glass lantern slides from the Clarence Leroy Andrews papers.
We released the 7th episode of our podcast, Archiving AK, in which Veronica interviews Chris Hieb and Leah Geibel from the Alaska State Archives.
That’s all for this month!