New in the Archives, August 2019

Notable news:

Veronica has moved on to a great new job in the Lower 48: Farewell, Veronica, safe travels, and we wish you all the best!

Change of hours: Due to several years of budget cuts at the Consortium Library and the probability of more, the library has a hiring freeze. With Veronica’s departure, this takes us from three archivists to two. Starting in September, our open hours will be reduced to Wednesday-Friday, 10 am – 4 pm or by appointment. Please note: any changes to our schedule will be displayed on our main website.

 

Collections newly available:

HMC-1180: Walter Parker papers; circa 1940-2014. 20 GB addition to the collection. Due to a house fire, some of Mr. Parker’s papers had condition issues (smoke smell, charred elements, water damage) when they came to us. It’s very rare that we digitize for preservation, but in this case the damage to the materials was so severe that the cost of preserving the hard copy was out of our scope. Many Consortium Library student workers as well as the archivists here spent time in digitizing the damaged materials and then evaluating the scans for quality control in order to ensure we were preserving the best copy possible.

HMC-1302: William B. Workman papers; 1963-2005. 2.5 cubic foot addition. Research and writing files from a retired UAA archeology professor.

HMC-1331: Thelma P. Langdon papers; circa 1983-2012. 0.2 cubic feet and 1.53 MB. Personal papers of a nurse.

HMC-1332: J. Ray Langdon papers; circa 1944-2015. 1.0 cubic feet and 2.3 GB. Professional papers of an Alaskan psychiatrist.

HMC-1338: James L. Simpson diary; 1917-1928, bulk 1917-1921. Diary of a man who homesteaded at Chickaloon.

HMC-1339: Alaska Light Opera Theatre records; 1986-1989. 0.46 cubic feet. Programs and set designs of a theater company in Anchorage.

HMC-1340: Epsilon Sigma Alpha. Alpha Iota Chapter records; 1960-2019. 5.0 cubic feet. Records of an Anchorage philanthropic sorority.

Does the above processing list look a little light for our productivity compared to other months? Especially compared to July’s enormous list? There’s a reason for that! On top of all the other things we do, like providing assistance to researchers, working with donors, meetings, and the occasional vacation, we received a large digitization order from researchers needing materials from one of our collections. Our page/time count for that order (so far) is 15,394 pages and over 55 hours of scanning time. Most days we’re really grateful for our overhead scanner, but right now we’re especially thankful for it! (We also used it to digitize most of the damaged documents from the Walt Parker papers mentioned above).

Alaska’s Digital Archives:

44 photographs from Juneau resident slides; undated, 1942-1986. HMC-0740

5 photographs, an identification card, and a document from the Bill Lathan papers; 1973-1977. HMC-1055. Also metadata added to 20 images from the Lathan papers that had been uploaded previously.

17 images from McGlashan and Monsen.

22 videos and 1 film from Atwood family papers, also available on the Archives YouTube channel (Atwood Foundation grant).

Outreach and other:

“Learning is Permanent!” An exhibit on curriculum materials developed for elementary and high school students in the early 1990s is now available for viewing in the Consortium Library Great Room. The documents and memorabilia in the exhibit came from the Dave Rose papers. Mr. Rose was the first executive director of the Alaska Permanent Fund Corporation.

Gwen recorded a podcast with Dr. Emily Moore, an Art History professor at Colorado State University. Dr. Moore did research in the Archives for her recent book, Proud Raven, Panting Wolf: Carving Alaska’s New Deal Totem Parks.

Arlene and Veronica both attended the Society of American Archivists annual meeting. Arlene attended the preconference workshop and meeting days, Veronica attended the conference education sessions.

And last (but perhaps most fun), with Veronica leaving we decided that instead of waiting to do our annual staff portrait for Halloween, we’d do it a little early this year. We took inspiration from the photo in our holdings that gets–by far–the most duplication requests for any single item we hold. We just updated it a little and made it more reflective of our own Alaskan interests.