Use of materials
The Anchorage Daily News used some our Anchorage Organizing Committee records in their ongoing series Curious Alaska: this entry about past attempts to bring the Olympics to Anchorage. Gwen appears in a few of the photographs.
The Fairbanks North Star Borough Emergency Operations Department used a 1964 earthquake photograph from the Robert and Wilma Knox papers in an emergency preparedness calendar.
24 images, primarily from the Alan May papers, were used for a private social media group for families of Attu residents who were removed from the island during World War II.
Veronica Denison, formerly one of our archivists, recently published a paper in the Journal of Western Archives entitled “Teaching Archival Research Methods through Projects in Ethnohistory.” The article is about incorporating archival description work into coursework and is based on a two-semester project with Medeia Csoba Dehass who taught UAA’s Ethnohistory of Alaska Natives course taught in 2015-2016. The article was co-written with Dr. Csoba Dehass and two of the students from the class.
Researcher time
We had about 155 on-site researcher appointment hours during these two months. An additional 32 email and phone requests took about 25 hours. Requests varied from single image use requests to researchers spending in-depth time with several boxes of materials.
Description
1.4 cubic feet and 886 MB addition to the Max Gruenberg papers.
Lennie and Thelma Hartman slides; 1958-1975. HMC-1376. Slides taken by a couple who lived in Anchorage and homesteaded in Kenny Lake.
Daphne Milbank White papers; 1947-1956. HMC-1377. 0.2 cubic feet. Materials related to the Alaska Constitutional Convention.
Western Alaska Trading Company stock purchaser list; 1925-1928. HMC-1378. 0.1 cubic feet. A list of stockholders for an Anchorage-based shipping company.
Grant Mining Company records; 1939-1944. HMC-1379. 0.01 cubic feet. Banking and payroll records for a mining company at Coffee Creek, Alaska.
Hirsch Syndicate Ltd. records; 1908-1912. HMC-1380. 0.4 cubic feet. Records of a London, England-based financial syndicate with some mineral development interests in Alaska and internationally.
Dr. J.H. Shelton photographs; undated, 1951. HMC-1381. 0.01 cubic feet. Photographs of a doctor who traveled throughout Alaska.
Joe Shelton slides; 1973-1979. HMC-1382. 0.4 cubic feet. Slides of an Alaska resident who worked as a tour guide at Prudhoe Bay.
Anchorage Light and Power Company bond records; 1932-1944. HMC-1383. 0.7 cubic feet. Banking records relating to utility bonds.
National Bank of Alaska records; 1916-1963. HMC-1384. 0.25 cubic feet. Limited documents from an Alaskan bank.
New subject guides:
Alaska before 1900: a guide to collections in the Archives with content pre-dating 1900.
Arctic National Wildlife Refuge collections
New on the Alaska’s Digital Archives
Transcriptions of 64 of the Ruben Gaines recordings have been added to the records. Thanks to our long-time and consistent volunteer, Alice Cone, for doing all that transcription work!
Grant news:
We just received the award letter: we are the recipients of an American Rescue Plan Act grant for nearly $30,000 to create 17 new statewide subject guides to archival resources. Topics on the list as voted on by archivists across Alaska and in vote order: Environment/climate change, Permanent Fund Dividend, subsistence, boundaries/surveying/mapping, highways/roads, Russian Alaska, World War II, aerial photos, African Americans, ANILCA, aviation, D2, Exxon Valdez oil spill, geology, journalism/newspapers/broadcasting, Alaska Territorial Guard.
Outreach:
For Democracy and Civic Action week in September, Gwen and Arlene recorded a special edition of our vacationing Archiving AK podcast. We had so much fun doing it, we decided to reboot the podcast for a season 2, and celebrate Archives Month (October) 2021 by releasing at least 2 episodes each week. What’s worth doing is worth overdoing, right?
Archives Month episodes:
- Julie Varee at the Anchorage Museum and community archives
- Erin Wahl from New Mexico State University and how creative writers can make use of archives
- Karen Gray and Leah Geibel at the Alaska State Archives
- David Bowie of UAA’s English Department on using archives in curriculum
- Desiree Ramirez of Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve and Alissa Gardner and Chris Warner of The Great Basin Institute on NPS/GBI projects and the records of Wrangell-St. Elias NPP.
- Hayley Chambers, Erika Christian, and Ryan McHale of Ketchikan Museums on their holdings, exhibits, and ongoing oral history project (a two-part podcast)
- Andrea Floersheimer and Nancy Yeaton from Chugachmiut Heritage Preservation on their new archive
- Freya Anderson from the Alaska State Library on copyright in archives and special collections
And last but not least, it wouldn’t be October without an Archives staff portrait!
Our inspiration for our portrait this year came from this photo of two women doing some heavy and happy lifting from the Harry and Norma Hoyt family papers.
And here’s our archival version.
Thanks to Kevin Tripp for once again being our able photographer.