In this episode of Archiving AK, Gwen, Veronica, and Arlene tell their tales of the November 30th 2018 quake here in southcentral Alaska and then get together for a discussion of lessons learned and things observed. It’s a little longer than our standard podcast, but we hope you’ll forgive us…
November has come to a close, and while we normally try to get our monthly reports out before too long into the next month, the earthquake on November 30 put a dent in our plans (but not in our collections). We are back to normal operations and had some cleanup…
We’re back open to our normal hours on Wednesday, December 5. (With a few exceptions upcoming. See our main website page for details on those.) But we’re not quite cleaned up from the earthquake quite yet. Here’s our current status: Most archival collections are available for use but because the…
This may sound like a weird topic in the midst of dealing with clean-up after an earthquake, but bear with me here. There’s a few reasons. We’re nearly at capacity for physical collections, our vault is about 85-90% full. We’ve been doing a lot of rehousing of collections and moving…
In this episode of Archiving AK, archivist Gwen Higgins speaks with Dr. Jennifer Stone, a professor of English at the University of Alaska Anchorage. Jennifer discusses her decision to incorporate archival research into her History of English Language course and what she has learned from having her students use archival…
Going to visit people in their homes and offices to look at and pick up collections is a fairly regular occurrence around here. We like to think of them as archival field trips! We had one of those today, but this one was a little different than our normal trips.…
Every so often we get the question: my father/grandfather/uncle/great-uncle worked on the construction of the Alaska Highway. Is there the a list out there of all the people who did? How can I find out more about where he worked? The short answer to that is: there’s no list that…
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…
In the seventh episode of Archiving AK, archivist Veronica Denison interviews Chris Hieb and Leah Geibel – two archivists at the Alaska State Archives. In the episode Chris and Leah discuss their roles at the State Archives, the types of users they see, the material they have, and some of…
For those of you of a certain age, you may remember those interminable evenings spent watching somebody’s vacation 35 mm slides projected onto their living room wall. For those of you under that certain age, think Powerpoint or similar slidedecks. Back before photography was a thing, people would paint photos…
