One of our fairly regular reference requests goes like this: “I’m looking for a list of all the men who worked on the Alaska Highway.” One of the regular variants of that request goes like this: “My uncle/grandfather/dad/dad’s friend worked on the highway and I’d like to know where he…
If you count up all the archivists in Alaska, well, you’ll need more than just your fingers and toes but maybe not very much more. And it’s odd because for as many people who assume we’re all on first-name basis with each other, there’s probably as many people who assume…
Today I (Arlene) was working on rehousing a collection as I was working a shift on the reference desk. Rehousing is archives-talk for taking photographic slides out of carousels and other types of trays and placing them in polypropylene slide holder pages. Not only does it reduce the space the…
Web 2.0 technologies seem ubiquitous in business and personal life these days. For those of you who don’t quite know what web 2.0 is, think of this blog: that’s a 2.0 technology. Social networking, sites that offer online collaboration like wikis and such. A&SC uses 2.0 tech here, in this…
We here at A&SC get a lot of help from the students who work for Access Services in the Consortium Library. They help us deal with cleanup from disasters, even when they’re not our own, rehouse new accessions, digitize, describe, organize, and all with an amazing level of cheerfulness and…
Friday night, a serious quantity of water mixed with glycol from the HVAC systems came through the Dean’s office area. Carpeting across several rooms was soaked through and some of it continued to the 2nd floor Medical Library offices below. No big losses, that’s the amazing part. However, some records…
The Alaska’s Digital Archives has been one of the most popular topics for this blog in its short lifespan so far. And the reason we didn’t have a Friday entry is because Mariecris was very busy with reference and Arlene was in an all-day meeting relating to the Alaska’s Digital…
Today was a day we all spent on long-lived, and in some cases long-overdue, projects. Mariecris spent the day working on the Commonwealth North records. Commonwealth North deposited some 80 cubic feet worth of records with us about a year and a half ago. MC recently finished a draft of…
June is deadline month around A&SC. External deadlines, so no chance of begging off or asking for extensions. In terms of personnel, faculty have leave days that expire at the end of June. In terms of grants, grant reports are due. And it seems like everybody around a university likes…
We’ve been hearing this term a lot lately. Some granting agencies are offering grants to help uncover “hidden collections.” And hidden is usually defined as a lack of descriptive material on the collection. Hang around archival conferences a lot, and the term you’ll probably hear is not “hidden collections” but…
