The Division has identified the following events and observances below as of interest to either libraries, archives, museums or to Alaskans at large during the month of May:
Month long observances
Week long observances
Specific day observances
Conferences
If you’re aware of a general event or observance in May that meets our criteria, e-mail Daniel Cornwall at daniel.cornwall@alaska.gov.
SLED has a several guides providing access to primary sources on Alaskan topics. These guides are supported in whole or in part by the Institute of Museum and Library Services through the Library Services and Technology Act, administered by the Alaska State Library.
Today we take a quick look at the guide Anthropology and archaeology in Alaska primary sources.
This guide features finding aids and other material from:
In most cases, you will need to visit an institution above to access the materials.
The Division’s Andrew P. Kashevaroff (APK) building in Juneau had some special guests last month – the ten state finalists for the Alaska Poetry Out Loud National Recitation Contest:
The ten Alaska State Finalists for the Alaska Poetry Out Loud: National Recitation Contest are (L to R): Eliana Zimmerman of Port Alsworth, Kiana Vesel of Palmer, Honor Mealey of North Pole, Florence (Judy) Sarren of Unalakleet, Talisa McKinley of Ketchikan, Moriah Jacobsen of Gakona, Avery Herrman-Sakamoto of Petersburg, Natalie Fraser of Anchorage, Iris Downey of Homer and Morgan Blackgoat of Juneau! Congratulations to these amazing Alaskans! Photo by Ron Giles.
During their visit, nine of them visited our atrium’s map of Alaska:
Alaska State Poetry Out Loud Finalists for 2019 on the map at the Alaska State Libraries, Archives, Museums Andrew P. Kashevaroff (APK) building in the State Capital. Image courtesy Laura Forbes.
Janey Thompson, Project Coordinator for the Alaska Digital Newspaper Program, was recently interviewed by Canada’s Northwest Territories Library Association. Her interview appeared on March 19, 2019.
For this interview, Janey described an average day at the Alaska State Library:
I check Chronicling America’s website first thing every morning at the Alaska State Library Historical Collections to see whether any new Alaska historical newspapers have been posted. So far, there are 18 newspapers published between 1899-1923, and we anticipate many more to be added. I input newspaper metadata at a page level for each issue to be incorporated online. I frequently visit our cold storage to retrieve microfilm reels to be duplicated and mailed to our vendor to preform OCR (optical character recognition). I also compose weekly social media outreach posts on Instagram and WordPress, usually based on a theme relevant to a given week or holiday. On occasion, I will fill in on the Reference Desk in the Research Center for a fellow Historical Collections coworker. Lately I’ve been researching and writing essays on newspaper titles featured on Chronicling America. Each time seems like a juggling act and I enjoy wearing many hats!
See the rest of the interview for more professional and personal details about Janey. We are fortunate to have her working on the Alaska’s Digital Newspaper Program.
Hat tip to Janet Madsen, School Library Coordinator for the Alaska State Library, for this item.
The Alaska State Archives recently received a donation of historic records relating to Governor Lyman Knapp, Alaska’s third Governor, who served 1889-1893. Although Gov. Knapp is often remember for his legal reforms of the day, he is remembered today as the Governor who established Alaska’s historical society and library. Included in this recent donation was an 1892 letter correspondence to Gov. Knapp penned by Lt. Commander of the US Navy Sam Very, who recounts the history, circumstances, and people of Sitka at the time of Alaska’s transfer to America in 1867. Commander Very was an officer aboard the USS Resaca that reached Sitka in Sept. 1867, and his letter adds to Sitka and Alaska’s history. This donation was made by Sen. Bert Stedman of Sitka.
The Sheldon Jackson Museum’s April Artifact of the Month is a pair of Athabascan moccasins (SJ-IV-X-65A,B). They were collected by Reverend John White, who was given the footwear by Hudson Stuck, Archdeacon of the Yukon. The moccasins were later passed on to William H. White who donated the moccasins and twenty-five other artifacts to the Sheldon Jackson Museum in memory of Reverend White in November of 1995. The April Artifacts of the Month are interesting not only for their association with a well-known figure in Alaska’s history but also because they are the only Yukon-Tanana style moccasins in the museum’s collection.
Read more about these moccasins »
One of the sessions at February’s Alaska Library Association annual conference was a session of sessions: AkLA Ignite. Session librarians of all stripes had five minutes to share lessons they have learned while working in the library field. The majority of presenters gave permission to post their slide decks:
#1: GeekFest – Ketchikan Library staff shared about a science fiction/fantasy festival they hosted. Plenty of inspirational pictures, from the magical to the timey-wimey.
#2: Data without Borders – Katie Fearer of the Alaska State Library shared how libraries how libraries can promote preservation and use of public and research data. Her slides have many links to useful articles and resources.
#3: Bridging the Gap – Petersburg Library staff shared a powerful story of transforming a group of “problem kids” into engaged STEAM learners. The staff did this through observations, questions and a willingness to change longstanding participation policies.
#4: IMLS Funding Opportunities – Sandy Toro of the Institute for Museum and Library Services (IMLS) provided an overview of grant opportunities and a few tips on applying for them.
#5: Avant Garde Librarian & His Unlikely Friends – Jonas Lamb of the University of Alaska Southeast Egan Library shared ideas on alternative library programs to support artistic communities and alternate ways of measuring program success. His presentation referenced the Alaska Independent Musicians Initiative, the Northern Culture Exchange and MusiCat.
#6: ALN as Your Fiscal Agent for ILC Grants – Jodi Jacques, Associate Director for the Alaska Library Network (ALN) shared how ALN can act as a fiscal organization on your grant projects.
#8: Stories from Our Elders Project) – Beth Hill, a collaborator with the Martin Monsen Regional Library in Naknek Alaska, shared about her project – Stories from Our Elders.
With a $74,000 contract from the US Bureau of Indian Affairs, the Alutiiq Museum and the Sun’aq Tribe of Kodiak will partner on the Pinguat (Beads) Project—a two-year effort to study and teach Alutiiq beading. The project, which begins this month, will center around the study and replication of historic, beaded regalia currently on display in the museum’s gallery.
In 1872, French anthropologist Alphonse Pinart collected three sets of rare beaded garments from the Kodiak region—coordinated headdresses, belts, and cuffs. These pieces are now part of the collections of the Musée Boulogne-Sur-Mer, France and one set returned to the Alutiiq Museum last summer on loan. While in Kodiak, the pieces will be used to mentor a group of contemporary beaders. The museum plans to host a master beading class in November 2019 where artists will gather to study the ancestral pieces and make a replica set for the museum. The process will be documented on film and educational resources developed and shared in the community.
For more information and information for artists wishing to apply to be part of this project, see the Pinguat-Beads project page.
We enjoyed the blurb for the Ketchikan Public Library “Free Style Book Club” that appeared in their April 2019 newsletter:
FREE STYLE BOOK CLUB: A book club that offers something different: Instead of an assigned book for all to read, each person will give a short presentation describing a book which they would like to recommend. Readers could learn about books they might want to read, and consider authors or genres which might be new to them. Don't want to present? That's okay; come and listen and get some ideas about books to search out.
If your library, archives or museum has a book club that you're proud of, we'd love a paragraph or two about it!
Six of Alaska’s collecting institutions, in six communities from Unalaska to Fairbanks, have been awarded $72,600 in grants. The awards will support the acquisition of artwork through funds created by Rasmuson Foundation and administered by Museums Alaska.
The Art Acquisition Fund invites museums and cultural centers to submit proposals to purchase recent works by contemporary Alaskan artists. Now in its seventeenth year, this initiative has helped institutions across Alaska enhance their collections, interpret contemporary themes, and support hundreds of visual artists. In March, Alaska museums received funding to purchase 12 pieces of artwork from 9 Alaskan artists—including paintings, a helmet, a woven robe, mixed media, colored pencil drawings, and a photographic print.
The Awardees are:
Alaska State Museum
Alutiiq Museum & Archaeological Repository
Clausen Memorial Museum
Ketchikan Museums
Museum of the Aleutians
University of Alaska Museum of the North
Back in February, the Inupiat Heritage Center celebrated its 20th anniversary. The center has over 60,000 cultural artifacts and last year greeted 23,102 visitors. The anniversary was noted on the web version of the Arctic Sounder on 2/22/2019 and carried what we thought was a beautiful quote:
"Coming into this building, even just walking in, you see our heritage from whaling to sewing qupaqs," said Asisaun Toovak, who is the assistant to the director at the Iñupiat History, Language and Culture (IHLC) Department, which manages the center. "And that's definitely empowering, especially for somebody who is Iñupiaq, to come to a place where we have our heritage and empowers us to remember who we are so we can move forward together and that we're all lifting each other up like we had done in our history, whether as a whaling crew, as a people or as a community. It's very empowering coming here and being able to have a safe place for our heritage."
For more, visit the Arctic Sounder article Inupiat Heritage Center celebrates 20 years by Shady Grove Oliver.
Public libraries can take advantage of the 2019 summer learning resources at STAR Net’s Summer of Space page and register to gain access to a number of giveaways such as NASA tactile books, Scholastic books (including the Luciana Vega series), and even some Orion telescopes. Public libraries can officially register to participate in STAR Net’s Summer of Space campaign in collaboration with CSLP’s A Universe of Stories summer learning program.
Writing in EdSurge on 3/11/2019, Sheena Vaidyanathan, makes the case that in computer programming, choice of programming language is less important than the ideas behind the code:
“Learning the fairly small number of keywords and simple syntax of a specific programming language is easy—a lot easier than learning an actual, spoken human language! By contrast, in order to program independently, one must understand the underlying concepts in programming—variables, lists, conditionals, loops and functions, for example—and then know when, where and how to use them to convert your algorithm into code.”
Ms Vaidyanathan aims her remarks at K-12 students, but the ideas seem applicable to students of all ages.
Source: Teaching Coding to Kids: What programming Language Should We Use. EdSurge, 3/11/2019 by Sheena Vaidyanathan.
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