158 Days until January 21, 2020 - Census 2020 Enumeration of Remote Alaska begins in Toksook Bay
229 Days until April 1, 2020 – 2020 Census Day
Resources:
As we move into fall and night returns across Alaska, we wanted to let public and school libraries know that we are still loaning Science Technology Engineering and Math (STEM) kits. Kit 2, Be a NASA Detective - Expanding Your Senses, has a telescope, binoculars, star map and moon map, along with several indoor activities..
Not dark enough yet? Try Kit 1, Sun-Earth-Moon Connection. This kit carries several indoor and outdoor activities including yard stick eclipse, sorting games and UV kids – a great way to demonstrate radiation protection.
See content lists and activity lists for both kits on our NASA@ the Alaska State Library page. Then consider borrowing a kit.
Don’t want to wait for a kit and have common craft supplies? Many activity ideas await you at the STARnet STEM Activity Clearinghouse. Please note that sometime in the next week or so the STARnet servers will be moving to a new location. So if the Clearinghouse is not up when you first try, try again in a few days.
Recently an institution expressed puzzlement that something they sent to the Division was returned “return to sender, no mail receptacle, unable to forward.” We believe that for everyone who asks a question, there may be several more who want to know but don’t ask. So here's what you need to know about sending USPS mail to the Division.
So, if you have US post office mail for the Alaska State Archives, the Alaska State Library or the Alaska State Museum (Juneau), please send it to:
PO Box 110571
Juneau AK 99811-0571
Regular mail sent to our street address will be returned. If you need to send something FedEx, use our street address, which is available on our website.
Today we take a quick look at the SLED history primary sources guide Mountaineering in Alaska
This guide contains collections of primary source material relating to mountaineering in Alaska, held by archives, libraries, and museums across the state. This guide is not comprehensive and may not include every collection containing primary source material relating to mountaineering in Alaska.
All of the Alaskan Primary Sources guides on SLED 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.
Chris Hieb and Leah Geibel, archivists at the Alaska State Archives, authored an 8/12/2019 blog post on the disaster and the 30th anniversary display at the State Library, Archives, and Museum in Juneau for the Northwest Archivists blog.
In addition to describing how the exhibit was put together, they also described the impact on visitors:
The display created more buzz with our patrons than we anticipated. Visitors will frequently stop and take time to remember what happened in Prince William Sound 30 years ago. One such visitor was in fact the gentleman who was photographed with a chart of Prince William Sound and the oiled sea otter. He said he was on the spill for the first 47 days as a member of the Department of Fish & Game, and was surprised to see himself in an exhibit 30 years later. In regards to the photograph, he told us that they only had one chart of the Sound left with them and no one wanted to get it soiled. However, apparently the photographer decided that people in red suits holding an oiled otter was not going to photograph well, and determined they needed something white, which is why they decided to use the chart.
Consider reading the whole entry. It’s a good mix of how-tos and interesting reflections.
Tech tip from Tracy Swaim, Grants and Data Coordinator for the Alaska State Library::
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Does your pointer get “lost” on your screen?
Is it hard to find the blinking vertical line for text entry in WORD?
With Windows 10 it is easy to change your mouse size/color as well as the thickness of the vertical text input line.
Type “pointer” in the search box in the lower left section of your screen.
Click the box that says “Change mouse pointer size”
This will give you the “Change Pointer size and color” control box.
By moving the bar you can increase/decrease pointer size.
To change color you need to click on the fourth box with the color wheel; color choices will appear.
Finally, by moving the last bar you can increase/decrease the thickness of the vertical text entry line.
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In the office we quickly realized that this feature is only available in Windows 10, version 1903 and later, which some of us don't have yet. If you run Windows 10 and don’t have 1903, you probably will soon.
You can find out which version of Windows you have by following these instructions from Microsoft. For an extensive list of what’s new and what’s by dropped in version 1903, read the “How to Geek” article, Everything New in Windows 10’s May 2019 Update, Available Now.
We’re happy to share a report from Claudia Haines, Homer Public Library, on what we think is the first ever astronaut visits to any libraries in Alaska:
The “mic drop” moment of this year’s summer reading & learning program at the Homer Public Library was the arrival of Rex Walheim, NASA astronaut. His tales of space travel, his inspirational journey to a lifelong career at NASA, beautiful photos from his 3 visits to the International Space Station, a personable presence, and even his blue flight suit left larger than expected audiences in Homer, and at each of the other libraries he visited, in awe. Kids, teens and adults learned something interesting about rockets, training for space missions, and living in space. They also connected in new ways with the science, adventure, and humor involved with being an astronaut.
Rex recently visited 9 libraries in Southcentral Alaska (Anchorage, Wasilla, Homer, Kenai and Soldotna) as part of NASA’s Astronaut Appearance program and thanks to support from the Alaska State Library, the Alaska Library Network and Friends groups in several locations. The process for arranging Rex’s trip began in December (2018) and took some time and a certain amount of flexibility to coordinate, but it was worth it. Anecdotal feedback included high praise for Rex and the knowledge he shared. More formal surveys at the various events expressed the audiences’ excitement and also provided useful information to help libraries further support their communities’ varied interests. For example in Homer, more than half of the adults and teens that attended a lunchtime conversation with Rex had never participated in a library program before, but indicated they would be back for more. Surveyed families in multiple locations expressed interest in more STEM programming for a variety of ages and mentioned Rex’s visit was a highlight of summer programming.
Caption: Astronaut Rex Walheim addressing his enthusiastic crowd.
More Alaska libraries and schools should consider collaborating on a similar visit. NASA astronauts are savvy travelers and interested in the adventure Alaska appearances offer. For the cost of travel expenses only, space travel is made more personal and possible for kids, teens and their families.
If you cannot afford travel expenses, NASA’s Astronaut Appearance Office also offers “A virtual appearance utilizing Skype to connect an astronaut via video conference with your organization.”
For more sources of potential NASA/space themed speakers, check out the “NASA and related links and resources” of the NASA@ the Alaska State Library page.
An 8/6/2019 Alaska Public Media article covered the opening of the Aging with Change: Food Arts in the Bering Strait exhibit at the Carrie M. McLain Memorial Museum in Nome. The exhibit was created by University of Alaska at Fairbanks professors, Igor Pasternak and Sveta Yamin-Pasternak.
From the article:
Igor and Sveta Yamin-Pasternak call the exhibit “a tribute to the passion and expertise of the many Yupik, Inupiaq, and Chukchi food artists on the U.S. and Russian sides of the Bering Strait.”
The “aging” part of “Aging With Change” comes from the role of aging and fermentation in the making of many Native dishes in the region.
“‘Change’ refers to both social and environmental change to which people continue to adapt their ways of doing food.”
For more, read:
Nome museum exhibit embraces Native food traditions, new and old. By Katie Kazmierski. KNOM – Nome, Alaska Public Media. 8/6/2019
Archivist Arlene Schmuland used a blog post to describe the buzz of activities that took place at the Consortium (UAA/APU) Library’s Archives & Special Collections last month:
July was a busy month for us, with a bunch of new special collections, university records, and ephemera being processed and described. We added our first batch of digitized audio and video from Veronica’s Atwood Foundation grant to Alaska’s Digital Archives. If you would like to learn more about our grant projects, we have a blog post and podcast about our project to create multi-institution topic guides, as well as a podcast episode about the two grants Veronica got to digitize audiovisual materials in our holdings.
Busy indeed! Many, many collections were newly described or added. A VERY SMALL sampling includes:
They also added material to Alaska’s Digital Archives, including:
For the full description of activities, plus links to their podcast, read:
New in the Archives, July 2019. By Arlene Schmuland. Blog of Archives and Special Collections at the UAA/APU Consortium Library. 8/1/2019.
An August 8th article on the Homer Tribune website featured Savanna Bradley, Collections Manager at the Pratt Museum in Homer. From the article:
Savanna Bradley has a passion for art, culture and natural history and is able to indulge in all three in her role as the collections manager at the Pratt Museum.
Working within the museum's mission of strengthening relationships between people and place through stories relevant to Kachemak Bay and the surrounding waters, Bradley has, since 2010, taken on a role, which, in larger institutions is divided into duties shared by several individuals. She is the registrar, keeping track of incoming objects, loans officer, track incoming and outgoing loans and curator of collections, caring for the objects.
For the full article and photos read:
Melding art, culture, and natural history. By Christina Whiting. Homer Tribune, 8/8/2019.
Have you seen a colleague featured in local media? Drop us a line so we can share the profile and help celebrate library, archives and museum staff across Alaska.
We recently learned that four Alaskan cultural institutions received grant funding from the Institute for Museum and Library Services (IMLS) for the coming year. The four institutions and projects awarded are:
Institution: Seldovia Village Tribe
Award: $100,000.00
Recipient Type: Museum
City: Seldovia
Project Description: The Seldovia Village Tribe will partner with the Seward Community Library & Museum to coordinate a multi-faceted project that offers training in digital collections management for a variety of audiences. A four-day workshop providing hands-on skills in digital object creation, processing, and preservation will be presented for staff members from small Alaska museums. The Seldovia Museum will inventory, digitize, and catalog its archival collections and conduct basic digitization workshops for local community members. The museum staff will also locate and digitize Seldovia-related materials housed in other museums and archives. These material will be added to Seldovia's archives, establishing the museum as a central, accessible repository for Seldovia's historical documents. The digitization and expansion of the museum's archives will benefit staff, community, researchers, and future generations. Community workshops will encourage participants to preserve and share their own records and photographs.
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Institution: Pratt Museum
Award: $50,000.00
Recipient Type: Museum
City: Homer
Project Description: The Pratt Museum will digitize 45 maps from its cartography archives, create an online catalog where community members and researchers can access the maps, and facilitate community and classroom conversations to inspire new map creation. The project will focus on 45 specific maps ranging from the earliest years of the 20th century through the late 1970s. The digitization project will include maps that were hand-drawn by local cartographers, documenting the layout of the town over various parts of the last century. Also included are hand-drawn maps that speculated on potential land use and maps that have been annotated in pen, sometimes accompanied by oral histories. The museum will partner with the City of Homer and the Homer Public Library to complete digitization and online cataloging. The maps will be publicly accessible on both the museum and library websites.
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Institution: Huna Heritage Foundation Inc
Award: $49,687.00
Recipient Type: Library
City: Juneau
Project Description: Huna Heritage Foundation (HHF) will collect and preserve Hoonah clan membership data in their Digital Archives and make it accessible to the community through dissemination of 1500 Hoonah Clan Lineage booklets. Working with a range of community partners, including the Hoonah City Schools, Hoonah Indian Association, Huna Totem Corporation, and clan leaders, HHF will update and build on existing clan lineage data by engaging the community during a series of clan workshops, community events at the school, and other programs, as well as through direct outreach to individuals in the community. This project responds to assessed community needs to collect, document, and preserve clan lineage data that define the identities of the aboriginal peoples of Hoonah, Alaska.
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Institution: Sealaska Corporation
Award: $99,896.00
Recipient Type: Museum
City: Juneau
Project Description: The Sealaska Heritage Institute will enhance the "Our Grandparents' Names on the Land" exhibit. Aimed at school children, the general public, and visitors to Juneau, this exhibit showcases the multi-faceted attributes of the region's indigenous place names. The exhibit features a large, interactive, touchscreen multimedia tabletop with a total of 3,500 Native place name locations displayed on a satellite map of Southeast Alaska. The project will harness the table's capability to share digitized content from the institute's extensive collection. This collection includes audio and audiovisual recordings that document Tlingit, Haida, and Tsimshian language, culture, and history. The project team will digitize and link collection resources, which range from historical photographs to videos to textual documents, to 50 indigenous place names in the exhibit. Two students from the University of Alaska, Southeast, will earn college credit by assisting with project activities.
As night starts to return to Alaska, we wanted to remind people about International Observe the Moon Night (IOtMN), celebrated this year on 10/5/2019. Here’s a description from the official IOMN site:
International Observe the Moon Night is a worldwide celebration of lunar science and exploration held annually since 2010. One day each year, everyone on Earth is invited to observe and learn about the Moon together, and to celebrate the cultural and personal connections we all have with our nearest neighbor.
The event occurs in September or October, when the Moon is around first quarter. A first quarter Moon is visible in the afternoon and evening, a convenient time for most hosts and participants. Furthermore, the best lunar observing is typically along the dusk/dawn terminator, where shadows are the longest, rather than at full Moon.
If you choose to host an event, let us know ahead of time so we can share with your colleagues. Also register your event with IOMN when registration opens for the 2019 event, which we expect to happen soon.
Cloudy skies? Not quite dark enough? You can explore the Moon with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s Moon Trek as long as you have decent internet.
Teachers and history buffs take note! The US National Archives hosts educational webinars. Learn about these and other useful resources from the National Archives’ Education Updates blog.
Upcoming webinars include:
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Teaching the Constitution
Thursday, August 29, 2019, 7 p.m. ET
Get ready for Constitution Day by exploring resources from the National Archives for teaching the Constitution in your classroom. Discover how you can bring the big ideas of the Constitution to life with primary sources on DocsTeach.org, check out lesson plans from the Center for Legislative Archives, and learn about our free distance learning programs on the Constitution. This webinar is suitable for all educators. - Register today
Native Communities and the Vote: Teaching about American Indian Voting Rights through Documents
Wednesday, November 6, 2019, 7 p.m. ET
Join us and learn how to incorporate primary sources related to American Indian voting rights into your lesson plans. We will share activities and resources from the National Archives, and explore how to include discussions of evolving rights over time as relating to Native Communities and the right to participate in federal elections. Register today
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National Archives webinars are recorded and posted to their YouTube channel.
A Library Journal web article from earlier this year describes a new effort to help libraries and publishers find non-bestseller books that are hits with readers in a particular region. From the article:
Using aggregated, anonymized library holds data provided primarily by OverDrive, Panorama Picks will generate quarterly lists of ebooks with long wait lists, focusing on titles other than obvious bestsellers, according to an announcement. Initially, this will be accomplished by creating lists of the most in-demand titles in adult fiction, adult nonfiction, YA fiction, and YA nonfiction in eight U.S. regions—California, the Great Lakes, the Midwest, Mountains and Plains, New Atlantic, New England, Pacific Northwest, and the Southeast, with Hawaii tracked separately. The resulting lists are filtered to include only titles published at least 12 months ago, but no more than 24 months ago, and then scrubbed to exclude well-known bestsellers, recent book club selections, and other titles that have been heavily promoted during that quarter.
For the full article, and a discussion of the differences in demand between regions, read:
Panorama Project Launches “Panorama Picks” Regional Lists of Popular Library Ebooks. By Matt Enis. Library Journal, 5/30/2019.
To see the latest lists from the Panorama Picks project, visit their website. As you might expect, Alaska is included with the Pacific Northwest.
For the second quarter in 2019, here are the Pacific Northwest’s top ranked book in each category:
From our friends at the Library of Congress:
New Research Guides Celebrate Women Changemakers
As part of its yearlong initiative to Explore America’s Changemakers, the Library of Congress has created numerous research guides highlighting women’s contributions to many fields, including science, business, civil rights, suffrage, and more. These guides combine a focus on the Library’s diverse collections, both digital and physical, along with research strategies and external resources selected by the Library’s subject specialists.
Of special interest are a series of research guides related to the national commemoration of the 100th anniversary of women’s suffrage and the Library’s newest exhibition entitled “Shall Not Be Denied: Women Fight for the Vote” :
Additional guides in the “American Women” series focus on materials found in the Library’s collections:
Continue to explore women’s many contributions in history by exploring our guides under the subjects “American Women History,” “Gender and Women’s Studies,” and “Individuals.” All guides from the Library are available on our Research Guides home page.
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