171 days until January 21, 2020 - Census 2020 Enumeration of Remote Alaska begins in Toksook Bay
243 Days until April 1, 2020 – 2020 Census Day
Resources:
The 2020 Census is fast approaching. We’ve thrown around April 1, 2020 (243 days as of this writing) as a starting date, but the residents of Toksook Bay will be counted on January 21, 2020, just 171 days away. Either way there is a lot of work to be done and not much time to do it.
The Census Bureau recognizes this and are actively recruiting people for Census 2020 jobs. In Alaska, the hourly pay for Census Enumerators is $28.00/hour. People who are hired will be required to do online training. So you might see people asking to use your computers for the online job training
There are groups within Alaska striving to help get as many Alaskans counted as possible. One is the Alaska Census Working Group, which we are a part of. They have developed the Alaska Counts campaign. According to the Alaska Counts website, Alaska Counts is a nonpartisan education initiative to inform public, private, nonprofit, and Native entities representing the interests of people around the state about the 2020 Census.
As Census time nears, the Alaska State Library is committing itself to helping the Alaska library community support the 2020 Census in spreading the word and, where possible and appropriate, supporting Census enumerators in their work of counting Alaskans to ensure we receive our fair share of federal funding and political representation.
The Division has identified the following events and observances in September that are likely to be of interest to libraries, archives, museums or Alaskans in general:
Month long observances
Week long observances
Specific day observances
Conferences
Today we take a quick look at the SLED history primary sources guide Mining in Alaska:
This guide consists of collections of primary source material held by Alaskan archives, libraries, and museums, which deal with mining activities in Alaska. The guide is divided into sections, based on the type of ore or mineral (Coal, Copper, Gold, Platinum, Lead, tin and zinc.
This guide is an overview of collections containing significant amounts of material relating to the mining in Alaska and is not meant to be comprehensive or include every collection containing material related to the topic. For collections related to oil, petroleum, or the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, these can be found in a separate guide.A few of the collections mentioned in this resource guide include:
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.
The Sheldon Jackson Museum's July Artifact of the Month is a Tlingit spruce root basket (SJ-I-A-830). The basket was collected by Aaron Taylor Simson while he was in Sitka and was generously donated to the museum, along with over forty other artifacts, by Simson's granddaughter, Grayce C. Alexander. The basket is a fine example of 19th century twined spruce root weaving and false embroidery.
Hobbies & Crafts Reference Center is a full text database accessible via SLED. Content in the database includes a collection of core, proprietary articles covering over 140 topics, as well as licensed periodicals, books and video that focus on categories commonly referred to as hobbies and crafts and is available in high-quality PDF format (Think displays like magazine pages). Features include the ability to search the Hobbies & Crafts interface by category, view all available topics and browse popular resources related to the area of Hobbies & Crafts.
The broad categories in the Hobbies & Crafts Reference Center are:
We’ve been discussing the multi-institutional primary sources guides on SLED for some time now and have several more to highlight. If you’ve wondered how they came to be or who developed them, Gwendolyn Higgins has an answer for you. Read the origin story of the SLED history primary resources guides at:
Introducing multi-institutional topic guides on SLED. By Gwendolyn Higgins. Consortium Library Archives and Special Collections blog, 7/23/2019.
Note: Gwendolyn was identified as the author of the blog post through search the UAA directory for archives staff and eliminating other staff named in the blog post.
Pratt Jams started in Homer on Wednesday 7/24/2019. The Pratt Museum is hosting these informal food and music events each third Wednesday in July, August and September. Attendees are encouraged but not required to bring a dish to share and/or an instrument to play.
For a writeup of this series read:
Jammin at the Pratt. By Kathleen Gustafson. KBBI, 7/24/2019.
If you haven’t visited Sealaska Heritage Institute’s YouTube Channel, give it a try. They have dozens of videos and 12 playlists. The playlists include:
As of this writing, the most recent video was posted on 7/26/2019 and is a 2012 talk titled “Our Grandparents’ Names on the Land: Southeast Alaska place names.”
Does your library, archives or museum have an active YouTube Channel? Let us know so we can share your content with your colleagues.
Recently the Cordova Times published an article on the Cordova Public Library’s “Knit & Lit Book Club”:
Book club offers judgment-free zone for lit lovers. By Zachary Snowdon Smith. Cordova Times, 7/27/2019.
From the article:
“Youth services librarian Anna Hernandez founded the club in 2017 alongside retired English teacher Teri Stavig. The group’s relaxed atmosphere and shared focus on crafting activities like knitting, embroidery and painting helped set it apart from other book clubs.”
Sounds fun, especially for the craft-inclined.
Does your library or museum offer a book club with a twist? Share it with your colleagues by dropping us a line.
On 7/24/2019, patrons were invited to view a webcast of the launch of the SpaceX Commercial Resupply Services mission (CRS-18). We’re happy to see libraries doing space events.
For more about the CRS-18 mission itself, see SpaceX’s press kit (PDF).
Has your library or museum done something space related, either for the Universe of Stories or for the 50th Anniversary of the first human Moon landing of Apollo 11? Let us know what you did and how it went.
And if you were wondering, the supply mission was a success.
If you’d like to offer Microsoft Office to your visitors and/or staff but cannot afford the licensing fees AND you have decent internet, Office on the web might be for you.
A recent PC Magazine explains how anyone can get free access to basic versions of Word, Excel and other MS Office programs, along with 5GB of storage space, by signing up at office.com.
For details, read:
How to Use Microsoft Office for Free on the Web: If you don't need the full might of the desktop version of Microsoft Office, you can use the free online version instead. Here's how to access Office on the web. By Lance Whitney. PC Magazine, 7/28/2019.
If you’re pushing all e-materials all the time to grab millennials for the library, you might reconsider and broaden your strategy to include other approaches.
A July 2019 Library Journal article used a survey that covered 493 millennials and made several interesting discoveries, including this one:
“Extensive use of technology is often considered a hallmark of millennials, who are sometimes referred to as the first digital natives. Nonetheless, the survey shows they place high value on print when reading for pleasure, a finding that echoes research on textbooks. Paperback books are the most common format read by millennials (about 74 percent), with hardcover titles close behind (about 73 percent). Ebooks garnered roughly 41 percent of responses and audiobooks received roughly 24 percent. Nearly three quarters, or 72 percent of respondents, reported reading in more than one format. “
The survey also showed signs that a library can drive book sales among millennials by offering “try before you buy:” (bolding ours)
“LJ survey results show that 69 percent of millennial readers have library cards, and the data highlight millennials' view of the public library as offering not just value, but also the opportunity to explore new titles without financial investment: 44 percent said that the main factor in the decision of whether to borrow a book is cost: i.e., a desired book is too expensive to purchase. Another 42 percent reported that they turn to the library in order to "take a chance on a new author or book I never heard of for free," while 39 percent said they borrow titles when they are "not sure about reading the book." Notably, once a book has been borrowed, a majority—60 percent—of millennials reported that they go on to purchase that same title. And more than three quarters—77 percent—later purchase books by the same author.”
For the full story, see:
Witteveen, April. “Social Readers.” Library Journal (July 2019) 144 (6): 16–19.
This article should be available to any Alaskan resident via the SLED databases. If you have trouble opening this article or getting into the SLED databases, visit the ALN Help Page.
Later this month, the Government Publishing Office is offering a couple of webinars of likely interest to libraries and perhaps museums:
Attention school and public libraries! Next month is our next official observance of our nation’s Constitution. The Government Publishing Office has set up a Constitution Day Page for federal depository libraries (FDLs). A few resources are only for FDLs, but other resources are available for anyone to download, including:
If your public or school library has plans to celebrate/commemorate Constitution Day in a particular way, let us know so we can share with your colleagues.
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