Alaska Library Network, in partnership with the American Indian Library Association, the Alaska State Library, and San José State University, will provide financial and scaffolded student support to 15 American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian graduate students to earn master’s degrees in library and information science and an advanced certificate in strategic management of digital assets and services.
The grant will support the recruitment, training, and development of these Indigenous librarians and contribute to growing a diverse and skilled professional workforce.
Graduates will bridge digital practices with traditional knowledge while allowing for culturally appropriate stewardship of sensitive materials.
This project will make supplemental curriculum, presentations, and poster sessions featuring scholarship widely available through the Sustainable Heritage Network.
Financial Details
Program: Laura Bush 21st Century Librarian Program
Fiscal Year: 2021
Federal Funds: $728,027
City: Juneau
State: AK
This project was made possible in part by the Institute of Museum and Library Services RE-250081-OLS-Alaska Library Network.
Tutor.com, the company behind Alaska’s Live Homework Help, has announced a series of webinars on:
As of this writing (8/6), webinars are available on 8/10 and 9/1.
You may know that you can send students to Alaska’s Live Homework Help (LHH) service for tutoring.
But did you know Live Homework Help also offers all Alaskans free help with finding and applying for a job, writing resumes and cover letters, preparing for interviews, and applying for unemployment assistance?
To access this service, start a tutoring session, choose “Job Help” as the topic, then choose the type of job assistance you're looking for under "Subject" (see screenshot below).
Tutor.com also offers the YouTube series Webinars for Job Seekers.
As of this writing, five recorded webinars are available:
For more job seeker resources, visit the Job Development section of the State Library’s Digital Literacy Guide.
If you or someone you know has questions about the internet like:
check out our updated About Internet page on the State Library's Digital Literacy Guide.
Consider hosting Illustrating Alaska: Artists Making Children’s Books at your library, school, community center, or grocery store!
The pop-up exhibit contains 10 panels that explore the colorful and intriguing process of illustrating children’s books. The exhibit highlights the jobs of four Alaskan illustrators: Jim Fowler, Evon Zerbetz, Mitchell Watley, and Caldecott winner Michaela Goade.
The pop-up exhibit is available for $300, plus one way shipping to the next venue (about $50 via USPS).
Visit the Illustrating Alaska Traveling Exhibit page or email curator Sarah Asper-Smith for more information.
The latest newsletter from University of Alaska’s Museum of the North features highlights from their various fine arts collections.
View images from the following collections:
Do you have a virtual exhibit to share? Let us know!
From our friends at Ketchikan Museums:
Join Ketchikan Museums on Thursday, September 2 at 12:00 PM for a virtual Museum Midday program with Megan Smetzer, author of Painful Beauty: Tlingit Women, Beadwork, and the Art of Resilience.
At a time when Indigenous cultural practices were actively being repressed, beading supported cultural continuity, demonstrating Tlingit women’s resilience, strength, and power. Working with museum collection materials, photographs, archives, and interviews with artists and elders, Megan Smetzer reframes this often overlooked art form as a site of historical negotiations and contemporary inspirations. She shows how beading gave Tlingit women the freedom to innovate aesthetically, assert their clan crests and identities, support tribal sovereignty, and pass on cultural knowledge. Painful Beauty is the first dedicated study of Tlingit beadwork and contributes to the expanding literature addressing women’s artistic expressions on the Northwest Coast.
Listen to Megan Smetzer's discussion of Painful Beauty on the Tongass Historical Museum's Facebook page.
Do you have a virtual event to share? Let us know about it!
We recently wrote about the upcoming release of Windows 11 and how it may affect public library computers.
Since that issue, the tech website How-to Geek reported that Microsoft will continue to provide security updates for Windows 10 until October 2025.
We’re recommending that you stick with Windows 10 for your public workstations until you buy new computers. It’s best to replace computers on a three to five year cycle if you can afford to do so. Eventually new computers will come standard with Windows 11.
For more on this procrastination-friendly upgrade, see:
It’s not too early for librarians and teachers to plan for Constitution Day (9/17/2021) with help from the Library of Congress. The Library’s Constitution Day Teacher Resources Guide offers the following:
The Library of Congress offers teachers many other sets of classroom materials and professional development items on their Teachers Home page.
From our friends at the Library of Congress:
Official letters, work reports, tariff and cargo registers, ships’ journals, accounts of exploratory expeditions, and other records relating to the exploration and colonization of Alaska and Siberia by the Russian-American Company (Rossiĭsko-amerikanskai︠a︡ kompanii︠a︡, a fur trading company conducting trade with the Alaska Natives as well as the exploration and colonization chiefly of Alaska and the Pacific Coast of America. Founded in 1799 as the successor of the Shelikhov-Golikov Company, founded in 1783. Also includes material relating to the company's contacts with the Japanese, Chinese, and Portuguese. Individuals represented include Nikolaĭ Petrovich Rezanov and G.I. Shelikhov. Collected by G. V. I︠U︡din (Yudin).
Buying refurbished computers and other hardware can be a good choice for cash-strapped libraries, archives, and museums. Not all refurbished hardware is equal. Before you shop for used equipment, check out:
10 things to know before you buy refurbished electronics by Eric Griffith. PC Magazine, 7/19/2021.
The article covers questions like:
If your library, archives, or museum has had a positive experience buying refurbished equipment, please let us know what you bought, how long you’ve had it, and who you bought it from.
According to the National Library of Medicine, color blindness is significant in some groups. Red-green color blindness is the most common type. For example, among populations with Northern European ancestry, red-green color blindness occurs in about 1 in 12 males and 1 in 200 females.
Web designer Andrew Wilshere explains accessibility implications in a recent blog post titled From A Colourblind Designer To The World: Please Stop Using Red And Green Together.
Wilshere identifies three problems he regularly encounters:
Fortunately, as with many accessibility issues, there are simple ways to avoid these pitfalls. Find solutions to the above problems, along with other tips for removing red-green color blindness barriers, in Andrew Wilshere’s blog post.
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