Governor Michael J. Dunleavy made his FY2020 (starting 7/1/2019) amended FY2020 budget available on the OMB website. You can find the Governor’s budget proposals for Libraries, Archives and Museums by visiting the Department of Education and Early Development budget detail page and scrolling down to RDU: Alaska State Libraries, Archives and Museums, then clicking on the individual component of interest.
February 16th has been known as Elizabeth Peratrovich Day since 1988 and Janey Thompson of Alaska’s Digital Newspaper Project celebrated it with a blog post.
For many, Elizabeth Peratrovich is best known for her testimony before the Territorial Legislative in 1945 in support of the Anti-Discrimination Act. While there are newspaper accounts with selected quotes from her, there is no known full transcript of her remarks. The State Library posted a roundup of what was known and not known about her Senate testimony back in January 2010.
If you happen to have an authenticated copy of the full transcript of Elizabeth Peratrovich’s testimony or a complete citation to where it could be found, we would LOVE to hear from you.
Why bother to keep historical newspapers? In part to keep track of what happened back in the day. Janey Thompson provides an example of this through her examination of two of the first films to be shot on location in Alaska - The Girl Alaska and The Cheechakos.
For details, see her 1/10/2019 blog post, Lights Camera, Action! Moviemaking in Alaska Historical Newspapers.
The Sheldon Jackson Museum’s February Artifact of the Month is a Yup’ik wooden box (SJ-II-B-75). The wooden, rectangular box was collected by Sheldon Jackson from Andreafski in 1893. Carved from a single piece of wood, the box is hinged with rawhide and fastened with a loop to a peg on the side. The lid has two faces carved into its surface — one with a large upturned mouth and two white beads aslabrets and a second face with a downward turned mouth. Two small ivory pegs are fitted in the recessed line around the carved faces and a third is placed just below the mouth of the frowning face. At the center of the lid is a large blue bead situated between two diagonally carved lines. The bottom of the box has an animal carved in low relief with a seal-like head, flippers, a long tail, and an open mouth fitted with a set of teeth. A small ivory peg is located at each of the animal’s joints. Containers were made to store a variety of things including thin slate lance points, trinkets, pigments, tobacco, and snuff but according to museum records, the February Artifact of the Month was made to be an "arrow box" to store arrow points.
Read more about this wooden box »
We recently learned that the Anchorage Public Library (APL) loans out kits for learning Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM). There are almost two dozen different kits that you can find descriptions for on the APL STEM kits page. Each kit entry includes a contents list.
As far as we can tell, these kits are only circulated within Anchorage, but we thought you might find inspiration in exploring their descriptions.
We’ve heard of cultural institution as publisher before, but a museum with a record label is new to us. According to a 1/31/2019 article by KNBA, the Anchorage Museum has recently launched a record label – Unbound Records. Its first release is a vinyl record - "ARC: a compilation of the Circumpolar North." According to the museum, “ARC brings together music from around the Arctic Circle in a compilation of tracks from contemporary musicians with Northern connections. The album includes tracks from Mari Boine, Cris Derksen, Olga Bell, Foresteppe, múm, Harm, Amiina, Indian Agent and Tsembla.” These limited edition LPs can be purchased through the Anchorage Museum store.
Episode 10 of the Anchorage Consortium Library’s podcast Archiving AK has Arlene Schmuland interviewing Zane Treesh, the head of the Anchorage Museum’s Library and Archives. According to the episode description, “Zane splits his work between being a librarian and being an archivist for the Anchorage Museum. He talks about the kinds of materials they have, who their users are, and the types of work he does.”
KHNS FM reported 2/1/2019 that the 716th Explosive Ordnance Disposal Company out of Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage was called to assess and remove a World War II mortar that has been housed at the Haines Sheldon Museum since the 1990s.
According to the article, although the mortar had been in the museum’s collection for years, there was no documentation that it had ever been deactivated. So the museum called the local police, who after examining the explosive, called the 716th, a unit tasked with responding unexploded ordinance around Alaska.
The Army discovered that the mortar still had some explosives in it and detonated it safely out of town.
Has your institution had an odd experience with an artifact? Let us know if you’d like to share your story on the Friday Bulletin.
The Alaska Museums mailing list recently featured an article with video that we wanted to share with libraries and archives staff:
UAF Museum creating new virtual reality exhibit, 1/29/2019, NBC WebCenter 11.
The article describes the efforts of the museum to create a VR presence. The exhibit should be available this summer. Visitors will be able to see and interact with a variety of objects including a weevil. They will also be able to hold a light to an object and teleport to dig sites.
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