Notable Dates:
Resources:
Online Census response opens on March 12th at 2020census.gov. This webinar will:
Census response in a nutshell:
No registration required just login into the WebEx webconference at https://stateofalaska.webex.com/meet/daniel.cornwall at 2pm on Thursday, 2/27/2020.
Attention libraries applying for E-rate: Valerie Oliver wants you to know that “March 26, 2020 is the last day to file an FCCForm 471 requesting E-rate discounts for the upcoming funding year.”
The Alaska State Library has entered a contract with WhoFi to make available their WhoFi Library Edition wireless session measuring tool. Libraries can opt-in at no cost to them and so far 38 have. We believe that having an automatic, consistent tools for wifi session statistics will provide value for Alaskans.
How?
In addition to having technological measures to protect privacy of library wifi users, the State Library’s contract with WhoFi states they will fully observe Alaska’s Library Confidentiality law (AS 40.25.140. Confidentiality of library records).
Learn more about our new program and see a list of our current participating libraries on our Getting Wifi Statistics page. If your library would like to opt-in to WhoFi Library edition, please have your director contact Daniel Cornwall, Library Technology Consultant, Alaska State Library.
The Alaska State Library is pleased to announce the hire of Jack Kovaleski as our new OWL Librarian. He is moving from Indiana to Juneau, Alaska and will start here on Monday, March 23rd. We asked Jack to introduce himself and here is what he had to say:
Hello, Alaska! For the past seven years I have worked to make library resources and services available to the people of Monroe County, Indiana. I recently completed a Master of Library Science at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana. Most recently, I have been working at the IU Libraries Moving Image Archive creating metadata and description for digital scans of educational films. In one of my favorite roles at the local public library, I performed outreach duties such as driving the bookmobile to reach geographically remote and other underserved populations in the county. One of my favorite reading interests is poetry. My favorite book of poetry I read in 2019 was Ada Limón's The Carrying. I am delighted to join the State Library and to serve the state employees, librarians and community members of Alaska.
We hope you will welcome Jack to the Alaska library community as he starts his new duties. We are very excited to have him start here. Which brings us to the next part of this article.
The OWL Librarian position is one of the re-alignments that happened as a result of last year’s budget cycle and ongoing staffing needs. Jack will spend 40% of his time on OWL, eventually taking over much of the day to day communication with libraries, internet service providers, videoconferencing staff. etc. Daniel Cornwall will retain the overall management of OWL and take lead in policy calls. About 50% of Jack’s time will be spent on digital projects production work for the Alaska State Library. It’s this digital project piece that has us excited about Jack’s previous work in this area. The remaining time will be other duties as assigned.
Daniel’s position has also been realigned. While his OWL time has been reduced, he will still continue to provide technology and internet consulting and training to libraries. He will also be doing digital projects work for the Alaska State Library, focusing on prototyping, designing workflows and troubleshooting.
The Sheldon Jackson Museum February Artifact of the Month is a pair of moccasins (SJ-II-X-164). The moccasins were donated to the museum in 1992 by Helen Waters who had received them originally from her aunt and uncle, a Mr. and Mrs. Franklin Adams.
Read more about these moccasins »
News from our friends at the Alutiiq Museum:
Before there were pick-up trucks, there was the Alutiiq/Sugpiaq angyaq (open boats). Crafted explicitly for heavy seas, and mass transportation, and made from local materials, these historic skin-covered boats were used in Sugpiaq society for harvesting and traveling. Angyaq were owned by families.
The Alaska State Committee on Research honors the creativity, traditional ecological knowledge, and craftsmanship of the Alutiiq/Sugpiaq angyaq and inducts these large open boats into the Alaska Innovators Hall of Fame class of 2020.
“It was import to us that this ingenious watercraft to be recognized and remembered,” said Dr. April Laktonen Counceller, Executive Director for the Alutiiq Museum. “The boat, and growing knowledge of its manufacture, are symbolic of our community’s journey. Just as angyat carried many people, the journey to relearn angyaq construction has been a community experience, with many people involved.”
While it's unknown when angyat were first invented, archaeological finds from the Alutiiq village of Karluk suggest these boats are at least 400 years old. The construction of angyat was suppressed during the Russian conquest of Kodiak. Fur traders confiscated and destroyed angyat as a way to make it difficult for Sugpiaq communities to gather, flee subjugation, and/or retaliate. Consequently, knowledge of these boats and their construction faded from living memory.
For the rest of the story, including the resurrection of these amazing craft, check out the Alutiiq Museum’s press release.
The Cordova Times recently shared this program notice from the Cordova Public Library:
Life Hacks for Kids is a free weekly after-school program at Cordova Public Library for students grades four through six. Students will learn useful life skills such as using common household tools, restaurant etiquette and ordering, grocery shopping, laundry, camping, first aid and fire safety, and basic sewing.
Does your library offer a similar program? How is it being received? How are participants demonstrating the skills? We’d love to hear about your program!
On the subject of life skills, we wanted to highlight an Alaska Public Media article on how the Anchorage Museum is providing an opportunity for people to learn ways of mending their clothes. These monthly workshops are led by textile artist Amy Meissner.
For more, including a workshop photo and four minute audio piece, visit:
LISTEN: Anchorage clothes-repair workshops revive the practice of mending. By Casey Grove, Alaska Public Media - Anchorage - February 13, 2020
The workshop is a program of the Museum’s SEED Lab.
Lani Hotch, credited in the creation of Klukwan’s Jilkaat Kwaan Heritage Center, recently received an award from United States Artists for her contributions to the field of traditional arts. From the KNBA article:
The fellowship honor comes with week-long retreat at the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan and a $50,000 cash award to be spent at her discretion.
For more, visit:
Klukwan weaver Lani Hotch receives national honor for traditional arts. By Claire Stemple. KNBA, 2/4/2020.
Nicholas Galanin, an artist with a Tlingit and Unangax̂ background who lives in Sitka recently had some of his work and philosophy featured in the publication ARTnews. The article focuses on his new exhibit at the Peter Blum Gallery in New York City. From the article:
The sculptures, paintings, textiles, and installations in the exhibition, at Peter Blum Gallery on the Lower East Side, focus on Galanin’s standing as a Tlingit and Unangax̂ artist exploring Indigenous identity and various conceptions and misconceptions surrounding it. “To balance out the diversity of medium and process was, as always, interesting, because I do a lot of different projects,” Galanin told ARTnews during a walkthrough of the exhibition. (As he wrote in Kindred Spirit: Native American Influences on 20th Century Art, a book published in conjunction with an earlier group show at Peter Blum: “I work with concepts, the medium follows.”)
“These are maps and exit routes for cultural objects from institutions,” Galanin said, pointing to two new works made over the past year on deer hides pinned to a wall. The first—Architecture of return, escape (Metropolitan Museum of Art)—has arrows charting ways out from where Northwest Coast objects are kept at the Met, and the second—Land Swipe—shows green spaces and underground transit patterns in Manhattan that were Indigenous travel routes in the past. Both address “the simple fact that objects often were removed from communities forcefully or through theft,” Galanin said—but also diverging perspectives on “care for cultural objects, and repatriation and restitution as forms of oppression.”
For more, visit:
Ancient to the Future: Nicholas Galanin Aims to Change How Indigenous Art Is Understood. By Andy Battaglia. ARTnews, February 13, 2020.
If you are a computer programmer, web developer, or someone interested in software, the Alaska Developer Alliance could be for you. They offer monthly in-person meetups in Anchorage, Juneau and Fairbanks and participation in other areas is available through Zoom web videoconferencing.
For examples of talks done at monthly meetups see the Alaska Developers Alliance YouTube videos page.
Other ways to connect with the Alliance:
If you’re into Slack, the Alliance has a channel for you.
If you are involved in maintaining websites or searching for online information, you may have heard of the “3-Click Rule” - "Users won't go more than three clicks past your homepage to get to anything."
In a recent blog post, library web expert Laura Soloman disputes that this is still true, if it ever was. She argues in part that people’s reliance on search engines means that people are rarely three clicks away from anything. Also, the research supporting the “3-Click Rule” is sparse.
For the argument, see her 1/30/2020 blog post: The “3-click rule” has been hogwash since it’s inception.
Do you disagree? Drop us a line!
March is Women’s History Month and our friends at STARnet has Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) resources for that:
Every year, libraries have the opportunity to host Women’s History Month events related to NASA’s scientific explorations of the universe. Using a suite of resources from NASA’s Universe of Learning, you can host your own Girls STEAM Ahead with NASA event to celebrate and highlight the contributions of women to astronomy.
Get More Details | Programming Resources
From our friends at the Smithsonian Transcription Center:
Transcribe Girlhood History
Girlhood: (It's complicated), a new signature exhibit opening at the National Museum of American History on June 12, 2020, showcases the unexpected stories of girlhood in our nation's history. Beginning today and continuing through the summer, we're joining the effort to celebrate and share the diverse experiences of American girls through new Transcription Center projects from around the Smithsonian. From published ads to personal diaries, historic collections from the Archives of American Art, the Smithsonian Institution Archives, the National Museum of American History, and more, are included. Join us as we explore these materials and learn more about what it means to be a girl.
Click here to explore new, upcoming, and completed projects. And don't forget to join the conversation on social media using #BecauseOfHerStory!
According to the technology company Open Vault, median monthly usage by broadband subscribers in 2020 is on a trajectory to surpass 250 GB for the first time. If this happened, it would be nearly a 25% increase from 2019, when the recorded median was 190.7 GB. From the Open Vault Press Release:
Using similarly historical factors for high volume subscribers, OpenVault expects that by the end of 2020 “power usage” of more than 1 TB per month will account for at least 12% of all subscribers, a 60% increase from EOY 2019, and that “extreme power usage” of more than 2TB will reach 1.4% of subscribers, an 80% increase from EOY 2019.
These numbers are premised on a national average download speed of 128 Mbps, which isn’t frequently seen here in Alaska and the rise of super high definition video (4K, 8K, etc). But these numbers imply that libraries everywhere should expect to see their data usage rise and plan accordingly.
For additional information and a link to the full report:
OVBI: median broadband usage on pace to surpass 250 GB per month in 2020. by OpenVault | Feb 11, 2020 | Quarterly Advisories
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