The Anchorage Daily News published an obituary of former Alaska State Library employee Mary Jennings Penzenik in their June 13, 2018 issue. We were especially touched by this line:
Mary made friends easily and was kind to all.
This was so true. Goodbye, dear Mary. Your kindnesses will be remembered for many years.
ASL-P87-1709 - Distant view of rescue ship at Princess Sophia wreck
The traveling exhibit “Titanic of the North” opened at the Alaska State Museum on June 1st and was a success. Here’s an account of the event from Division Director Patience Frederiksen sent out to Division employees the day after the opening:
From: Frederiksen, Patience A (EED)
Subject: Congratulations to All on Princess Sophia Opening and Lecture
My congratulations to everyone involved in the Princess Sophia exhibit that opened yesterday. The exhibit is fascinating and eerie. The 60 minute film had loads of people watching both sitting and standing. The gold jewelry made you think about the person who last wore it. As you tour the exhibit, think about the height of the blue green paint on the walls and how it makes you feel. Wonderful job!
As for the First Friday, the addition of Coast Guard, Red Cross and Local Emergency Preparedness tables in the atrium paired perfectly with the content of the exhibit. The Friends buffet was pretty much gone by 7 PM, which made clean up easy.
The lecture last night on the ship's china patterns was a big surprise to me and probably to the other 160 people (standing room only) in the lecture hall. An underwater archaeologist Jacques Marc led off with a photo essay on the Sophia and how the ship was organized. Local diver Annette Smith presented a film of divers around the Sophia with operatic music and images of ghostly white anemones attached to the hull. Jacques then described the 15 patterns of chinaware used on the Sophia and presented his theory on why it had so many patterns of chinaware, more than any other steamer on the West Coast.
No one left the lecture hall until these two fascinating speakers had answered more than 20 questions from the audience. For example, when asked about the only survivor of the disaster being a dog, Annette posited that the 100 mph winds, blowing snow, and freezing water made it unlikely that a dog survived. “Besides,” she said, “Every shipwreck on the West Coast always has a lone dog as a survivor.”
This lecture was filmed by KTOO and LAM staff, so be sure to watch for it on KTOO’s 360 North web page for At the APK.
The Sheldon Jackson Museum’s June Artifact(s) of the Month are two Inupiaq mountain sheep horn spoons or dippers (SJ-II-T-28 and SJ-II-V-26). The larger of the two sheep horn dippers was collected by Sheldon Jackson from the Noatak River, while the smaller, shown on the left in the adjacent photograph, was collected from Point Barrow by Captain Michael Healy of the US Revenue Cutter Service. The dipper was just one of nearly a half dozen artifacts given to Sheldon Jackson by Captain Healy, an ambitious, driven man and America’s first African American sea captain.
Learn more about Captain Healy and these artifacts on the June 2018 artifact page. Visit the Artifact of them Month page for previous artifacts.
Now that you know how to fix common barriers, like inconsistent heading hierarchy, no alternative text for images, and low color contrast, what then? Test! There are many amazing automated testing tools available, but the easiest to work with when you’re just starting out is the WAVE tool by WebAIM. It’s available as a Firefox or Chrome extension. If that doesn’t work for you, you can use their website.
Automated testing is great for getting started, but it doesn’t guarantee that your pages are 100% accessible to all people. Manually testing with a keyboard, screen reader, and real users are still highly recommended.
The Alaska State Archives recently documented some of their holdings on the Aleutians campaign in World War II in a May 31, 2018 blog post. The post features pictures and documents relating to:
For more information on the Aleutian Islands Campaign and Alaska during WWII in general check out the documentary “Alaska at War”, available on the Archives YouTube channel.
In April 2018, the Information Services section of the Alaska State Library created a guide to assist librarians and members of the general public to find resources on immigration and becoming a citizen. The sections of this guide are:
We hope your staff and patrons will find this guide of use.
As part of the State Library's internship program, we placed Tim Bakken with the Anchorage Public Library as a Small Business Outreach Intern. We asked him to introduce himself. Take it away Tim!
Hello, My name is Tim Bakken and I graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in December of 2017 with my MLIS. I had worked previously as the head librarian for one of UW-Madison's research department's and as a shelving and collection librarian with UW-Madison's high density storage facility. I like to do anything outdoors and I am currently spending my off time in Anchorage trying to catch Salmon at Ship Creek. If anyone has any tips, let me know because I need them! In my future career I hope to work with first year or incoming students at a community or technical college.
I am at Anchorage Public Library for the summer as the Small Business Outreach Intern. It is my hope and goal to create training materials for staff and patrons on how to use the small business resources the library has to offer. I will also be augmenting our website to include more small business related material and resources. Overall with Alaska's unemployment rate being so high, I think this is a great time for the library to step in and play a role in economic and community development. I am really glad to be here, and I think the project is an important one to get started.
Check out the newest edition of the Dewey Decibel, American Libraries podcast. The June 8, 2018 episode is all about the ALA Policy Corps and tips for librarians who would like to become advocates. The episode features interviews with four ALA Policy Corps members, including Deborah Rinio, former school librarian in Fairbanks.
Thanks to Amy Steffian at the Alutiiq Museum, we became aware of some heartening news.
On June 1, the Alutiiq Museum assisted two local tribes in reburying the remains of over 122 ancestors, and then broke ground on a new public park – adjacent to the museum and developed in partnership with the City of Kodiak. The park will honor Kodiak’s Alutiiq heritage.
For more information, photos and an artist's rending of the park, check out these two press releases:
If your institution has a story of collaboration with local tribes, we would love to share it with the rest of the state.
Hat tip to Dawn Biddison at the Smithsonian Arctic Studies Center for sharing the following news item on the Alaska Museums list. We expect this to be of interest to public and school librarians across the state as well:
Material Traditions: Twining Cedar is a set of 15 instructional videos and bilingual guide with comprehensive instruction and cultural context on how to prepare materials and weave Annette Island-style red cedar bark twined baskets.
Led by master weavers Delores Churchill and her daughter Holly Churchill, the videos feature Tsimshian weavers Kandi McGilton (apprentice of Delores and Holly Churchill), Annette Topham (daughter of master carver Jack Hudson and granddaughter of master Tsimshian weaver Lillian Buchert) and Karla Booth (granddaughter of master Tsimshian weaver Violet Booth). An accompanying 51-page bilingual guide is based on extensive work by Kandi McGilton with Metlakatla elder Sarah Booth, a fluent speaker of Sm’algya̱x, the Tsimshian language.
This co-production of the Smithsonian Arctic Studies Center and The Haayk Foundation was made possible through generous support from The CIRI Foundation, Smithsonian Council for Arctic Studies, Metlakatla Indian Community, Central Council of Tlingit & Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska, Sealaska Heritage Institute, Alaska State Council on the Arts and Anchorage Museum.
You can also find the videos online by searching for "Twining Cedar Sharing Knowledge Alaska." A limited number of DVD copies and full resolution HD files are available by request.
From our friends at GPO:
The U.S. Government Publishing Office published a new Learning Adventure on Ben’s Guide that explains the unique relationship that the Federally recognized tribes have with the U.S. Government. The Adventure is available in all three learning levels: Apprentice, Journeyperson, and Master.
Ben's Guide to the U.S. Government is designed to inform students, parents, and educators about the Federal Government.
Add a link to Ben's Guide on your website with our colorful Ben's Guide badge. Download yours today!
Graphically Speaking is the title of a seven page article on graphic novels in the June 15, 2018 issue of Library Journal. According to the abstract:
The article discusses the rising popularity of graphic novels as of June 2018, which was attributed to libraries and their patrons. Topics covered include the performance of libraries above the traditional retail channels in 2017, increase in graphic novel circulation and increase in unique comic book users since 2016 according to hoopla digital owner and cofounder Jeff Jankowski, and comic titles from across the literary and entertainment industries.
This article is available in full text in the SLED Databases. If you have problems accessing this article from within Alaska, visit the SLED Databases ID and Password Help page.
Recently the bloggers at OverDrive (our vendor for Alaska Digital Library) put together a post called The top 10 Libby and OverDrive questions answered. If you or your patrons have wondered how to send books to Kindle, manage how downloads are done, or just want to know what this OverDrive thing is about, this post will link to good answers.
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