Chronicling America - Access digitized historical newspapers from around the state and country. This is where you'll be able to find newspapers digitized by Alaska's Digital Newspaper Program.
Because of budget cuts and to reduce costs, the Alaska Library Network is ending access to OCLC's ALNCAT as of June 30, 2021. This service is paid for by libraries subscribing to the OCLC General Services Contract. Cost savings from this action are expected to be $11,239 annually. Each participating OCLC Alaska library will receive a proportional reduction in their OCLC bill for the coming year. WorldCat.org remains available to all users for searching and for locating holding libraries.
We recognize that some libraries which do not subscribe to OCLC may have used ALNCAT to find cataloging metadata and/or holdings information. There are at least three alternatives available:
1. Getting MARC records from the Alaska Library Catalog
Go to any member’s instance of the ALC, like the Alaska State Library’s and search for a record like “We are water protectors”:
Holdings for this item are at the bottom of the record. For MARC records:
Click on the “Export MARC” icon. A file ending in MARC.txt will be downloaded to your computer and look like:
2. Search the Library of Congress Catalog. Each record has several MARC options, but none with as straightforward formatting as the MARC you can find in ALC.
As part of the ongoing effort to show how historical topics were covered by older Alaskan newspapers, Christopher Russell of the Alaska Digital Newspaper Program recently blogged about the Teapot Dome Scandal of the late 19th Century. Christopher weaves historic headlines and photos along with a basic sketch of the famous oil scandal taught in classrooms over the United States.
For the entire article and all images, visit:
Teapot Dome Scandal, By Christopher Russell. Alaska’s Digital Newspaper Project blog, 6/7/2021
Looking to write a well-documented report on an important episode of Alaska History? Alaska History Topics from the State Archives are a set of curated topics about Alaska's history are designed to help the student find resources held by the Alaska State Archives. Archivists periodically update these resources and topics.
As of this writing, primary and secondary resources lists were available on the following topics:
New to the Spirit Wraps Around You (SWAY) exhibit page:
June Virtual First Friday
Saantaas’ Lani Hotch (Tlingit), co-curator of The Spirit Wraps Around You, discusses the legacy of weaving in Klukwan, home to the Jilkaat Kwaan Heritage Center.
From our friends at Ketchikan Museums:
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Ketchikan Museums is collaborating with the Pioneer Home for a new oral history program. Have a family member or friend residing at Ketchikan's Pioneer Home? Invite them to share an oral history and treasure the stories shared! You can have a conversation with anyone—parents, aunties and uncles, grandparents, old friends, and even new friends.
Facilitated interviews are available every Wednesday morning by appointment. Getting started is easy and Ketchikan Museums will help! Contact Erika Jayne Christian if you have questions, want to schedule a recording session with your elder at either the Pioneer Home or Tongass Historical Museum, or if you would like to learn how to volunteer to record oral history interviews for Ketchikan Museums.
The Ketchikan Museums Oral History Program works to preserve the rich memories of our community by providing resources and instruction on how to record oral histories, training people who would like to volunteer as Interviewers or Facilitators, and by actively collecting, preserving, and sharing the unique voices of Ketchikan.
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Does your institution have an oral history collaboration with the community in general or with a local institution? Tell us about it!
We noticed that the Seldovia Public Library wrote a blog post on 5/31/21 about a quilt they have on display through July 2021. The quilt celebrates the 50th anniversary of the Kachemak Bay State Park and shows a variety of wildlife in the bay and hills of the park.
To see the quilt and learn who created it, visit Seldovia Public Library’s blog post Kachemak Bay State Park Quilt on Display Through July 2021.
Last week the Homer News reported on a visiting exhibit that opened at the Pratt Museum in Homer. From the article:
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That’s the focus this summer of a visiting exhibit, “In Time of Change: Microbial Worlds,” an art, science and humanities collaboration that invited artists of the north to learn about the world of microscopic organisms and then be inspired to create. Delayed from its planned 2020 opening because of the COVID-19 pandemic, “Microbial Worlds” opened last Friday and shows through Sept. 25.
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For more coverage of the exhibit’s debut in Homer, read:
‘Microbial World’ blends science, art: Exhibit postponed by the pandemic opens at Pratt Museum & Park. By Michael Armstrong, Homer News, 6/10/2021
Learn even more about In a Time of Change: Microbial Worlds by visiting the exhibit website, which includes a virtual tour.
This week, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) released an interactive national map called “Indicators of Broadband Need.” From the NITA press release:
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The public “Indicators of Broadband Need” tool released today puts on one map, for the first time, data from both public and private sources. It contains data aggregated at the county, census tract, and census block level from the U.S. Census Bureau, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), M-Lab, Ookla and Microsoft. Speed-test data provided by M-Lab and Ookla help to illustrate the reality that communities experience when going online, with many parts of the country reporting speeds that fall below the FCC’s current benchmark for fixed broadband service of 25 Mbps download, 3 Mbps upload. This is the first map that allows users to graphically compare and contrast these different data sources.
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If you want to start exploring right away, visit the map.
If the map looks intimidating, use the “find address or place” search box to narrow map to your location. You’ll first see a map with the address you searched on it with an opportunity to “zoom to” the appropriate census block:
Choosing “Zoom to” provides a map with a closer view. Continuing to click zoom to is not necessary to futher narrow your search, but does give you a pretty close up map to provide context. Click in the colored area next to your search for quick internet facts about the census tract your address is in. Clicking on the “…” in the lower right hand box gives you a chance to view the Census Tract info in a table. Putting them all together, you get information like this photo:
On the quick box we can see the estimate for percentage households without any internet access. In the table below, the columns that start with Form 477 are Internet Service Providers (ISP) statements of what broadband is available in the area. For the Census Tract above that would be 1 GB x 50 MB. The columns labeled “Ookla Median” are the median of speed tests submitted by subscribers in the area. For this Census Tract, that would be 24.1 MB x 8.8 MB. This doesn’t mean that the 1GB connection isn’t available, just that most people don’t have that, for whatever reason.
If you explore this map, we’d love to see what you find for your area and whether it matches your actual internet experience.
For additional background and reaction to the new map, see:
Just How Bad Is the Digital Divide Where You Live? : You can finally see with new government broadband maps that clearly highlight the broadband affordability problem in American cities. It's pretty bleak. By Sascha Segan June 17, 2021. PC Magazine.
From our friends at the Government Publishing Office (GPO):
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Register to attend the live training webinar, "An Introduction to Benefits.gov."
Registration confirmation information:
Upon registering, a confirmation email from icSys@icohere.com will be sent with instructions for joining the webinar. To ensure delivery of that email, configure your junk mail or spam filter(s) to permit messages from that address. GPO staff will also email your access information the day before the webinar. If you do not receive your login information, please email FDLPoutreach@gpo.gov.
Prior to the webinar:
For those participating via a desktop or laptop computer (preferred method), a WebEx plug-in must be installed (one-time only). Download instructions. Some features will not be available for users participating with a tablet or smartphone. Devices need to have a WebEx app installed from the device’s app store, which may take time. After installation, the app will ask for you to Allow or Deny permissions.
Some organizations are overwhelmed at the idea of making their websites accessible – that is providing an equal experience to everyone who comes to your website to get information or complete a task. There are companies out there that promise they can make your website accessible with a single line of code.
Sounds too good to be true? Hundreds of people with disabilities and workers in the field of accessibility think so. They’ve put together an “overlay fact sheet” to explain what overlays can and cannot do. Vist the Overlay Fact Sheet for details.
If you’d like to make your website accessible with approaches that most agree will actually improve your website’s experience for all users, check out these resources:
Census data covers a wide variety of topics with many data gathering instruments. One of the most detailed surveys is the American Community Survey (ACS). The information produced from it can be overwhelming even for professionals, so a non-profit journalism support organization pulled the open data from the ACS and gave it a more user friendly interface called Census Reporter. All results from Census Report provide a US Census citation for where the data came from.
There are at least 20 topics available to search and refine by geography. To get started, you can either watch one of their tutorials, or just type your address into the search box and see a whole list of geographics that your address belongs to.
If you check out Census Reporter, let us know what you think.
Last month PC Magazine had some suggestions to help ensure that your loved ones can access and wind down your online life after you die. Read this article to keep your online presence from getting zombified or keeping your relatives locked out of important memories or financial information:
How to Prepare Your Digital Life for Your Death: Death is inevitable. Don't make it harder on those you leave behind. Here's how to let loved ones manage passwords, sensitive data, and social media profiles after you die. By Eric Ravenscraft. PC Magazine, 5/21/2021
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