Today we take a quick look at the SLED history primary sources guide Fishing, fisheries, and canneries:
This guide lists collections of primary source material related to fishing, fisheries, and canneries that are accessible to the public at archives, libraries, and museums in Alaska. The guide is divided into pages by institution, and you can navigate between pages using the menu on the left-hand side of the page. Click on the linked collection names for more detailed guides to the collections. Not all collections have detailed guides online, and it may be necessary to contact the institution that holds a collection for more information. This guide is not meant to be comprehensive, and there may be additional collections containing primary source material relating to fishing, fisheries, and canneries.
Selected items related to fishing, fisheries, and canneries from many of the institutions represented in this guide have been digitized and added to Alaska's Digital Archives.
Some of the collections highlighted in this guide are:
All of the Alaskan Primary Sources guides on SLED are supported in whole or in part by the Institute of Museum and Library Services through the Library Services and Technology Act, administered by the Alaska State Library.
An announcement from the Alaska Library Network:
Kat Dej-Panah is the new Girls Who Code Partnership Coordinator for Alaska, taking over for Emily Ong. There are several Girls Who Code clubs in schools across the state. Visit girlswhocode.com or contact Jodi at the Alaska Library Network at info@aklib.net for more information about the organization.
According to Josephine Dawson, who manages the child nutrition program for the Alaska Department of Education and Early Development, there are nine public libraries participating in the summer meals programs. Children in these towns come to their public libraries for meals:
Two more libraries are hosting meals in the library space outdoors through partner agencies; these two are not listed here.
Ginny Jacobs, cataloger at the State Library, cataloged the 24 digital books found at AASB Digital Books Showcase Local Stories, Language, and Culture. These 24 interactive digital books were created by students to record their local history and stories. The record for each book links to the Digital Book Showcase web page. More than 92% of Alaskans use the Alaska Library Catalog, a shared catalog used by public and academic libraries across the state. More people should be able to find these unique digital books, then read the books at the AASB web page. A search on the words book slam workshops will bring up all 24 records.
The Sheldon Jackson Museum's June Artifact of the Month is a Yupi'k boy's hat or uivquq (SJ-II-S-198). The hat was collected by Sheldon Jackson from the Kuskokwim region. Until recently, the museum had little information about the hat – it was evident that the hat was made from a small animal and pieced together hide that one had been covered in fur, eaten away by insects at some point in its history, that there were remnants of red cloth strips, and that it was sewn together by hand with commercial thread.
Since March we’ve been doing a presentation by presentation look at sessions done at the 2019 Alaska Library Association (AkLA) Annual Conference where presenters had posted slides and other materials. At this rate, we’re unlikely to finish our retrospective before the next conference, so we’re picking up the pace so we’ll finish by the end of July.
Today’s highlights:
KCUB in Unalaska ran an article on 6/6/19 on a new exhibit at the Museum of the Aleutians. The exhibit is called “Chiilulix: The Long Journey Home." According to the article:
"Chiilulix: The Long Journey Home" will explore the history of four Aleutian communities that were never resettled after the evacuation of World War II — as well as the Lost Villages Project that eventually helped Unangax̂ survivors and descendants to reconnect with those places.
For more, including an interview with the museum's director, Dr. Ginny Hatfield, and its education programs coordinator, Lauren Snyder, visit:
MOTA To Open New Exhibition On Lost Villages Project. By Laura Kraegel. KCUB, June 6, 2019.
With grant funding from Museums Alaska, the Alutiiq Museum will purchase works from two Kodiak artists—Hanna Sholl and Stacy Studebaker. The works are:
Please see their press release titled Works by Sholl and Studebaker Added to Museum Collection for more information and for photographs of the works being purchased. Amanda Lancaster, the Alutiiq Museum’s collections manager, is available to answer questions. Her phone number is 844-425-8844, x22, and she may be e-mailed at amanda@alutiiqmuseum.org.
The June 2019 Newsletter from the Gustavus Public Library had this fun sounding event:
Youth Art Open Studio, Tuesday June 18, 2-4 pm (drop in)
Open studio is a chance to explore art media and create in a relaxed, friendly atmosphere. Basic art supplies will be provided, but please feel free to bring your own as well.
Does your library or museum have an open art studio? For who? How often? How well is it received? We’d love to share your experience with others.
We’re a bit late in sharing this item but it still seems relevant. In May 2019, the Clausen Museum in Petersburg installed a bench called “Ectoplasmic Salmon Settee #1” outside the borough assembly chambers. The bench was part of the travelling Decolonizing Alaska exhibit that traveled to several locations, including the Alaska State Museum, last year.
For pictures of the bench and more about the installation, read this article from KFSK:
Petersburg museum installs “Decolonizing” bench in municipal building. By Joe Viechnicki. KFSK, May 24, 2019.
We recently received this announcement from our friends at the Schools, Health & Libraries Broadband (SHLB) Coalition:
Washington, D.C. (May 16, 2019) - Today the Schools, Health & Libraries Broadband (SHLB) Coalition applauded the introduction of the Leading Infrastructure for Tomorrow’s (LIFT) America Act (H.R. 2741) by Rep. Frank Pallone Jr., and all 31 Democrats on the House Energy and Commerce Committee. In addition to authorizing $40 billion over the next five years to expand high-speed broadband access, the bill recognizes the importance of connecting community anchor institutions to gigabit-speed broadband.
John Windhausen Jr., executive director of the SHLB Coalition, made the following statement:
“We thank Chairman Pallone for authorizing funding for the deployment of gigabit broadband for anchor institutions in the LIFT America Act, and granting them eligibility for the Broadband Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Program. Anchor institutions provide essential online services to those most in need, such as the elderly, rural residents, schoolchildren, healthcare patients and people of color – but they need high-capacity bandwidth to provide these modern education and telehealth services.
“While the LIFT America Act is a big step in the right direction, the SHLB Coalition would like to work with Congress to give local communities a role in selecting the most appropriate broadband provider. We also hope to avoid using the flawed 477-based maps when identifying unserved and underserved areas, and suggest that the bill accommodate broadband availability information gathered from consumers.”
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About SHLB:
The SHLB Coalition is a nonprofit, 501(c)(3) advocacy organization that supports open, affordable, high-quality broadband connections for anchor institutions and their surrounding communities. The SHLB Coalition is based in Washington, D.C. and has a diverse membership of commercial and non-commercial organizations from across the United States. To learn more, visit www.shlb.org.
A 6/6/2019 article in Library Journal reported on the work of the Xwi7xwa (pronounced “whei-wha”) Library at the University of British Columbia (UBC) in Vancouver — the only Aboriginal branch of a university library system in Canada – in centering “the knowledge and experiences of the communities they serve by better representing them in the collections they share.
One eye opening example of the bias in Western libraries shared by this article concerns the groupings of Aboriginal people. From the article:
For example, the LC E99 class places Aboriginal people in the History of the Americas class and then geographically scatters Indigenous works by arranging them alphabetically. Tsimshian materials from the Pacific Northwest coast of Canada are cataloged beside materials relating to the Tübatulabal people of the interior mountains of California, next to those of the Tukkuth Kutchin people of northern Canada’s Yukon, beside the Tzotzil people of the Chiapas highlands in southern Mexico. This dynamic of dispersal through classification is reminiscent of the dispersal of First Nations children, communities, and lands through colonial government policies.
The Xwi7xwa library uses a variation of the Brian Deer Classification System to bring back together things that Western classification has pulled apart. For more on the work they do to support Indigenous scholarship see:
Indigenous academic library serves as a model for centering First Nations cultures, communities, collections. By Karen Adjei. Library Journal, June 6, 2019.
Courtesy of Carolyn Martin at the NNLM Pacific Northwest Region Dragonfly blog:
According to the CDC the number of measles cases in the first five months of 2019 has surpassed the total number of cases each year for the past 25 years. More than likely, your community has been affected even by just reading the news, social media, or knowing someone living in areas that have reported cases. Some of your patrons may be asking questions, stating opinions or perhaps wanting to know what can be done. However, your library system may be hesitant to address this topic as vaccines can be a very sensitive subject and difficult to address.
Two upcoming webinars are focusing on immunizations which may provide some helpful information for libraries, particularly public libraries. Both of these sessions are free and will be recorded for viewing later.
From our friends at the ALA Public Programs Office:
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) and the American Library Association (ALA) Public Programs Office invite libraries to apply to host Americans and the Holocaust, a traveling exhibition that examines the motives, pressures and fears that shaped Americans’ responses to Nazism, war and genocide in Europe during the 1930s and 1940s.
The special library exhibition — based on the exhibition at the USHMM in Washington, D.C. — will travel to 50 U.S. public and academic libraries from 2020 to 2022.
Read the project guidelines and apply online by August 9, 2019.
The Americans and the Holocaust traveling exhibition addresses important themes in American history, including Americans’ responses to refugees, war and genocide in the 1930s and ‘40s. This exhibition will challenge the commonly held assumptions that Americans knew little and did nothing about the Nazi persecution and murder of Jews as the Holocaust unfolded.
Drawing on a remarkable collection of primary sources from the 1930s and ‘40s, the exhibition focuses on the stories of individuals and groups of Americans who took action in response to Nazism. It will challenge visitors to consider the responsibilities and obstacles faced by individuals — from President Franklin Delano Roosevelt to ordinary Americans — who made difficult choices, sought to effect change, and, in a few cases, took significant risks to help victims of Nazism even as rescue never became a government priority. The USHMM and ALA PPO hope to challenge people to not only ask “what would I have done?” but also, “what will I do?”
Selected libraries will receive:
Grantees will be required to meet minimum programming and reporting requirements. See the project guidelines for details.
Americans and the Holocaust was made possible by the generous support of lead sponsor Jeannie & Jonathan Lavine. Additional major funding was provided by the Bildners — Joan & Allen z”l, Elisa Spungen & Rob, Nancy & Jim; and Jane and Daniel Och. The Museum's exhibitions are also supported by the Lester Robbins and Sheila Johnson Robbins Traveling and Special Exhibitions Fund, established in 1990.
When the Anchorage Field Office of the US National Archives (NARA) closed, NARA took a chunk of Alaska related records with them to Seattle. NARA promised to digitize a portion of these records. Some time ago they established a web page titled Alaska Records Digitization Project. From the page:
In order to make NARA's Alaska records more broadly available to the public, we are digitizing the most in-demand records.
The National Archives requested input from stakeholders and the public on those records that should be digitized first. In 2014, NARA combined this feedback with historical reference activity, access restrictions, and preservation issues to create a digitization list for 2015 and 2016.
For the 2017-2018 project list, the National Archives combined the public's initial input with a list of Alaska records requested in 2015 to 2016 and narrowed the list to the most popular records. NARA also received specific input from the Alaska Department of Transportation, Alaska Department of Natural Resources, and the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
This digitization list has shifted as we made the determination that access issues prevented us from digitizing some of the promised records. Work on various series was halted and on others began ahead of schedule. Additionally, new series were added based on interest.
We hope that Alaskans, particularly K-20 students and faculty, will find this trove of primary sources useful in their explorations of Alaska’s history. A few of the completed digitization series that look interesting or helpful to us are:
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