Artist Ray Troll with youth displaying the artwork made during their activity.
As part of the Crusin’ the Fossil Coastline exhibition, Artist Ray Troll provided a youth activity on Saturday May 4th. We have this report on the event from librarian Claire Imamura, who assists in coordinating youth events with the State Museum:
What a fun weekend with Ray! Forty kids created amazing drawings inspired by Cruisin’ the Fossil Coastline with bright crayons on black paper and then had their minds blown by the 3-D chromadepth glasses that make any image three-dimensional. We couldn’t even fit all the kids in the group shot! We have permission to share these pictures.
A big thanks to our volunteers, and special acknowledgement to Salissa, Christine, Mary, and the Visitor Services staff, who fielded hundreds of calls from desperate parents and kids since the workshop filled up on April 24. Your professionalism and patience is awesome.
Claire
Art makes us happy!
Today we take a quick look at the SLED history primary sources guide: Alaskan legislators' papers:
This guide consists of collections of the papers and records of Alaskan Representatives and Senators serving in the Alaska State Legislature, held by Alaskan archives, libraries, and museums. This guide is an overview of collections containing significant amounts of material relating to these legislators and is not meant to be comprehensive or include every collection containing material related to the these individuals and their legislative activity.
This guide is divided into three sections: legislative records in general, then territorial period legislators and state period legislators. Click on the linked collection names for more detailed descriptions of the collections. Not every collection listed has a description online. For more information about a collection, please contact the institution that owns the collection.
A few of the collections mentioned are:
In most cases, you will need to visit an institution above to access the materials.
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.
The Friends of the Sheldon Jackson Museum sent in this report of their successful silent auction:
April 6th was our Annual Silent Auction at the museum and we are very pleased with the results. This year we raised over $3000 for the Alaska Native Artists Summer Residency program. 73 items were donated, both Native and non-native art. Among them were original paintings, prints, sculpture, two baleen boats, Japanese glass floats, a seal skin hat, baskets, jewelry and even a Tlingit denim coat.
The event was well attended and people were generous with their bids for this worthy cause. We thank all who participated by either donating and/or buying the auction items. Be thinking about how you would like to participate next year.
If you have after action reports of your institution's activities you'd like to share, send us a write-up.
A recent story on the Petersburg radio station KFSK mentions the recent publication of Tin Can Country. According to the article, the book “tells the story of salmon canneries around Southeast from Excursion Inlet, to Kake, Petersburg, Wrangell, Klawock and Ketchikan. It also tells of the workers in those canneries and the fish traps that supplied them before statehood.”
Research contributing to this book by Karen Hofstad was donated to the Alaska State Library Historical Collections. Another connection between this book and the Division is Anjuli Grantham. Prior to her working as the Curator of Statewide Services for the Alaska State Museum, Anjuli worked with Hofstad for three years, contributing to and editing this work.
Reference: New book packed with history of Southeast salmon canneries. By Joe Viechnicki. KFSK April 29, 2019
The Sheldon Jackson Museum’s May Artifacts of the Month are a pair of Inupiaq masks (SJ-II-E-2 and SJ-II-E-35). The masks were both collected by Sheldon Jackson from King Island in 1893. At first glance, the masks seem relatively simple, but closer examination shows that they were carved in a complex manner to depict three faces and suggest the representation of two different animals.
We recently received word that the Alutiiq Museum opened a three year exhibit on Kodiak plants. From their press release:
Kodiak plants and the many ways Alutiiq people use them are the subject of the Alutiiq Museum’s latest exhibit, Naut’staapet—Our Plants. The displays feature the ethnobotanical knowledge of Alutiiq harvesters combined with photographs and artifacts from the museum’s collections. Much of the information in the show comes from the research of Priscilla Russell, who visited Kodiak communities in 1990 and recorded traditional plant uses for the Kodiak Area Native Association.
“Alutiiq people continue to use plants and the show is a celebration those living traditions.” said Alutiiq Museum Executive Director April Laktonen Counceller. “There are four major sections in the displays—for food, fuel, materials, and medicine. The display also features a banya corner, where our visitors can see what the inside of a modern steam bath and learn how steam activates plant medicines.”
The show includes an interactive art activity. Visitors are invited to make an art card showing a plant important to them. Each card features a place to draw and room for a title and artist’s name.
“The activity encourages people to think about plants in their own lives,” said Alex Painter, the museum’s exhibits coordinator and the designer and fabricator of the show. “It’s also fun to make something in the museum and leave it for others to enjoy. Some people draw local plants they love. Others are thinking about plants they rely on every day, like cotton or coffee.”
Production of the exhibit was generously supported by the Munartet Partnership, the Alaska State Council on the Arts, PetroMarine, and the Kodiak Area Native Association. The show will be available in the museum’s temporary gallery for about three years.
Alaska Public Media recently covered a land acknowledgement workshop hosted by the Anchorage Museum on May 2, 2019.
The article defines a land acknowledgement as “a statement of respect at the beginning of an event acknowledging the Indigenous inhabitants of a place and their claim to the land.”
Also according to the article, “The three-hour workshop was intended as a jumping off point, aimed especially at educators, as a way to raise questions, talk about issues and encourage participants to try land acknowledgments in different settings.”
Does your institution provide land acknowledgement and are you willing to share that acknowledgement with others? Please drop us a line.
Reference: In Anchorage, land acknowledgments are gaining ground, by Zachariah Hughes, Alaska Public Media, May 3, 2019.
Micah Muer of Mat-Su College, UAA provided an introduction to the free citation manager Zotero at February’s Alaska Library Association conference in Juneau. The conference schedule links to a file that combines his presentation slides and presentation notes.
While aimed at academic audiences, we think Zotero may be of use to anyone with a need to collect references and produce bibliographies resource lists.
Micah’s presentation slide did not appear speak to Zotero’s accessibility, but a Portland State University guide to citation managers had this this to say:
Zotero is the most accessible of the two free citation management software recommended by PSU. The Zotero standalone desktop application is accessible with screen reader program. There are also additional plugins that allow Zotero to have custom keyboard commands and additional screen reader accessibility. Discussions about accessibility features, appropriate plugins and other support is available in the Zotero discussion forums.
Veronica Denison recently shared some good funding news for the Consortium Library Archives and Special Collections:
We applied for two grants, and were awarded funding for both of them. One was through the Atwood Foundation, and the other through Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR). Information regarding the grants is below. I also hope to make some of the materials available on Alaska's Digital Archives. The materials to be digitized under the Atwood Foundation are currently at our vendor and are being digitized now. I hope to send out the materials to be digitized under the CLIR grant by the last week of May. Thanks!
- $10,000 from the Atwood Foundation to digitize Anchorage related audio, video, and film. These materials include UAA and APU sporting events, promotional events, and programs; audio recordings of the Anchorage Civic Opera, interviews and news reports of the 1964 Earthquake, Margaret Mielke’s poetry, Alaska Repertory Theatre and Anchorage Symphony League PSA’s, and radio spots and debates of Anchorage legislators.
- $19,002 from the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) Recordings at Risk program to digitize materials related to public health history in Alaska. These materials encompass different facets of health and social science research, which are of interest to current public health physicians and those studying the practice and establishment of health programs and institutions in Alaska.
Congratulations to Veronica and the rest of the folks at Consortium Library Archives and Special Collections.
Everyone – let us know if you’ve got good project or funding news to share.
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