Next month has a lot of opportunities for displays, programming, etc:
If you know of a month, week or day commemorated in October that is either important to Alaskans in general or to libraries, archives or museums, drop us a line!
(Caption: US Poet Laureate Tracy K Smith speaking to group of 160 poetry fans)
Recently, U.S. Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith visited Juneau as part of her second-term project, “American Conversations: Celebrating Poems in Rural Communities.” Ms. Smith offered a public reading at the Father Andrew P. Kashevaroff State Library, Archives, and Museum on Wednesday, August 29, at 6 pm; where Alaska State Writer Laureate Ernestine Saankalaxt' Hayes provided an introduction. The poetry reading and discussion will be recorded for later broadcast on 360 North and online at www.360north.org/at-the-apk/.
As part of her visit, Ms. Smith gave away copies of “American Journal: Fifty Poems for Our Time,” featuring the works of 50 living American poets of different backgrounds, offering 50 different outlooks on America, including stories of loss, experiences of immigrants, outcries of injustice and poems that evoke history and celebrate America’s diversity.
“I’m very excited about the opportunity to take what I consider to be the good news of poetry to parts of the country where literary festivals don’t always go,” Smith has said. “Poetry is something that’s relevant to everyone’s life, whether they’re habitual readers of poetry or not.”
Here are a few more photos from the evening:
(Caption: Division Director Patience Frederiksen and US Poet Laureate Tracy K Smith)
(Caption: MaryLou Gerbi and US Poet Laureate Tracy K Smith)
Photo credits: MaryLou Gerbi of the Friends of the Alaska State Library, Archives and Museum
Libraries and schools around the country are adopting Virtual Reality (VR) systems. The State Library purchased their own to learn more about the educational possibilities of VR and to demonstrate the technology to visiting library, archives or museum staff, educators and Alaska State Employees.
Since we started our lab, we have demonstrated virtual reality to school library staff, school superintendents, and parent agency staff.
Here are a few details about the library’s set up:
VR Lab Hardware: $1,547
VR Lab Software: $57.67
For our initial demo offerings we acquired:
For more information, to offer comments or schedule future demos, contact Daniel Cornwall, Internet and Technology Consultant at Daniel.cornwall@alaska.gov. We’d also like to hear from you if you know of educational VR applications you think we should know about.
We also plan to bring the State Library’s VR lab to the 2019 Alaska Library Association Annual Conference. If you attend, we hope you’ll stop by our display!
Our latest accessibility tip from Division Webmaster Amy Carney:
A brief, descriptive, and unique title is important for electronic document and webpage accessibility. It is often the first thing read by a screen reader. It provides context and orientation when visiting that document or webpage.
The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), an international standard for web accessibility, requires that the title describe the topic or purpose of the page in order to meet minimal conformance. Since the document title is often used when navigating browser tabs or windows, it is important for all users. Search Engine Bonus: Your document will have this necessary metadata to be more findable.
Where to Add Your Title
Word, Excel, PowerPoint (2016)
File > Info > Properties > Title
PDF (Acrobat)
[picture 1 from 20180907-acc-1]
File > Properties… > Description > Title
Webpages
Include a title element inside the head element.
<head>
<title>Give Documents a Title</title>
</head>
Note: For users of content management systems (e.g. WordPress, Drupal), the title should automatically happen, but sometimes the titles of uploaded PDFs in a CMS can be a challenge to transfer to the browser.
The Research page of the Sheldon Museum & Cultural Center offers online finding aids on the following collections (abstracts are from the Museum):
If your library, archives or museum has a research page or online finding aids, we would love to highlight them for you.
The following item came across the Alaska Museums list but is likely to interest attendees from libraries and archives.
Hello Museums Alaska members,
For those of you who will be in Nome next week, we welcome you to join us this coming Thursday, September 13th, from 6:30-8:30p at the Katirvik Cultural Center in the Richard Foster building for Salmon Shadows: Art to Inspire Critical Conversations About Alaska's Salmon System.
The Alaska Salmon Fellows and Kawerak's Katirvik Cultural Center are partnering to bring this pop up art show and community conversation to Nome!
If you’re on Facebook, you can visit the event page.
Thanks to Julie Raymond-Yakoubian, Kawerak Social Science Program Director for highlighting this opportunity for conference attendees.
The Atlas Obscura blog recently posted about Rockwell Kent’s Wilderness: A journal of quiet adventure in Alaska that describes the life that Kent and his son had after moving to Fox Island off Seward back in August 1918.
Kent came to the island to paint and spend more time with his son. He managed both. The Atlas Obscura post shares some of the illustrations, provides background on book and corrects a few of Kent’s misimpressions.
Overall, Atlas Obscura loves this book, saying:
One hundred years after Rockwell Kent, father and son, went to Fox Island, their own lonely, snowy paradise, discovering Kent’s book feels like uncovering a secret. Now little-known, Wilderness makes going off to the wilds of Alaska—as long as they’re not so remote, not as Into the Wild as the places Christopher McCandless sought—seem like an excellent idea. The book counts as a forgotten classic of nature writing, with striking illustrations by Kent, that paints a picture of people settled in lonely landscapes, a dream that seems impossible a century later.
The original text of this book is in the public domain and electronic copies can be found through the Internet Archive. Print copies of various editions are available through the Alaska Library Catalog.
Source:
The Wild Alaskan Island that inspired a lost classic. By Sarah Laskow, Atlas Obscura, August 28, 2018
Using the powers you already have to increase your confidence is theme of Michael Stephens’ one page column:
Stephens, Michael. 2018. "Librarian Superpowers Activate!." Library Journal 143, no. 13: 16. Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost (accessed September 8, 2018).
The article is based on an interview with Sally Pewhairangi, a New Zealand librarian. In response to a question on boosting confidence in one’s digital skills, Ms. Pewhairangi replies:
The good news is you [already] possess six qualities that can help boost your digital literacy confidence—adaptability, critical thinking, curiosity, empathy, patience, and problem-solving—and use them to varying degrees for different situations. The one quality that boosts your confidence with things digital—your digital superpower—is the quality you prefer to use regardless of the situation. It is the one that comes most naturally to you and makes you feel confident when you use it.
Based on our experience with Alaskans working in libraries, archives and museums, we agree. You are adaptable, critical thinking, curious, empathic, patient and above all, great problem solvers. We know you can learn what you need to do, analog or digital.
The full article is available through the SLED Databases. If you have trouble getting to the article, visit the SLED/ALN help page.
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