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Today is the last day I work this year. My grades are in, my to do lists for next year perpared, everything is interfiled or shelved, the processing room and my office are vacuumed and wiped down, I have students lined up to work or intern or volunteer, and supplies and collections on hand. I think it's going to be a rough start of term with Omicron, so I am as prepared as I can be with backup plans. I wish everyone a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

We have boxes of historic holiday greeting cards and postcards in the Clarke. Here are a few examples.   ,

The Clarke has images in multiple formats documenting Christmas. These images include family Christmas trees, downtown decorations, painted store windows, and buildings decorated for the holidays. Above is a nice example, a glass-plate negative of 5 girls and a dolly each sitting on a small chair near a small Christmas tree on a table in the 1890s photographed by Owen P. Safford of Flint, Michigan. By the 1880s he worked as a druggist (pharmacist) and photographer. Back then photographers made the chemical concoction to put on the plates to create the photographs. Having chemical knowledge and access to chemicals was very helpful. Little wheelbarrels in the lower corners of the image and small toys on the table are visible. If you look at the tree carefully there are candles, small bells, a string of popcorn, and some small photographs of girls' faces on round, oblong, or star-shaped Christmas ornaments. I believe we are looking at the photographer's daughters and their images ...

  A fully-revised Cultural Diversity Competency course taught by Helen Wong Smith is being offered via the SAA Zoom platform. This live course is scheduled for January 24, January 31 and February 7, 2022, from 3:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. U.S. central time (each day). Early-bird registration deadline is December 27, 2021. Participants will be provided with the most up-to-date information and readings on this critical topic. You’ll also be able to participate in live discussion with the expert instructor!   We all would like to believe that we are aware of Cultural Diversity Competency (CDC), but what exactly does it stand for? Helen Wong Smith says it’s the ability to function with awareness, knowledge, and interpersonal skill when engaging people of different backgrounds, assumptions, beliefs, values, and behaviors. In this workshop you’l...

  Scholarships available for  "What Now? Reflection, Reckoning, and Recovery" RBMS 2022 Tuesday, June 21 – Friday, June 24, 2022 New Haven, CT   The Rare Books and Manuscripts Section (RBMS) of the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) is currently accepting scholarship applications for the  2022 RBMS Conference, What Now? Reflection, Reckoning, and Recovery , the first hybrid RBMS conference, to be held in New Haven, CT and online, from June 21-24, 2022. The  deadline to apply is January 24, 2022 , and applicants will be notified on or before March 18, 2022.   RBMS is committed to increasing equity, diversity and inclusion in its membership and the special collections and archives professions. Accordingly, preference is given to applicants from underrepresented groups that have been historically marginalized or excluded due to race, ethnicity, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, economic background, age, and/or ability. For m...

 This is a SAA announcement: December 15, 2021— Our hearts go out to so many people in the wake of the devastating tornadoes in  Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Illinois, Mississippi, and Missouri.  Even though a major disaster has been declared only for Kentucky (to date), the  Heritage Emergency National Task Force  is prepared to support state cultural agencies, arts organizations and cultural institutions, and local and state government entities that have been affected.   Life safety and life-sustaining activities remain the highest priority. Please check on the status of your colleagues, grantees, constituents, and members in the above states.   Please help disseminate the following information  to help the public salvage cherished photographs, letters, and other irreplaceable objects:   Save Your Family Treasures | FEMA.gov.  This FEMA site offers guidance to help individuals and families salvage their treasured family belongi...

There is no limit, amazingly, to the variety of containers in which people store collections and in which they are donated to the archives.  This week is the first time I've received a flash drive in a VHS videotape case, although I have received information in a wide variety of containers over the years. Sometimes they are taped or stapled to containers. Here are some of the containers I've experienced: boxes-wooden, cardboard, plastic, decorative and plain, handmade or purchased; envelopes of all shapes, sizes, and materials-paper, plastic, carboard; photographic storage containers, a wide variety, including slide carousels in boxes, plastic pages for negatives of all shapes and sizes, and wooden boxes for glass-plate negatives; bags of all kinds, shapes, sizes, and material- shopping, garbage, clothing bags, and food storage baggies, as well as  plastic wrap and tin foil; luggage and briefcases; milk crates; desk organizers and portfolio file carry cases, both the kind you ...

For my final semester at CMU, I was a hybrid intern at the Clarke Historical Library under archivist Marian Matyn. (Hybrid here means Tabitha completed part of her internship in the Clarke and the rest online.)I was wrapping up my undergrad feeling a bit lost, not knowing what my next step after graduation would be. I enjoyed my studies, but lacked experience in any relevant fields, and COVID-19 only made it harder to move forward. My internship at the Clarke was the jumpstart I needed to get excited about my future. During my time there I processed material for the first time, organized existing information, and creating finding aids, while taking in supplemental information from Marian. My experience at the Clarke pushed me towards the decision to further pursue a career in the archival world and I begin working towards my master’s degree in Library and Information Sciences at Wayne State University. I am now wrapping up my first semester of graduate school and am currently interning...

 SAA Courses beginning in Jan. include the following: Courses below count towards the in-person requirement for the A&D and/or DAS program. Jan. 12:   Preserving Digital Archives  (DAS) Jan. 24, 31, Feb. 7:   Cultural Diversity Competency Feb. 9:   Appraisal of Digital Records  (A&D, DAS) Feb. 14-16:   Encoded Archival Description 3  (A&D) Mar. 7, 14, 21, 28:   Advanced Topics in Financial Management   NEW!   Apr. 4:   Encoded Archival Context (EAC-CPF)  (A&D) Apr. 5-6:   Enhancing Digital Access   NEW!  (DAS) May 3 and 5:   Arrangement and Description: Fundamentals (A&D) To add multiple courses, click the  Add Registration  button during your check out process. DEI Webcasts for Archives Managers Available On-Demand   We launched four new webinars for archives managers to take your knowledge of and commitment to DEI principles and practices to the next leve...

Today is Dec. 7th, the 80th anniversary of the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the catalyst to our government declaring war against Japan and entering WWII. I was profoundly moved when my family had the privilege of visiting there in 2018. Some day nobody will be alive who was actually at Pearl Harbor when it happened. That is why documenting through oral history interviews and personal papers is critically important for our national heritage. My Dad always talked about how the news over the radio and the declaration of war affected him, the shock of his consequent drafting as a 35 year old married man and plumber, and his overall negative experience serving in the South Pacific as a U.S. Navy SeaBee. The Clarke does not have any manuscripts related to anyone who was in Hawaii on Dec.7th. Those are more appropriately housed in the archives at Pearl Harbor. We do have the scrapbook of a man who served in Hawaii later in the war, 1943-, Floyd Dain. He was in Pearl Harbor during a 1944 comme...

This month two of our wonderful CHL students graduate from CMU. Nichole has worked in the reading room and Josie processed and described archival collections for me in the archives.  We will miss them and wish them a positive future. Commencement is a wonderful exhibit theme that reoccurs each December and May. This is the first time I remember our students actually being featured in our commencement exhibit, which is a very nice addition to the historical images.

This is an interesting story about how Kenya's old libraries from the colonial era are transitioning. It is appalling to me, but not surprising, that only whites could use the libraries. Libraries originally were private property of the wealthy and powerful. To limit anyone access to books and resources to me is terrible.   https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/29/africa/book-bunk-kenya-library-renovations-africa-spc-intl/index.html     This makes me think about the history of public libraries and their collections which are freely accessible to the public. When I lived and worked in Pennsylvania I first heard the word free used in library titles, such as in the Free Library of X town. This was part of the changing concept of  libraries being more accessible to more of the public in the late 19th century. The Free Library of Philadelphia was chartered in 1891 as "a general library which shall be free to all." by Dr. William Pepper (https://libwww.freelibrary.org/about/his...

Here's an interesting story about how a Boise library book was returned 110 years after it was checked out. Librarians don't know who returned it.  https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/29/us/library-book-returned-110-years-later-trnd/index.html  This reminded me of news reports about  library books that were returned to West Germany after the Berlin Wall fell and the two Germanies reunited. People held onto them hoping for reunification and the chance to return the books and kept them safe for decades