Tuesday, September 29, 2015
Wednesday, November 05, 2014
Dovie Horvitz Collection Showcases Extraordinary Evolution of Ordinary Women
Bum pads, cockade feather fans, petticoats, talcum powder tins, postcards depicting the “10 Commandments for Wives,” and garters made by prisoners. The breadth of the Dovie Horvitz Collection reflects the lives and progress of women over the last two centuries – exactly what the collection’s namesake intended.
“Everything from the artwork, to the post cards, to the clothes, even the makeup all tells a story,” Horvitz said. “I look back now and think of how extraordinary the transformation has been. This isn’t about showcasing celebrities. It’s about the day-to-day lives of ordinary women.”
Now, more than 1,300 images and scanned texts of items in Horvitz’s are available through the University of Wisconsin Digital Collections site. While the collection is new to the site, it actually is decades in the making.
Read the rest of the story at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Libraries website.‘Dress thyself like an old witch’ postcard. The seventh in a series of ten postcards titled, “The 10 commandments for wives.” From the Dovie Horvitz Collection / UW Digital Collections 2010.27.1
Thursday, October 30, 2014
From Princeton.edu:
"The papers of Nobel laureate Toni Morrison are now part of the permanent library collections of Princeton University, where the renowned author served on the faculty for 17 years.
The announcement was made today [October 17, 2014] by Princeton President Christopher L. Eisgruber to a packed audience in Richardson Auditorium, addressing attendees of the conference "Coming Back: Reconnecting Princeton's Black Alumni." Eisgruber made the announcement after a tribute to Morrison's legacy at Princeton by trustee Ruth Simmons and before Morrison's on-stage interview with Claudia Brodsky, professor of comparative literature.
Eisgruber said: "Toni Morrison's place among the giants of American literature is firmly entrenched, and I am overjoyed that we are adding her papers to the Princeton University Library's collections. This extraordinary resource will provide scholars and students with unprecedented insights into Professor Morrison's remarkable life and her magnificent, influential literary works. We at Princeton are fortunate that Professor Morrison brought her brilliant talents as a writer and teacher to our campus 25 years ago, and we are deeply honored to house her papers and to help preserve her inspiring legacy."
Click here to read the rest of the article at Princeton.edu.
Monday, October 27, 2014
MEETING MINUTES
Women’s Collections Roundtable
August 13, 2014, 5pm-7pm
Washington DC
Officers:
Helice Koffler | Co-Chair
Tali Beesley | Co-Chair (absent)
Stephanie Bayless | Vice Co-Chair
Leslie Fields | Vice Co-Chair (absent)
Rachel Appel | Incoming Vice Co-Chair
Rachel Grove Rohrburgh | Incoming Co-Chair
Welcome/Introductions/Installation of New Officers
• Officers began the meeting with a general welcome and asked all attendees to sign in. We went around the room for brief introductions and introduced the new officers during this process.
• The meeting was well-attended - 41 attendees total, but only 26 signed-in as requested. Attendees hailed from institutions across the United States, including American Folklife Center, Rutgers University, National Archives and Records Administration, Tulane University, University of California Berkeley, and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University.
Presentation
Online Art Ephemera: Web Archiving at the National Museum of Women in the Arts and Beyond
Heather Slania, National Museum of Women in the Arts
Artist archives usually contain important primary source materials such as brochures, catalogues, checklists, artist statements, and dairies—but what happens when this ephemera is only online? The National Museum of Women in the Arts has been web archiving art-related online ephemera using the Internet Archive's Archive-It since November 2011.
Heather Slania presented the considerations and challenges of archiving this material and discussed how arts institutions are beginning to work together for more collaborative web archiving.
Slania’s presentation was well-received. During the questions and discussion period, attendees asked about tools to use for web-archiving, social media archiving, and coordinating with other institutions to avoid duplication of effort.
Old Business
WCRT Bibliography
o We reminded members about the WCRT bibliography, which is a selection of published works that discuss archival theory and practice in relation to women’s archives/collections. We invited attendees to submit new additions to the blog whenever possible and asked for volunteers to read through the document and make sure all information was correct.
WCRT Blog
o We discussed the progress of growing the blog’s readership and the need for member post contributions. We discussed what has been posted and what the group would like to see posted in the future.
o We encouraged attendees to send any press release or official news they wanted to share to the WCRT email address, even if the news had already been posted on their own social media sites.
o We send around a sign-up sheet allowing members to volunteer to write a post of pick a specific month to search for women’s collections related news to share.
New Business
Wiki-Edit-A-Thon
o We discussed the possibility of sponsoring or facilitating a nationwide Women’s History Month Wiki Edit-A-Thon in March 2015.
o Attendees discussed the pros and cons of attempting this kind of event in their institutions. Those attendees who had held an event like this before shared their experiences.
o Overall, attendees were unsure if they would hold an Edit-A-Thon, but were interested in the WCRT exploring the possibility of providing a “How to Host a Wiki-Edit-A-Thon” information packet.
Tumblr
o We discussed the possibility of starting a WCRT Tumblr. Attendees were very much in favor of Tumblr.
o We discussed having leadership set up the Tumblr then having one or more members take over as admin to prevent confusion during turnover periods. Helice Koffler volunteered to be one of the admins. Mark Vassar from the Schlesinger expressed a desire to contribute many of their posts created for other media outlets.
o WCRT will move forward with setting up a Tumblr page.
Program Committee Report
• The meeting concluded with a report from the SAA Program Committee about the 2015 meeting and call for presentations.
• The 2015 meeting will be held in a convention center instead of a large hotel. Sections and roundtables will no longer be endorsing presentations, but are encouraged to facilitate coordination between members with possible related topics.
• The program committee is encouraging proposals in a number of new formats and is introducing free form pop-up sessions to encourage continued discussion of popular topics during the conference.
Sixteen attendees continued the discussion and networking at a scheduled dinner at the nearby Lebanese Taverna.
Thursday, October 23, 2014
SAA members and friends of the archives profession submitted 142 education session proposals and 29 poster proposals for ARCHIVES 2015, the 79th Annual Meeting of the Society of American Archivists in Cleveland, Ohio August 16-22, 2015.
The 2015 Program Committee members will begin their review of proposals during the week of October 20, and will meet in Chicago November 14-16 to determine the final selections. Here is their tentative proposal notification schedule:
November 17-21: 2015 Program Committee initiates discussions with session proposers whose sessions require revision(s) if they are to be accepted.
November 24-28: Thanksgiving week; most communication halts over the holiday.
December 1-5: Continued communication about required revisions.
December 8-19 (tentative): 2015 Program Committee communicates with all session proposers and chairs and all poster proposers regarding the status of each proposal.
December 19-31: "Official" accept letters sent to each participant on accepted sessions and posters (i.e., each chair, speaker, commentator, moderator, poster presenter). Please allow up to 10 business days for receipt of letter.
December 18, 2014 - July 2015: Alternate proposals slotted on an "as needed" basis (i.e., substituted for a session that suddenly cannot go forward). There is no definite timeline for when alternates will be used because dropped sessions are unpredictable by nature. Alternates are slotted depending on timeframe and topic, so the chances of one alternate proposal being slotted over another cannot be determined.
April 15: Registration opens, and presentation times are available via the public conference schedule.
Monday, October 20, 2014
The Beaumont Public Library System has been awarded the TexTreasures Grant in the amount of $18,490.00. This grant is made possible from the Institute of Museum and Library Services to the Texas State Library and Archives Commission under the provisions of the library Services and Technology Act. (2015)
The grant will digitize and provide descriptive historical background information related to the Melody Maids Collection. Once this information has been digitized, it will then be uploaded to the “Tyrrell Historical Library Collections Digital Collections” site for patrons to use as an online research tool.
The Melody Maids was a girls’ choir that traveled the United States and the world to perform for military personnel located at military installations from 1942 to 1972. The Melody Maids Collection is on permanent display in the Rose Room of the Julie Rogers Theatre in Beaumont, Texas. Several scrapbooks are already available online @http://cdm16058.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/search/collection/p16058coll33/searchterm/Melody%20Maids%20Scrapbook/field/all/mode/all/conn/and/order/title/ad/asc. With the help of this grant, we will be able to add 155 to 185 additional scrapbooks to the collection.
Thursday, October 16, 2014
Though she has made her name and home in Washington D.C. for the past three decades, distinguished LSU alumna, veteran political strategist and commentator, author, and Democratic Party official Donna Brazile makes no secret of her pride in being a native of Louisiana and an LSU graduate. Now an important piece of Brazile’s personal history has returned to her home state with the recent donation of her papers to the LSU Libraries Special Collections.
Photographs, correspondence, speeches and other writings, memoranda, reports and analyses, campaign management and research files, and memorabilia comprise the collection. Together the 32 boxes of materials document Brazile’s involvement in Democratic politics and the Democratic National Committee; her interest in and efforts to mobilize African American voters, elect women to office, and advocate for voting rights; her public speaking and teaching; her work with the Louisiana Recovery Authority; and her participation in every presidential campaign between 1976 and 2000, including as manager of the Gore-Lieberman bid for the White House. She was the first African American to lead a major presidential campaign. Visit the link above to read the rest of the news release.
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