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.
Monday, October 13, 2014
Monday, September 08, 2014
Start your week off with some interesting stories from around the world. Enjoy!
"Denying Historians: China’s Archives Increasingly Off-Bounds" from The Wall Street Journal
At last week’s meeting of the Historical Society for Twentieth-Century China in Taipei, roughly 200 historians from Asia, the United States and Europe gathered to share their latest research. But during lunch hours and coffee breaks, the one question that kept popping up wasn’t about any given paper or project. Instead it was: “How’s your archival access been lately?”
This wasn’t just idle conference chitchat.
"The Fate of Feminism in Pakistan" from The New York Times
KARACHI, Pakistan — On Feb. 12, 1983, 200 women — activists and lawyers — marched to the Lahore High Court to petition against a law that would have made a man’s testimony in court worth that of two women. The Pakistani dictator Gen. Muhammad Zia ul-Haq had already promulgated the infamous Hudood Ordinance, which reflected his extremist vision of Islam and Islamic law. Now, it was clear to many Pakistani women that the military regime was manipulating Islam to rob them of their rights.
"Touching Images of Unaccompanied Minors—From 100 Years Ago" from New Republic
From the time Ellis Island opened in 1892, to 1954 when it closed, more than 12 million immigrants from all over the globe—many of them children—passed through its doors. Almost 40 percent of Americans can trace at least one of their ancestors to Ellis Island. As child migration surges along the southwest border, a look back at some of the children that embarked on a long voyage across the ocean in the hope of becoming Americans.
"200-Year-Old Alcohol Found in Shipwreck Is Still Drinkable" from Smithsonian Magazine
Earlier this summer, researchers discovered a 200-year-old bottle of liquid while excavating a shipwreck off the coast of Poland. Based on the mark on the neck of the bottle, the archaeologists assumed that the stoneware bottle was full of mineral water from Seltsers, Germany. But preliminary test results have shown that the bottle actually contains alcohol—probably a form of vodka or the gin-like jenever.
Friday, September 05, 2014
Digitizing the Women's Liberation Movement: A conversation with Movement Leader Alix Kates Shulman and Behind-the-Scenes perspectives from Molly Bragg and Kelly Wooten Wednesday, September 10, 9:30-11:00 a.m. Perkins Library, Room 217 This program will give insight both to the women’s liberation movement and to the life cycle of a digital project, and celebrate the launch of the Women's Liberation Movement Print Culture digital collection. “Documents from the Women's Liberation Movement: An On-line Archival Collection,” was created in 1997 to support a Duke course on the Social History of American Women, and became one of Duke Libraries’ most popular digital collections. Read more about the event at the Sallie Bingham Center for Women's History and Culture.
Monday, September 01, 2014
Proposal Evaluation
- Inclusion of diverse or international perspectives and initiatives.
- Relevance to SAA members and other interested attendees.
- Interaction and engagement with session participants.
- Potential impact on archival practice.
Session Formats
- Traditional. 75- or 60-minute session consisting of two or three fully prepared papers of 15 minutes each and a commentand- discussion period. Please do not propose sessions of more than three presenters. A chair is not required for this format; chair duties may be performed by one of the speakers. Paper titles are required.
- Incubator Session. 60-minute session consisting of two presentations of 10 minutes each that describe project, research, or collaboration initiatives in their developing or formative stages, and including at least 40 minutes for audience feedback and discussion.
- Special Focus Session. 60-minute session designed to highlight innovative archives or records management programs, new techniques, and research projects. Audience participation is encouraged.
- Panel Discussion. 75- or 60-minute session consisting of a panel of 3 to 5 individuals discussing theories or perspectives on a given topic. Similar to the traditional model, the goal of a panel discussion is to have a more informal session with time for audience feedback. Presentation titles are not printed in the program. A moderator is required; a commentator is optional.
- Poster Presentation. Report in which information is summarized using brief written statements and graphic materials, such as photographs, charts, graphs, and/or diagrams mounted on poster board. Presenters will be assigned a specific time at which they must be with their poster to discuss it with attendees.
- Lightning Talks. Eight to eleven lively and informative 5-minute talks in a 60-minute Lightning Talk session format. The session chair secures commitments from speakers and compiles all presentation slides to ensure timely speaker transitions. Proposals in this category may suggest recommended presenters, and commitments should be secured soon after the proposal is accepted.
- Alternative Format. Don’t feel confined by the prescribed formats—suggest an alternative format or create your own! Alternative format sessions may take a variety of forms. Examples include world café (http://www.theworldcafe.com/ method.html) and fishbowl discussions (http://en.wikipedia .org/wiki/Fishbowl_(conversation). Or you could go “old school” and propose a debate with opposing views and rebuttals. We welcome your creative ideas about how your topic might best be addressed! Proposals in this category must specify the format and session facilitator and briefly describe how the format will enhance presentation of the material and may suggest up to four presenters who will be involved in the session.
New for 2015: Pop-Ups!
Reminder for Proposal Submitters and Session Participants
Proposals for the 2015 Annual Meeting are due on October 8, 2014.
Thursday, August 28, 2014
Barnard Library Hosts History of Women's Education Open Access Portal Project Meeting
Archivists, administrators and programmers from the Seven Siblings (formerly Seven Sisters) met at Barnard College on 7/25/2014 to discuss the collborative "History of Women's Education Open Access Portal Project." Project participants include staff from Barnard, Bryn Mawr, Mt. Holyoke, Radcliffe (Schlesinger Library/Harvard University), Smith, Vassar and Wellesley colleges.
Visit the link above for the rest of the article.
Monday, August 25, 2014
The National Archives at Kansas City will present in partnership with the American Association of University Women and the League of Women Voters a program titled “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Minor?: Women’s Suffrage on the Prairie” at 6:30 p.m. Aug. 28. A 6 p.m. reception will precede the program.
Friday, August 22, 2014
From the Baltimore Brew:
Why no mention in Wikipedia of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s years living in Baltimore’s Bolton Hill?
Why nothing about Esther McCready, the trailblazing East Baltimore nurse who desegregated the University of Maryland School of Nursing?
And as for the Great Railroad Strike of 1877, isn’t Wikipedia giving short shrift to events in Baltimore when it says the epic unrest began solely in Martinsburg, West Virginia?
At a Baltimore Wikipedia Edit-a-thon scheduled this Saturday at Red Emma’s, anyone with an interest in correcting errors and omissions in Baltimore’s online history can join like-minded types to do so.
Read more. . .
Tuesday, August 05, 2014
Meeting Date(s):
August 13, 2014, 5:15pm - 7:15pm
Marriott Wardman Park, Virginia B
Washington, DC
Join us for the WCRT annual business meeting to discuss activities, issues, and concerns related to women’s collections.
As announced previously, our special guest will be Heather Slania from the National Museum of Women in the Arts.
Here is a description of Heather's talk:
Online Art Ephemera: Web Archiving at the National Museum of Women in the Arts and Beyond
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 will present the considerations and challenges of archiving this material as well as discuss how arts institutions are beginning to work together for more collaborative web archiving. This will be discussed in the context of the collection development plan of the library’s archives; questions related to our traditional archival collections are also welcome.
In addition, we are trying to organize an informal dinner outing immediately following the meeting, tentatively at the nearby Lebanese Taverna.
If you're interested in joining us for dinner, use the handy meetup spreadsheet SNAP kindly has made available. You can only add a certain number of attendees to each row, so please start another row if you find it already full. If we have enough responses by Friday, we can go ahead and try to make a dinner reservation.
Thursday, July 31, 2014
- Panels: we prefer to receive proposals for complete, 3-paper sessions but will consider individual papers as well.
Panel: pdf form, word form. Individual: pdf form, word form. - Roundtables: informal discussions of a historical or professional issue.
Form: pdf form, word form. - Working Group Discussions: informal discussions of pre-circulated papers.
Form: pdf form, word form. - Scholarly Shorts: five-minute presentations of a research project.
Form: pdf form, word form.
Monday, July 28, 2014
Start your week off with some interesting stories from around the world. Enjoy!
"The amazing story of a 4,000-year-old necklace found in a dumpster" from Newsnextbd.com.
"A 4,000 year old necklace and two discs are now in The National Museum of Ireland after they were found in a dumpster. The necklace, called a lunala, was worn by the early kings of Ireland. It is thought to date from between 2,300 and 1,800 BC."
"Big Berkshire Conference 2014 Report" by Heather Munro Prescott on NursingClio.org.
"Last month, I attended the 16th Berkshire Conference on the History of Women (aka the Big Berks) at the University of Toronto. For those unfamiliar with this event, it is a triennial research conference held by the Berkshire Conference of Women Historians (aka the Little Berks)."
"The Girl with a Pearl Earring: The Making of an Icon"
, a lecture by Arthur K. Wheelock Jr., curator of northern baroque paintings, National Gallery of Art (audio only)
"At the end of the 19th century, Johannes Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring sold for a pittance, an unknown work by an artist who was only beginning to achieve recognition. Today it is revered as a great masterpiece, so famous that it is recognizable by its title alone, with the name of its maker being almost superfluous. In this lecture recorded on June 1, 2014, at the National Gallery of Art, curator Arthur Wheelock examines the reasons why this image resonates so profoundly with contemporary audiences."
"Crusty 118-year-old sandwich found stuffed in UK church organ" from Mid-Day.com
"The perfectly preserved remains of a sandwich have been discovered in the bowels of a church organ —more than a century after they were put there."
"Anna Yegorova’s Red Sky" at ozy.com
"Being a World War II fighter pilot wasn’t all glamor and bravado as Hollywood suggests. It meant coaxing a temperamental machine into the air, dodging lethal bits of metal at high speeds and testing one’s physical limits and mental resolve. And for Anna Yegorova, one of the few women to fly alongside the men in World War II, that was just the beginning."
Thursday, July 24, 2014
To learn more about the Pacifica Radio Archives, please visit: http://pacificaradioarchives.org. .jpg)
Monday, July 21, 2014
Do you have news you would like to share with your colleagues?
Do you have interesting women's collections you would like to share with the world?
Please email any posts, news articles, or suggestions to wcrt.saa@gmail.com.
And don't forget to connect with us on Facebook so you don't miss any women's collections news.
Right: "Victory Waits on Your Fingers"
Produced by the Royal Typewriter Company for the U.S. Civil Service Commission
NARA Still Picture Branch, NWDNS-44-PA-2272
Thursday, July 17, 2014
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