Eighty-eight students came to visit the therapy dogs yesterday, at the Ed/Mus Library. It was lovely to see the students interact and de-stress. There were six dogs to help out (not all at one time. Add the plush one for a total of seven! 
When we at the Science Library look up from our computers to do our distance eye exercises, this is what we see:
7:50 am: Serials staff arrives with chocolate and other goodies to bait the dog-captor.
7:53 am: Katelyn walks to the newspaper chute on the ground floor to gather the papers only to find one homesick and frightened Winston waiting for her! He looked a little different than last time she saw him. From what we can gather from his new attire, the dog-napper has a terrible sense of fashion- pink bunny ears and a camo-backpack? And inside that backpack were some suspicious looking “mini eggs” (cough cough POISONED!! cough cough). What kind of sick person could do such a thing to an unwitting dog? And to toss Winston aside into a newspaper bin like some kind of Dickensian orphan?
7:55 am: Katelyn rushes Winston up to Serials to reunite him with his Serials family. All are relieved to have him home- but there is still an unease in the air as the “whodunit” question remains unanswered. And besides that, there is still no sign of the firefighter outfit he wore when he was taken. This brings up some other possible character sketches of our dog-thief. Serials staff is currently on the lookout for a suspicious person who is around 10 inches tall with a black plastic firefighting hat and tiny red vinyl shorts. If you see such a person, contact the Serials Crime-Tips Hotline at 1-800-DOG-NAPP
8:57 am: Amy and Gail receive a suspicious letter in the mail; inside are two photos of Winston in an Easter candy isle, and with a new-found lady friend.
Stay tuned for updates as this story develops!
***IMPORTANT UPDATE***
12:40 pm: Fern arrives in Serials with a chocolate dog in tow. Christine suspects that the chocolate dog looks familiar.
We check one of the photos that arrived in the mail earlier this morning:
A-ha! It seems that this chocolate bunny was purchased from the same store that Winston was in! It is a pretty strange coincidence that Fern would give us the same chocolate dog!
‘Fess up, whoever you are!
The month in review — on time!
First off, a couple of areas calling for congratulations:
SHO (Saskatchewan History Online) had it’s kickoff last week, with Craig Harkema and Joel Salt hosting two SHO-off, SHO-and-tell sessions. While they’re still tweaking a few things here and there (and will continue adding to the site and tweaking for the rest of their mortal lives), this is a truly impressive piece of work. Two particularly neat features are the “set making” tool, which works sort of like a pinterest board in that you can create a specialized collection of images, and the historypin map tool, which is a great way to explore regional histories in the province. To take a look at the site, visit : http://saskhistoryonline.ca/
Also our own Dee Gibson, who spent much of last year in residency in Iceland, has recently had a show installed at the Mendel Art Gallery. The collaboration between Dee Gibson and Terry Billings is entitled Time and Water. The exhibit will last until June 7th, 2015, and the reception will be held on May 28th at 8 p.m.
In other news, I was given the opportunity to attend a workshop put on by the Saskatchewan Council for Archives and Archivists (SCAA) on flood/disaster planning and recovering. This workshop was conducted by veteran conservator Jane Dalley of Dalley-Froggart Heritage Conservation Services , and was crazy useful. We even had the opportunity to rescue some waterlogged photographs, posters, and documents. Jane gave us a number of useful forms and handouts, two of the most useful being this flowchart and accompanying table.
I thought I’d take this opportunity to share some of the things UASC is currently doing on the disaster preparedness front (aside from the lovely preparedness kit in the blue bin). In the last year we have had a greater number of fire extinguishers installed due to the highly flammable nature of much of our holdings, including some CO2 extinguishers, which are larger, clunkier, but less damaging to the documents.
We also purchased a freezer, which is useful in a number of situations.
Not only does a freezer help slow the decay of things like acetate-based film reels (as shown above–vinegar syndrome, anyone?), it can also be used in a situation where materials have gotten wet as a “buy time” measure before full restoration can occur. Ziplocking a wet book (getting the air out first) and popping it in the freezer keeps it in a safe state of stasis until proper drying can occur. Of course, our cute little freezer couldn’t manage a large-scale disaster!
Something that can happen to photos when they get wet and then dry improperly, or when they are stored incorrectly, is curling. The way to deal with this is to get them wet again! Or rather, moisten them until they become pliable, and then flatten them using blotting paper and weights or books, or whatever’s handy. Our moistening chamber (invented and constructed by Patrick) is shown below.
Excited to get an Archives and Special Collections specialized disaster plan put together!
The last bit of news is that, in honour of Trans* awareness week, I put together a little blurb featuring some Trans* children’s books from the Neil Richards Collection for Sexual and Gender Diversity. Check it out here!
7:45 am: Katelyn arrives at work, discovers Winston the Serials Dog is missing and in his place is a ransom note.
7:50 am: Christine arrives at work, Katelyn and Christine discuss possible suspects.
7:55 am: Art arrives in Serials; Christine and Katelyn accuse Art of stealing Winston, to which Art replies – “the note isn’t written in my style of writing”
8:10 am: Christine suspects Aaron wrote the note, as the note seemed to be in the style of his writing.
8:40 am: Fern arrives in Serials- agrees with Christine that Aaron is the likely suspect.
9:10 am: Aaron arrives in Serials, denies stealing Winston as he believes Fern has stolen the dog and blamed it on him as payback for stealing her St. Patrick’s Day decorations.
9:15 am: Laurianne and Mary Lou are alerted about the recent dog-napping. Laurianne laughs maniacally for an uncomfortable amount of time.
9:16 am: Serials staff accuses Laurianne of stealing Winston.
STAY TUNED FOR MORE UPDATES AND CHOCOLATE…
Exciting to see the video on the Star Phoenix website with Carolyn’s voice and our Alberta Slim artifacts! Way to go!
http://www.thestarphoenix.com/Alberta+Slim/10916549/story.html
We wanted to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day here at Law, but wanted to put our own spin on it. Here is our newest display. We hope you all enjoy.
February is one of our biggest months in UASC, as this is typically when appraisals happen on collections that have been donated over the past year. This means that we must have all of our collections processed and ready for the appraisers when they arrive to work their magic.
This year saw some great new additions to our collections, and I would like to share a bit of information about each of them — from mounds of Aboriginal research materials, to music, theater, and more, the list is well worth checking out for anyone interested in seeing what we have, and getting an idea of what we do.
In other news:
Adele came by the Education & Music Library today on her day off to bring us individual vases for ours desks! THANKS, Adele!
It’s that time of the year again, when we celebrate all the amazing books that Big Brother doesn’t want us to read. “And how do you celebrate the man trying to censor us?”, you may ask. “Why by creating a display that showcases many of the books that have been questioned, banned, or protested”, we reply. For those of you who didn’t get to stick it to the man and check out the Murray Library display here are some pictures.
Pssst… don’t tell but we even saw a few students check-out some of these books. Freedom to Read Week lives on!
