Greetings from UASC! In (early) celebration of Saskatchewan Library Week (Oct 18th – 24th), we put together a couple of entries for the SLA’s annual Book Spine Poetry contest. We perused the Neil Richards Collection of Sexual and Gender Diversity to tie it in with our current display, Year of Queer 2, which is set up on Murray ground floor.
The topical entry:
The second one, not so much on topic:
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!
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:
Another speedy month as we run head-on towards Christmas. November seems to have been extra short–but we still managed to fit a lot in, including two mini-displays. The first one was for Remembrance Day, which featured 349 poppies, one for each of the U of S men who served in the First World War.
The second , which has just recently gone up and will probably stay up until after Christmas, is a quirky winter display sharing such joys as the Snow Gopher (1966) .
Hello, Snow Gopher.
Anyway, if you want to feel amused, experience some holiday cheer, or sense the icy despair of the season (possibly all at the same time), check out the ground and third floor cases.
I also have a poem to share:
(ahem)
The Archive
Where do all the old things go?
To the Archives, don’t you know.
And who can help you find things here?
An Archivist seeks far and near!
“I am looking for a book”
On the shelves brave Archivist looks.
hunting and searching every nook.
“I would like to see a letter”
Our Archivist finds this and something better:
An Archivist is a real go-getter
Where has our brave archivist gone?
To find a photo—won’t be long!
Archivist searches in a box
Archivist searches behind locks
Archivist searches at her desk
Archivist searches East and West
Archivist searches in the stacks
Archivist follows ALL the tracks
Archivist hunts down a single file. . . .
And pulls it out with a smile.
I’m thinking we need a series of children’s books. Like “Where’s the Archivist?” and “The Back Corner Girls and the Growly Grumbly Rumbly Slide Scanner”
Come with me on a time machine ride back to 1994. For some of us this it will evoke dim memories of kindergarten and for others…well it will make us shake our heads and marvel at how quickly time passes. Jean Chretien was our Prime Minister. Forrest Gump and Pulp Fiction were box office smashes and Kurt Cobain committed suicide. The World Wide Web was born. Vancouver endured its first Stanley Cup defeat riot. Also, believe or not we enjoyed filling our cars up at 55.3 cents per litre.
In 1994, the Archives partnered with the Library to capture a ‘Day in the Life of the Libraries’. This photo project was inspired by the pictorial work A Day in the Life of Canada from 1984. Cheryl Avery, Patrick Hayes and Neil Richards wanted to document life in our library. Three teams went out and shot the facilities, technology, and people during an average day at work.
Photographs add fantastic texture and can provide invaluable and sometimes unwritten little clues to the past. Historical photos also help us interpret the past, present and future especially when change happens at a rapid pace. Perhaps browsing these images will encourage you to reminisce, swap stories or ask questions.
In turning each page of the album I was struck by how much technology has changed and amazed by how little some people age in twenty years!! I’m also left wondering whether it’s time to start up the project again.
Many thanks to Camellea Konkin, Patrick Hayes, Eva Wong, Michael Brockbank and Gail Horbay for gamely making this entry complete!
Photo credit: University of Saskatchewan, University Archives & Special Collections, University Libraries fonds, photos 1994-95
In other UASC news:
UASC enjoyed the launch of the Courtney Milne website and the exhibition event. Exhibition catalogues may be purchased in softcover or hardcover.
We also enjoyed a lovely thank you lunch at the University Club hosted by the University’s Great War Commemoration Committee. The Great War website has seen its official launch but we will continue to add material to it well into 2018.