Do you love Alaska history and making primary sources more accessible? Do you like dealing with technical details and metadata, while using your creative sides to promote unique resources? If you answered yes and are an Alaska resident with an MLIS or equivalent, consider applying to become the next National Digital Newspaper Project Coordinator! This is a long-term, non-permanent, Librarian I position located at the Father Andrew P. Kashevaroff Building in Juneau. It’s open to Alaska residents only and closes on Monday, September 19, at 5 pm Alaska time.
Friends of Sheldon Jackson Museum is seeking proposals for their Winter Lecture / Culture Share Series to be held on Zoom between November 2022 and March 2023. Speakers are invited to submit proposals for a 30-45 minute Zoom presentation, choosing one of six categories.
We are happy to say that the National Endowment for Humanities recently announced that Alaska would receive a 4th grant in the National Digital Newspaper Project, covering 2022-2024. This means that the Alaska Digital Newspaper Project will be able to add an additional 100,000 pages of Alaskan newspapers to Chronicling America! We are excited to continue our work on preserving Alaska’s historic newspapers and making them accessible to everyone.
We will be working to form a new advisory committee to help us select newspaper titles for the coming grant and we will keep you informed of our progress throughout this next cycle!
"Alaska awarded 4th newspaper grant!" by C. Russell, August 25, 2022. Alaska's Digital Newspaper Project: Historic Alaska Newspapers Blog.
The first-ever comprehensive guide to historical sources about the landmark Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA), that marked its 50th anniversary last year, is being released this month by the Alaska Historical Society (AHS).
The three-volume, nearly 1,200-page “Guide to Sources for the Study of the 1971 Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act” identifies the vast majority of documents in existence about the historic claims act legislation located in archives, libraries, personal collections and on-line from Alaska to Washington, D.C. It serves as the premier information gateway for researchers, historians and those interested in the fascinating history of how the largest land claims settlement in U.S. history became law.
The Kodiak History Museum is launching a two-year photography project to record and digitize each of the 2,300 artifacts in its collection.
On Tuesday, the museum announced a grant totaling $43,278 from the federal Institute of Museum and Library Services to complete the work, which began Sept. 1 and runs through 2024.
The project will enable museum users to access the entire collection online, said Executive Director Sarah Harrington.
"This will significantly increase public access to information while amplifying the museum's reach for both on- and off-island learners," Harrington said. "From beginning to end, the project serves the museum's mission to preserve and share Kodiak's history in a widely accessible, free and safe way."
"Kodiak History Museum digitizing its collection" by Steve Williams, September 14, 2022. Kodiak Daily Mirror.
Closes on 10/31/2022. Interested applicants can send questions to Erica Cordeiro.
This is a new program in Fiscal Year 2022. The National Park Service administers this grant program and is interested in developing this program for Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian culture and arts programs. Public Law 117-103, the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2022, provides $250,000 in Fiscal Year 2022 to encourage new entities to apply.
The Secretary of the Interior is authorized to make grants for the purpose of supporting programs for Native Hawaiian or Alaska Native culture and arts development to any private, nonprofit organization or institution which— (1) primarily serves and represents Native Hawaiians or Alaska Natives, and (2) has been recognized by the Governor of the State of Hawaii or the Governor of the State of Alaska, as appropriate, for the purpose of making such organization or institution eligible to receive such grants. Grants will enhance culture and art programs, including traditional and contemporary expressions of language, history, visual and performing arts, and crafts.
Members of the Friends of the Wasilla Library, the Wasilla City Council, the Mat-Su Health Foundation, the Wasilla Noon Rotary, and the Wasilla Library came out on Saturday to celebrate the new StoryWalk.
A StoryWalk is a fun, educational activity that places a children’s story, that is taken apart, and places the pages along a popular walking route, maybe in a park or other popular community areas. Wasilla Public Library took advantage of the sidewalk that circumvents the building...
The project was the brainchild of the Youth Services Library Director Sara Saxton, who had originally bought a StoryWalk from Anchorage, but the material that comprised the StoryWalk was just not quite right for the weather. After speaking with Troshynski, and brainstorming, they reached out to the Mat-Su Health Foundation for some grant money and the State of Alaska Library, Archives, and Museum and received the ‘State of Alaska institute of Museum and Library Services American Rescue Plan Act’ grant.
"Wasilla Library unveils new StoryWalk" by Katie Stavick, September 12, 2022. Frontiersman.com.
A team of scientists exploring an underwater region of southern Southeast Alaska has discovered what might be the oldest stone fish weir ever found in the world.
The existence of the fish trap, which is thought to date to at least 11,100 years ago, was confirmed earlier this year by a group of university academics and Sunfish Inc., a robotics company specializing in undersea exploration and inspection.
The scientists, in partnership with Sealaska Heritage Institute (SHI), are using artificial intelligence to explore ancient, submerged caves in the region and to seek evidence of early human occupation.
The age of the weir, which was found in Shakan Bay on the west side of Prince of Wales Island, pushes back Native occupation of the region by more than 1,000 years, said SHI Rosita Worl, noting previous scientific studies have confirmed that Indigenous people lived in Southeast Alaska at least 10,000 years ago.
"Scientists Discover Ancient Underwater Fish Weir in Southeast Alaska," September 14, 2022. Sealaska Heritage News Stories.
The Seward Middle School (SMS) Library has been awarded the Alaskan Book Hook Grant, distributed by the Juneau Community Foundation! Seward Middle School Library was one of eight Alaska libraries chosen in the grant’s inaugural year. The stated purpose of the grant is to support small libraries with purchases of books and other materials to better serve their library patrons.
The funds awarded to Seward Middle School have been used to expand the selection of manga and graphic novels in response to numerous student requests, as well as to replace books that have gone missing over the years and to complete series.
Honoring student requests for the collection and filling in the holes from missing books in the collection will go a long way toward maintaining student interest in reading. Reading choice is so important in sparking a love of literacy and learning! A bulk-buy discount from Barnes and Noble & Classwork helped the grant money go even further!
"Get hooked on books!" by Jessica Bamford, Seward Journal.
A pair of books by Alaska authors have been selected to represent the state at the National Book Festival in Washington, D.C., next month.
“Recess at 20 Below” by Cindy Lou Aillaud and Seth Kantner’s “A Thousand Trails Home: Living with Caribou” were picked for the national Center for the Book’s Great Reads from Great Places program.
“We are thrilled to showcase these wonderful titles from Alaska authors and share them with this year’s National Book Festival participants,” Alaska Center for the Book co-president Sara Juday said in a prepared statement.
"2 works by Alaska authors selected for National Book Festival," August 26, 2022. ADN.com.
A new National Science Foundation (NSF) grant of $2.98M will support a three-year collaboration with Alaska Pacific University and the University of Alaska Fairbanks to bring academics from across the US together with indigenous Yupik and Cup’ik communities in Alaska’s Yukon-Kuskokwim (YK) Delta. The initiative, part of the NSF’s Navigating the New Arctic program, is called Meq Unguvatkarput (Water is Our Livelihood)—Building Community Resilience for the Future, and is focused on shining scientific attention on pressing problems of water and sanitation, identified by local communities, that are only intensifying due to climate change.
“There are many things to be excited about with this project,” says Bessie Lea Weston, one of the project’s co-leaders and a resident of Mekoryuk, a 200-person village in the YK Delta that is on the front lines of climate change. “I am especially excited about the inclusion of local youth in scientific processes that will result in useful local data. It is also exciting to think that this project could potentially help pave the way for future successful partnerships that would benefit the community of Mekoryuk—the only Cup'ig community in the world.”
"New Research Partners Indigenous Arctic Communities with Scientific Researchers for Climate Resilience" by Daegan Miller, August 29, 2022. UMass News.
Recording and closed captioning are available. All webinars are free of charge.
Speaker
Claire Kluskens, Genealogy/Census Records Subject Matter Expert, National Archives and Records Administration
Learning outcomes
Federal decennial population census records provide a snapshot of families and individuals at 10-year intervals. The most recent publicly-available census, 1950, was released for public use on April 1, 2022. This presentation provides an overview of what is and is not included in the 1950 census, what you can expect from NARA’s 1950 census website, and resources that can help librarians answer patron questions about the census.
Do you have an online event or news to share? Email us!
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