The Universal Service Fund provides discounted broadband connections for all Public and Tribal Libraries (including Tribal Colleges). This program is commonly called the E-rate Program, which is short for education rate. The application period for applying for discounts on internet bills and equipment is currently open and will close March 27, 2024.
If you would like to explore eligibility for your library, don't hesitate to reach out to the Alaska State Library's E-rate specialist, Valerie Oliver, for more information.
Are you a tech-savvy librarian eager to champion access for all to the wonders of technology, the internet, and all things library? If so, we have the perfect role for you at the Alaska State Library in Juneau!
The rusty coach where Chris McCandless spent his final days captured the imagination of people all over the world and inspired hundreds of seekers to make dangerous treks to reach it. Now a dedicated team of curators in Alaska have given it new life as a fascinating exhibit—one that tells the story not just of McCandless, but of modern Alaska.
On June 18, 2020, Carine McCandless got a call from Alaska’s Department of Natural Resources. Corri Feige, the commissioner at the time, wanted to give her a heads-up: the abandoned bus where Carine’s brother, Chris, had briefly lived and then died was at that moment dangling in midair below a Chinook helicopter, on its way to a flatbed trailer and then to storage in a government facility. The bus made famous by Into the Wild was finally being hauled out.
Sara Scrambler, the library director for the Irene Ingle Public Library in Wrangell shares:
We are SO excited to show off our all-new children's non-fiction books! The purchase of these books was made possible by the Alaskan Book Hook Grant along with our very own Friends of the Library! Come check them out! (Literally!)
Alaska is home to millions of miles of rivers and coastlines, as well as thousands of navigable lakes and ponds. Fish and other marine life have made up the diets of Alaskans for tens of thousands of years, which both oral history and archaeology tell us. As a result, transportation on waterways has been a key way to access these essential resources as well as to move people from one place to another. The cultural collections at the UA Museum of the North hold items that document those traditions, including umiaks, kayaks, and canoes from nearly all regions of Alaska. In the ethnology and history collections, we care for four full-sized canoes (Gwich'in, tr'ih; Lower Tanana, tr'iyh) donated to or purchased by the museum in the 1960s.
Angela Linn and Joshua Reuther, February 4, 2024. Fairbanks Daily News-Miner.
A soft opening was held Thursday for the Soldotna Seed Library now in a new location at The Goods + Sustainable Grocery.
The seed library, which has been hosted at the Soldotna Public Library since its founding in 2022, will now be maintained by the Kenai Peninsula Local Food Connection and the Goods’ Willow King. It was first started by Lora Hagelund, information provided by the connection says.
The library is housed in a donated library card catalog — drawers filled with packets of seeds organized alphabetically. During the soft opening, people could be seen perusing the offerings and making tough choices — like which variant of zucchini they should try out in their garden.
A Chilkat robe that could be hundreds of years old was purchased at auction late last year by a group of donors and given to Sealaska Heritage Institute for Chilkat weavers to study.
Tsimshian basket weaver Mangyepsa Gyipaayg Kandi McGilton said she first found the robe when looking for traditional woven baskets online.
“I just stumbled across the robe in an auction,” McGilton said
The Kodiak History Museum has published an online photo database of thousands of items in its collection. As KMXT’s Brian Venua reports, the project has taken museum staff a year to complete, and was published Jan. 31.
The new database has been a long term project for staff at the Kodiak History Museum. Chief Curator Margaret Greutert said it’s taken over a year to document the condition of over 2,300 objects in the museum’s storage.
“The project kind of had two components,” she said. “One is we wanted to photograph all of the objects in our collection and then the second component is we wanted to make all of those photographs available online.”
Every Valentine’s Day the Alutiiq Museum shows [a] little love for its volunteers. We are fortunate to have many friends who contribute their time and talents to our work. To highlight the importance of our volunteers, we honor one outstanding contribution with our Volunteer of the Year award. For 2023, we picked Jim and Bonnie Dillard. The Dillards worked together to make a pair of Alutiiq drums for use by students.
Long-time Kodiak educators and artists, Jim and Bonnie Dillard have supported cultural education and the Alutiiq Museum for decades. Jim was an instructor in the museum’s first carving classes and traveled to villages with Sven Hakaanson to teach mask-making. He has lectured on woodworking and made objects for our teaching collection. Bonnie has partnered with the museum to bring Alutiiq traditions to art classes with lesson plans and special projects.
The Alutiiq Museum & Archaeological Repository will raise its profile within Kodiak's growing tourism economy with a new grant from the U.S. Forest Service and the American Indian Alaska Native Tourism Association.
The museum was awarded $143,460 through the consortium to help pay for three elements of it's "Keneq—Fire Gallery: Sharing Our Living Traditions" initiative.
AIANTA promotes cultural tourism in Native American and Native Alaska communities. The Alutiiq Museum is one of six in the current national round of grantees.
Steve Williams, February 9, 2024. Kodiak Daily Mirror.
Guest host Christina Love leads a conversation with T’óok’ Xoo Háni Alicia Maryott and Michelle Demmert about the importance of education, advocacy and uplifting living heroes in honor of Elizabeth Peratrovich Day.
The Natural Inquirer program produces a variety of science education materials for pre-K through grade 12. Natural Inquirer products are produced by the USDA Forest Service, FIND Outdoors, and other cooperators and partners.
One of their products is a set of Woodsy Owl branded scientist profiles that include activities and a science-oriented poem. A few recent examples are:
Meet Dr. Jovan! – Worked with moss to identify air pollution.
Few social networking platforms are known for inspiring positive social change these days, but an Inuit-developed app is helping Indigenous communities from Alaska to Greenland advance their self-determination. Named SIKU after the Inuktitut word for “sea ice,” the app allows communities in the North to pull together traditional knowledge and scientific data to track changes in the environment, keep tabs on local wild foods, and make decisions about how to manage wildlife—all while controlling how the information is shared.
A group of Inuit elders and hunters from Sanikiluaq, Nunavut, came up with the idea for SIKU more than a decade ago to document and understand the changing sea ice they were witnessing in southeastern Hudson Bay. The group turned to the local nonprofit Arctic Eider Society to develop a web-based platform where hunters in nearby coastal communities could upload photos and videos and share knowledge. Contributors began using the portal in 2015 to log water temperature and salinity data, note observations of important wildlife species—such as beluga and common eider ducks—and track the flow of contaminants through the food web.
Hannah Hoag, February 15, 2024. Hakai Magazine.
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