Thursday, October 27, 2016

FLC in archives

Am hosting the Faculty Learning Community I am in this year, we'll meet in the archives tomorrow, Friday the 28th. Will be a nice chance to show this group which is focused on alumni outreach the resources the archives has.

Monday, October 24, 2016

Hartwell Society, '66 and '56 groups

Spent time this past Friday with first Class of '66, giving a talk about their time here, and then later spent over an hour with a group of '56 alum talking about the history of the college, they were very interested, we talked for well over an hour.

1959 Saga

Mike Andriatch emailed looking for one for an alum, got one and brought over to his office.

Friday, October 21, 2016

"Happiness" statues and fountain history

A student emailed about this. Sent him the .pdf of some images and a very brief history I have, suggested some times I could met him next week.

Jean Linn, Niagara CCC

New cataloger/archivist there, emailed reaching out to area archivists to get help understanding how to organize and run their archives. Have replied, will have a phone chat next week, may go out there sometime too.

Thursday, October 20, 2016

Alma Mater score

Tony Dumas, Theatre & Music Studies, emailed asking if had a score other than what appears in the old Stylus' for the Alma Mater. I looked online, the score is that of Gotteschalk's "Last Hope," and found a free version, scan of an old song book. Emailed to him, and saved in the Alma Mater folder in filecity2...

GIS mapping, BCM, Zollweg

Jim Zollweg, Earth Science, contacted us at the Brockport Community Museum, I imagine after seeing my post about the group in the Daily Eagle. He asks about collaboration to do some historical mapping etc online. By a nice coincidence, I am going to a workshop on something related at NYLA in a couple weeks, this is what I emailed Jim, Allan et al:




This is the link to the project, and below the blurb: http://ssmp.skidmore.edu. I'm not sure what Jim has in mind, but I think there are probably a wide range of options, and like Jim suggests, for a virtual museum this could be a great project.


 


Mapping A City: A Collaborative Project

Sponsor: PLS / RASS
Saratoga Springs celebrated its centennial as a city in 2015. To commemorate this anniversary, a group of Skidmore College faculty and students, the Saratoga Springs History Museum, the Saratoga Springs Public Library’s Local History Room, the Saratoga Springs City Historian, and the Saratoga County Historian collaborated to present an exhibit at the history museum that told the story of the city through its rich collection of historical maps. The curatorial team for this two year collaborative project will share their experience in successfully working with their community partners. The map exhibit came about because of a recognized need to create a comprehensive inventory of historic maps of Saratoga Springs located in various collections throughout the city and at the Saratoga County offices. After a number of meetings to discuss strategy, the curatorial team came up with a list of maps to be considered for the exhibit.  In the Fall 2014, Professor Jordana Dym offered a class “Mapping the Americas” that worked with the selected materials, researched Saratoga Springs’ history, and prepared the story behind the maps.  In the spring of 2015, some of the class continued with the project helping to make the exhibit come to fruition. The class also created a website for the exhibit using maps digitized as part of the project.  





Monday, October 17, 2016

Royston & Massi

Two star football players of the '50s, and Massi was on the 1957 team that was the first winning Brockport team in the modern post-WWII era. Kerry Gotham from Advancement contacted me, they're going to be here for homecoming this weekend, Kerry wanted Stylus articles of some of their games, photos too if I can find them... Lot of digging but nice to support this...

1996-97 Men's basketball team

They were NCAA "Sweet 16" contenders that year, Liz Wacienga from athletics needed a pic of the team. The folder of prints didn't have one, and needs to be sorted, but found a negative in the Jim D. books. Scanned and sent to her.

Thomas "Lefty" McIntyre and Clark Whited

Bud Meade had a question about their dates here, and whether they might have known each other as far back as WWII. Lefty was here 1962-95, Whited 1946-83, Whited was much older, from the Rochester area, and Lefty was from the Midwest as far as I know.

Thursday, October 13, 2016

Greek organizations

   Student who is interning this fall with Greek life emailed asking about history etc. of Greek life on campus. Replied that it is a complicated topic, there was an active Greek life here c1856-1936, then nothing for many years. Found a Stylus article from October 1977 re Greek organizations being accepted back on campus. (All this is in reference to "social" Greek letter groups, not honor societies and similar groups. Those have a different history.)




   Hartwell essentially banned social Greek groups in the late 1930s. There were a few sporadic attempts to bring them back, but they never got far. At some point SUNY apparently had a ban on such groups, although it isn't clear to me how that worked, since I believe some SUNY campuses had Greek groups, like Arethusa, which had actually started here, going all along. Anyway, there certainly was a revival of Greek life in the '70s. The student is coming to see me in a couple weeks.


Update: meet with student this afternoon, 10/27. Talked with him for about an hour, showed him some Greek life items from the collections...



Reunions: '66 & '56

Bookscanner was down for a month or more, so had to set up a jury rigged scanner, camera on a stand, used that to scan a lot of material that folks of '66 had picked out. Now working on the slide show for them, and the talk for the Hartwell luncheon.


That same day am going to speak to Class of '56 who are gathering and would like to hear about the history of the school since their time here, so am prepping for that as well.

Tuesday, October 11, 2016

Mary Kay Maslanka '02

Goal keeper, women's soccer. Now assistant coach, Joan Schokow asked for images of her playing. Managed to find two nice shots, emailed to Joan.

Monday, October 10, 2016

BSG archives

Met with a student from BSG, and Becky Bird, at the BSG offices. Went and looked at their back files. This came up before but the student I had spoken with had misunderstood what they actually have. It is more manageable than I had thought, there are 4-5 shelves of binders, BSG board minutes etc. going back to the '70s. I said I would be glad to house them here, made suggestions re digitizing them, something they asked about...

Wednesday, October 5, 2016

Tunnels under campus, civil defense

Student reporter from Stylus looking into stories about tunnels under campus and civil defense shelters. Said didn't know much about tunnels, nothing actually, contact Rick Lair et al in Facilities. For civil defense searched and found a bunch of articles in old Stylus, sent one, gave link to nyshistoricnewspapers.org...

Monday, October 3, 2016

David Catlin '67

Friend of his was here looking for articles from the Stylus from Catlin's baseball days at the college. Showed how to use nyshistoricnewspapers.org, found some articles, he was quite a ball player! Explained how he can bring up the .pdf, download etc. He was happy to learn all that, he's going to download, print out, frame, for Catlin to share with his son...