Spring 2018 Interns

This spring have 3 interns, a much more manageable set than the 6 I had last spring! One, Qiqian, is doing a 3 credit internship working with me on our photo collections. Yesterday for example she scanned a set of 35mm negative strips I had found in processing, a 1962 CSEA award banquet. After scanning the strips, cropping and saving individual pics, she started working trying to ID the people. I may post some on FaceBook in the Remembering Brockport page for ID as well. A lot of the attention goes to faculty, civil service staff not so much..


Another intern, Rani, is doing a 3 credit too, on some research projects, starting with the Summer Arts Festival that ran c1960-1980s. I have little organized material on that, and it will be great to pull together what can be found from the Stylus, get a timeline, list of plays, venues, photos...


Lastly Lyndsey, who has interned before, is doing a smaller, 1 credit internship, focusing on helping me with sorting, processing etc.


UPDATE: Now have a third student doing a 3 credit internship, Tyler, who did one last fall. He will be working with me to inventory and organize better some collections, starting with the map cases.

Local history: who has what...?

   An upcoming project hopefully, I think it would be a good idea:

   I was emailing with Sue Savard at the Knapp Museum in town and part of the conversation was about the question of who people should contact re local history questions, who has what information etc. It isn't clear to people, should they go to the Morgan Manning House, the Knapp Museum, contact me at the college, the Brockport Community Museum...?

 I was just thinking, it might help if I created a libguide (an online guide, we do lots of them here,) specifically for local history, and detail as much as is possible who has what, when they're open, how to contact... Below is a link to the one I have specific to the college archives as an example. So something simple, but helpful hopefully, with a tab for each of the history groups in town... Then each group could have a link on their webpage to the guide, to provide more help and information for researchers.

http://library.brockport.edu/archives

The Port

Wrote and sent in a piece for the February issue of The Port, one of a continuing series on buildings and who they are named for, in this case Lennon Hall.

Gay rights, Stonewall riots...

A student who interned with me last semester is interning in the Rochester city archives and asked about gay rights history at Brockport. Luckily Lyndsey Richards covered that in her internship Spring 2017 and was able to share that powerpoint with the other student, as well as make reference to Tony Mascioli, Evelyn Bailey...

Scholars Day presentations

Someone asking if I get all Scholars Day presentations, and the answer is no, never have. There's no mechanism in place, and while some might be good to have, relevant to the college history, so many would not be, and the logistics would be quite challenging...

Bob Hellman manuscript

Bob came by and had some corrections to make to his "Snakes, Frogs..." manuscript that we are working on to add to the Digital Commons bookshelf. Ended up giving him back his print manuscript to bring home and make any needed corrections, and said I would be happy to come to his place to pick it back up.

Interns

Spent an afternoon with the one intern, Qiqian, showing her how to scan various negative formats, use Photoshop in basic ways etc. She will be working with me to reorganize the photo collections, and will be scanning some as well. As she is interested in a career in archives or museums, I am spending time with her to educate her about the ins and outs of these things.


Lyndsey, who did a 3 credit internship twice now, is coming back for a 3rd time, a 1 credit internship. She is going to be helping me to sort and process the backlog.

Backlog, backlog, backlog

Have been spending some hours these winter weeks trying to get some of the massive backlog of materials to be processed actually processed... It's quite a challenge, there always seems to be other things that need doing, but this year, 2018, am making this a priority as much as I can, it just has to be done. Unfortunately it isn't something I can have interns do on their own, or a student worker, it really calls for my hand to be there.

Spring 2018 interns

Right now I have two students doing a 3 credit internship each, and one who is doing a smaller 1 credit thing. One of the 3 credit interns is going to research the history of Christian groups on campus. A paper was written on the Newman Center and the Catholic group in the past, but nothing on the others, e.g. the old Wesley Fellowship etc. The other is going to work with me on organizing my photo collections etc. The third is Lyndsey who has already done a couple internships, and I may have her work with me on getting some of that huge backlog processed.

1984 Commencement speaker?

Query from a 1984 grad, thinking it was someone from the NY Times, and it was, according to the program it was Abe Rosenthal, executive editor, a real newspaper legend of the day.

Althea Ceasor

Request from folks at The Port for a cover article on Althea Largie Ceasor '89 that ran in Kaleidoscope in 1988. Was a little confusing, she is Largie in the article, I was only told Ceasor, and wasn't a cover photo, was an inside article, but did find it, scan, and send to them.

History 50th event

Spent a fair bit of time with an intern from history this past spring who was researching their 50th, and now am told they will have a celebration event this coming September and am being asked for photos for a slide show. Will see what I can find, nice to have ample lead time, as finding photos can be very time consuming!

BSG history

An email from a staff person who had been looking at the archive pages re BSG and wanted to know the identity of these two men. The answer is...

...they are, left to right, Henry Laster '67 and Lyle Akens '68. The photo is from the '67 Saga yearbook in which they are labeled "BSG Judges," who "...resolve conflicts... constitutionality of legislation... advisory disciplinary body...'

   BSG was just established at that time, it's their 50th anniversary actually, more or less. Before that there was a "Faculty Student Association," which the 1966-68 era divided into two bodies, today's BSG and Faculty/College Senate.

Tony Mascioli '54 Papers

These came up this past fall. Mascioli was a grad who became a pioneer for gay rights after Brockport. He is in the Genesee Valley Gay Alliance's "Shoulders to Stand On" hall of fame. Evelyn Bailey of the Alliance had talked to me this fall, looking for the collections of his papers that she thought had come here. I had no record or memory of getting them, and neither did the staff in Advancement (Mascioli had been a big donor.)


Turns out that the papers were never given to us as had been thought, and are actually with a relative of his in the area. I will be working with Evelyn and the relatives to see who gets what. There certainly are some interesting sounding papers relating to Brockport specifically, e.g. the script of the "Hangover Breakfast" play that was rather a controversial presentation here in the early '50s!

Environmental safety office

A question from an administrator asking if I'd received much from that office in recent years, and after checking responded that I hadn't, that all I have is a small amount of random material, the most recent from 2005. I added that if they have materials they no longer want to keep that I would be happy to take them, I an guessing that this is another moving out of Allen episode where they're looking to lighten their load...


Update: heard back, this is a different problem. Turnover in the office has resulted in a lack of records, and they were hoping I had them. I don't, there never has been a college wide understanding that materials no longer wanted, and not falling under the record retention schedule, should come to the archives. It has always been a very hit and miss affair.

RG30

Among other winter projects have been sorting out the Record Group 30 shelves. This record group holds various college histories, student scrapbooks etc. The collections were in a bit of disarray, as it's all been moved a few times in recent years, and some of the group subdivisions were in need of reclassing etc. That's one of the great things about an archives, there's always something that needs a little work!

Allen Building rehab and donations

Had people from the Presidents, Provosts and Advancement offices bring me boxes yesterday, 12 or so altogether. The building is going to be rehabbed over the course of this year a floor or two at a time. The occupants of the floors will have to move everything out, so now is a time when they are starting to declutter, and that leads to me getting some extensive, and often useful, archival donations.