Stylus editor

She emailed, wants to meet and discuss some of college history, look for some information re logo, college titles, e.g. "SUC Brockport..." Have responded and am waiting reply as to when she wants to meet.

Who was campus photographer certain date...?

Dance student, doing project, downloaded photos of dance c2016-2018, needed to credit the photographer. I said Matt Yeoman was campus photographer those years.

Field Hockey

Linda Arena '69, who was a big field hockey star here, and coached here as well, was at the 50th reunion for her class this year. I met her, she said she had archival materials she'd send me, and the first package has come already.

Recruitment

A new graphic designer here emailed inquiring about old recruitment materials, yearbooks, logos etc. Shared some initial things already digitized and am working on arranging a visit.

Campus Security Badge

Interesting, received a query from someone who collects police badges. They had recently bought a Brockport "Campus Security" badge on eBay, and wanted to date it. Archive records show that the force was called "Campus Security" from 1973-1977, at which time it changed name to "Public Safety."

Rathskeller

Was asked when the Rathskeller on campus, which had been in the basement of Seymour, had closed. Looking at articles on it in the Stylus in nyshistoricnewspapers.org it appears to have closed between 1983 and 1985. It was at this time the drinking age in NY was being raised, first to 19 in December 1982, then to 21 in December 1985.


The "Rathskeller," or student bar, was a common institution in colleges for many years. I remember there being one at SUNY Albany in the 1970s for example. Alcohol use, policy, the Rathskellers etc. across SUNY would be an interesting research topic!

Daniel Velte

Had a request for photos of this alum who played baseball here 1999-2001. Searched the Jim D negatives, found some after awhile, scanned, and sent to staff person who requested them. Luckily they knew what his team number was! Even so I could only find a few, it's really hard skimming those small 35mm negatives trying to see if it has someone you want.

Digital Commons

Removing an item, another such request. This time using the "remove ir..." command and burying the pdf, leaving only the metadata, wasn't enough, the author replied back and said they wanted the whole record deleted. I have asked Angeline at BePress how to do that.


We are talking internally, Pam and I, about this. Pam suggested we need to establish a policy and she's right, we do. I suspect this will continue and be a small but occasional thing. There's a lot of content in there now, many items have been there a few years and more, and there are a few authors noticing that their items are being viewed, downloaded etc. and for various reasons become uncomfortable with that.

Bio info for John Collins

Someone researching an early '70s basketball player from here contacted athletics asking for info, what high school did he come from etc. They said he was '72, but all I saw was a John Collins '74 in alum directories. Were a number of mentions in Stylus of a John Collins as playing basketball '70-72, not after. None mentioned his background. Shared what I had with athletics, suggested a person in advancement who is good at search the back part of Banner for old student records.

Martin "Marty" Rogers

Had a request via email asking about his "memoirs." I'd forgot we had this, but we do have 2 copies of "Grandpa Stories, The Life and Times of Martin H. Rogers," as told to Susan E. Edmunds. She was the daughter of James Edmunds, English, and family friend of Rogers. She taught in the Music Department here 1963-1983. One copy is in the stacks, one in the RG26 bio files.

Writers Forum

Very interesting meeting with Jim Wharton, English, prof who is in charge of Writers Forum, and John Schroth, owner of Media Transfer Service in East Rochester. John's company has done the digitization of a number of our WF tapes. Jim wants to step up the pace and get a CLIR Mellon Foundation grant to start doing much larger numbers of the tapes.


John's comments lent much support to the concerns for digitization and digital preservation. For example, not only is the life span of many video tape and audio tape formats limited, we are nearing the end of their lifespans at this point. The machines to run them are becoming old and worn out too, and the companies making them, or parts for them, have mostly gone out of business or into other lines of manufacturing. In other words, if one wishes to digitize old VHS, Betamax, reel to reels and so forth, it would be smart to do it sooner than later.


As for digital preservation, the grants specifically asks by what means will the digitized versions of the materials be maintained. John spoke at length about options, he is currently working with Geneseo for example, they got a grant from this fund and are maintaining the digital material on a set of LTO tape drives, as well as using cloud storage. We need something more than a RAID drive sitting on a back office PC where it is never checked...

1992 Wrestling Team

Advancement looking for team photo of this Nat'l Championship level team. Found one, scanned, and emailed to them.

Hartwell Hall

Secretary to the Dean of Business emailed asking about the history of the building. They have a nice print they framed of Hartwell, and they want to put together some sort of text document to put up with the photo. Supplied with links to a couple online things, like the 1940 Saga spread on the "new building," and shared some photos too, as well as some historical context.

Edward Stephany

Edward Stephany taught mathematics here 1947-1980. He has passed away, but his wife Arline is turning 100 soon, and a party is planned for her. Advancement wanted some info on them, have sent some, will look for a little more. It was a good question, I didn't happen to have a file on them!

Taking down a thesis

Someone who had an English thesis that was a creative writing piece emailed and was concerned that their thesis was being downloaded, possibly to pirate and sell. After thinking about it and looking through the DC blog etc., I decided to take it down for the time being.


For future reference if you being up a file and go to revise it, there is an option to only show the metadata, not the pdf itself. The pdf is still there, and to have it show again you would just check the appropriate box. The other option, to "remove" the item, doesn't actually delete it, but it does store in the "back end," and if ever wanted to repost it would have to ask BePress staff to do it for you.

Tracing a birth mother

I spent an hour or so helping a patron trace their birth mother. The mother was a grad, but the patron was unclear about the year of graduation, the alum directory was incorrect, but we found her in the 1966 yearbook. (The birth mother is deceased.) I also found some images of the mother in clubs she was in etc. Scanned the various pages and have emailed them to the patron.

Interns

Have been getting a second intern started this week. She is working on the history of the History Department. Gave her a general orientation to the archives, then to those materials more closely related to her work, e.g. faculty directories, catalogs, yearbooks, the department's files... The goal is for her to produce a digital exhibit on the department's history that likely will be housed in the Digital Commons.

Talon TV (Brockport TV)

I was interviewed today by a student from Talon TV (the current name for Brockport TV.) The interview focused on the International Special Olympics held here in 1979.

Processing

In between other things I have spent time processing some of the back log of materials from various offices in Allen that came to me during the times their offices were being rehabbed. While it takes time to go through, 2/3 probably is recycled, but the remaining 1/3 often fills gaps, supplies information not held before etc.

Digital Commons

Kim emailed from retirement to say she had noticed were several theses awaiting posting. This is something I and Pam and Mary Jo will need to talk about. Kim had various procedures in place, and periodically spent a fair bit of time working through them to ensure each thesis had the advisors approval and so on. Each department has different policy, and it is all listed in her blog.

https://brockportdc.blogspot.com/

There is a lot to it, and it will be challenge to carry these policies out. We'll have to discuss and see how we can best do this until such a time as we are able to get her position replaced.