Garth Fagen, Bucket dance photos

One of those requests that turns into a day long thing. Design needed images of Garth and his dance company for a promotional thing. I did manage to find a few shots from '80, '84, and then a few from an event in 2000, but simply could not find any for the October 2006 event cited to me.

I need to have a student for more hours than current one is working to get through all those photos to produce some sort of finding aid and index!

On a side note Richard Black told me in speaking of photo and electronic format issues that they are finding that they cannot open some photo CDs from early 2000s already. Interesting, Shane Swann in his internship was able to use the 125 year old student photos fine, but 100 years from now, will any of the current era photos even be accessible?

Seymour Library - local history room

Had planning meeting yesterday am, decided that the ground breaking will be Saturday, April 18. Offered to post to BCM, MMH etc.

Scholars Day 2015 - Costich films

Met with Ian Hauck yesterday re our upcoming Scholars Day presentation on the Costich films. Made some suggestions on how to organize the material, presenting in public etc. Will be working with him quite a bit on this.

Magic lantern slides

Student from photo class mentioned previously came yesterday  to look at, and borrowed, some lantern slides to digitize and do a project with. Discussed the history of magic lanterns, how to scan the slides etc.

Delta archives

Met with a student from Delta who is working with Stoller on developing an archives for Delta. Lent her a book on archives, showed her the basic organization, made suggestions, including that they consider contacting Kim to set up a DC site, offered to come visit their site sometime...

"Thank You" photo shoot

Worked with Advancement staff and Matt Yeoman to do a photo shoot in the archives thanking donors from the recent campaign. Ginny and Pat were helpful in supplying students to take part.

Glass slides & projector

A student who did a project in here with some old photos has contacted me, he saw a post in the archives blog re the old Balopticon projector and slides. He is going to stop by and take a look at them today.

16mm films

Recently borrowed the one remaining 16mm movie projector still on campus from Frank Mancini and spent a fair bit of time going through some old movies in the archives. Some had viewed before, some even converted to VHS, but some others I had never had the opportunity to screen before.

Having a better idea of what I have is invaluable, and after discussions with Frank am going to try to work with a staff person at VSW to ask them to digitize a few of these films for me while they are using a piece of equipment of ours down there to do others of their own. I am particularly interested in getting some never converted film of Homecoming in the '50s done, but it will be worth the effort to get some other materials redone, as they were first converted to VHS, then that copy digitized etc., and it will be interesting to see if digitizing from the original material doesn't produce a somewhat better quality product.

Thank you photo shoot

Am arranging for an archives "thank you" photo shoot at request of Darby Knox in advancement, an outreach to the donors in this last campaign.

1979 Special Olympics - sports film ?

Had a query from someone in BASC re footage they were told ABC shot here around the time of the Special Olympics. Will look, but am not sure that we have that. My suspicion is that if it was here it was in the film library of the old ECC (Educational Communications Center) and their holdings were weeded in a most unfortunate way in the late 1980s.

Service to community

Just a note that I am quite active in some local boards etc. The Brockport Community Museum, which I have been on for a year or so, I just was asked on the board of the Morgan Manning House, and have been active in the committee to build a local history room addition onto the Seymour Library.

I also regularly am consulted about archival basics, how to organize etc., both by people within the college and without.

Bio information on 5 women

Cherise from Marketing, wanting info on 5 women, Mary Jane Holmes, Fannie Barrier, Ruth Drake, Pauline Haynes and Alice Yale. Supplied some basic info, am waiting to see how much more she may need. Has prompted me to dig a little on Alice Yale, for someone about whom I heard so many stories years ago I don't have much.

Brockport TV history

Wendy came in contact with a prof, Kim Young, in Communications, who expressed an interest in the history of TV at Brockport. I reached out to her in an email with some info, a couple of pictures, and she has gotten back to me. We should be meeting soon.

Stylus - building names question

Query from lifestyles editor of Stylus, where buildings got their names, how, who I think is most interesting person etc. It was of course sent this past weekend and needed an answer by noon today... Emailed him the following response:

Hi Peter, there is a webpage with some info on building names and history: 

http://www.brockport.edu/archives/buildings.

   To answer your first question, for most of the school's history up through the 1940s there was just one building, and it did not have a name. In the 1950s and '60s the growth of the school led to the addition of many buildings and various committees of faculty and administrators gave them their names. Wayne Dedman, a history professor, who wrote a history of the school in the late 1960s, was a leading figure in these committees. They picked people because of particularly significant contributions to the college, their disciplines and so forth. So for example Hartwell was named after Ernest Hartwell who was president in the late 1930s and helped not only stave off a threatened closure of the school but secured a new building for it. Mortimer was named for Mary Mortimer who was here in the 1840s and went on to become a noted figure in higher education for women.

   While the people buildings are named for all have their points, I suppose one I personally have been most intrigued by is Malcolm MacVicar. He started life as a ship's carpenter in Canada on the Great Lakes, and worked his way through school, becoming a teacher and administrator in our predecessor, the Brockport Collegiate Institute. That was a private school, struggling financially, and MacVicar secured the school a spot as one of the newly established state "Normal" schools, or teacher training schools. He was a leader in the Normal school movement and the establishment of campus schools for teacher training in New York. After leaving Brockport in 1867 he went on to help found McMaster University in Toronto, and then, in connection with early training as a Baptist minister, he served as first president of Virginia Union University in Richmond, a college established for higher education for black students in the post Civil War era by the American Baptist Society.

   I think all the people buildings are named for have their points of contribution to the college, scholarship and our students. It's just unfortunate that we only have so many buildings to be given names to recognize people with!

   One building fact little known to today's students: from the mid 1970s to the early 1990s there was a building complex called only "Stage XVI," at the west end of campus, towards Redman Road. During the construction expansion of the post WWII era buildings were simply numbered at first, "Stage I, Stage II..." Stage XVI was the last such construction, town house style dorm buildings for students. The construction was poorly sited however and the buildings quickly deteriorated to the point that they were closed and then torn down in the early 1990s. So Stage XVI never got to the point of being named after anyone.

Video project

Something Logan is doing for the website, video to add, they shot in the archives for awhile, got some things out for them...

Al Brown - John Halstead

President Halstead called me, a bit of a surprise, asking some info on Al Brown for a letter he was writing to Brown. Found the info and called him back.

Gerry D'Agostino

John Follaco needed images of him in his football coach days (ca1967-73) for flyers etc. for an event. Dug around, found some negatives, scanned, sent to him.

Kaleidoscope

John McMahon came by, K'scope is moving online, I may have a column/page in it. For next issue, he needs 10-15 images of the '80s & '90s for the "do you remember...?" feature.

English Club - Jigsaw

Daniel Duval from the club contacted me and we met, about digitizing past issues of the club publication. I need to talk to Kim, and then him, the club president Alma etc. It sounds like Kim is setting up a club site on the DC, need to talk to her about copyright issues re previous editions...

Morgan Manning House & Guelf

Went to MMH this morning, after having emailed with Patty T. about the possibility of some Guelf materials still being there. It turned out they did still have a box. I went over and met with her and Alicia Fink (who it turned out taught in the Peace Corps program here later '60s). Enjoyable meeting, informative, and I have brought the materials here for study.

Alicia also invited me to serve on their board, which I said I would be happy to do. My name will be put forward at their next meeting. It could be a way to liaise between the different history groups in town.

George Guelf materials ?

The missing materials once held at the Morgan Manning House of local photographer George Guelf (took the pictures for the 1913 All Brockport supplement etc.) may have been discovered. Am going to meet two people there Wednesday. I had asked Patty Good who is now on their board about them, she and another person looked, and think they may have located them. It was a significant collection once - a camera, notebooks of photo shoots etc.

St James Episcopal - Batavia

Was contacted by a member, they are working on their bicentennial and have questions about archiving, student interns etc. Have sent initial reply, will follow up, suggest resources, check with Bruce re public history students...