in short: News | Grants | Events | Ideas | Webinars | Jobs

With support from an SCRLC digitization grant, Fenimore Art Museum was able to add an incredible number of historic Otsego County newspapers to NYS Historic Newspapers. These include the Cherry-Valley Gazette, Milford Tidings, the Morris Chronicle, the Otsego Democrat, the Otsego Farmer, the Otsego Journal, the Otsego Republican, Richfield Springs Daily, Richfield Springs Mercury, the Tocsin, the Unadilla Times, the Watch-Tower, and the Worcester Times. Browse or search the issues here.

Seymour Public Library in Auburn teamed up with the Cayuga Museum of History and Art to create the Voices of Cayuga County project, supported by an SCRLC digitization grant. They recorded oral history interviews with members of historically underrepresented and marginalized groups, including LGBTQIA+ folks, African-Americans, and immigrants. There are some really compelling stories, so take a look!

Could your organization host a book club about history? Humanities New York offers grants to support thematically-linked book talks. I might be biased as a librarian, but I think book discussions are a great way to foster a sense of community while engaging with a historical topic. Apply by December 13 to get up to $150 per session for the facilitator. They'll even lend you the books, which cover topics that you could easily tie in to your existing collection (like the Civil War, Women's Rights, WWI, etc.)

IMLS is offering a matching grant to support the preservation of nationally significant historic properties and collections. The deadline is December 14.

The National Endowment for the Humanities is offering grants of up to $10,000 to small or medium sized repositories that have never received an NEH grant before. These are not matching or cost-sharing grants and seem intended to pay for a professional conservator. The deadline is January 13, 2022.

This grant is meant to help preserve deteriorating library research materials, which can include monographs, serials, manuscripts, archival materials, maps, architectural drawings, sound recordings, photographs, moving images and newspapers, as long as they have "research value." Rehousing, reformatting to microfilm, environmental control improvements, and environmental surveys are fundable. Applications are due December 17.

CLIR's grants for audiovisual digitization are open again! Ask for $10,000 to $50,000 as long as you're using a vendor. Check out this recently updated vendor list that ESLN folks put together.

If you're a private nonprofit that spent money on things like diagnostic tests, face masks, sanitizer, thermometers and plexiglass barriers since April 2020, it looks like you may be able to apply for reimbursement from FEMA. Read the 8 page policy with directions and qualifications here.

Corning was recently listed by Country Living as one of the top 55 towns for "Christmas magic" - and that's in no small part due to the Corning Museum of Glass's breathtaking, sparkling holiday displays. CMOG has its annual Holiday Open House on December 4th and 5th, featuring free admission, crafts, and glassmaking activities. They're also celebrating Blown Away Christmas on Netflix and will feature master glassblowers with events and displays from December 10th through 12th.

Ethan Dickerman, a PhD candidate in Cornell's archaeology program, has created a comprehensive project to map where African-American residents lived in Tompkins County from 1820 to 1870. Check out the resulting interactive maps and read about his process here.

CCHS has put a new transportation themed exhibit online, built on Wix and organized by vehicle. They've also had a great idea for promoting their gift shop during the holiday season, adding a sale to a poster of the Big Flats Erie Depot, perfect for railroad enthusiasts.

The Greater Oneonta Historical Society has a few animatronic holiday elves from Bresee's store in the 1940s, which will be activated and moving at the top of every hour through December 10th.

Cortland County Historical Society is visiting the local public library for another story time on December 4th, when they'll read Janie's Tree and make beaded candy cane decorations. Tabitha has added a few more entries to her great blog series on the street names of Cortland. The most recent post highlighted an object from the collection from the street's namesake family: a bottle for whiskey... or ketchup.

Binghamton University Libraries is moving millions of books from their two off-site facilities to a single 97,000 square foot, high-tech, high-density storage solution known as the Collection Management Facility (CMF) in Johnson City. Let's plan a field trip for 2023 to see the monumental CMF in action!

The current issue of SAA's Archival Outlook includes a short, helpful primer about using appropriate descriptive metadata. Among the helpful resources mentioned is the Disability Language Style Guide by the National Center on Disability and Journalism. See the full reading list here.

That same issue of Archival Outlook included tips for happy, healthy collection processing, since it's so easy to find yourself personally overwhelmed or defensive about setting realistic expectations. The author recommends using Yale's Processing Estimates to explain to non-archivist stakeholders why the work is time-intensive and how processing decisions are made.

SAA is looking for members to join committees on a wide array of topics, including the Dictionary Working Group, which is drafting a Dictionary of Archives Terminology.

Has your institution finished a fabulous finding aid this year? Nominate it for MARAC's Finding Aid Award. There aren't many submissions each year, and there is a monetary prize- so take the leap and submit!

MANY is coming to Corning from April 9 through 12, 2022 and needs conference proposals. You could also nominate yourself or a colleague for having done an outstanding and innovative project, and you could apply for a scholarship in order to attend the conference.

As you're planning your next display, take a look at this biographical exhibit at the Ithaca Town Hall done by the History Center in Tompkins County. It centers around Monroe (Matsujiro) Asai and his family in Ithaca in the 1920s, and relies on clippings and photos as well as Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps, as seen in HistoryForge. The Sanborns do a great job of orienting the viewer, and it's done very well here:

Thursday, Dec. 2 at 2 pm

Thursday, Dec. 2 at 4 pm

Friday, Dec. 3 at 1 pm

Tuesday, Dec. 7 at 12:30 pm ($45)

Tuesday, Dec. 7 at 1 pm

Tuesday, Dec. 7 at 1 pm

Wednesday, Dec. 8 at 2 pm

Wednesday, Dec. 8 at 2 pm

Thursday, Dec. 9 at 9:30 am

Thursday, Dec. 9 at 10 am

DPLA Book Talk: Subprime Attention Crisis (about digital marketing)

Thursday, Dec. 9 at 11 am

Thursday, Dec. 9 at 1 pm

Thursday, Dec. 9 at 1 pm

Friday, Dec. 10 at 1 pm

Monday, Dec. 13 - Tuesday, Dec. 14 ($199-349)

Wednesday, Dec. 14 at 10:30 am

Wednesday, Dec. 14 at 12:30 pm ($45)

Thursday, Dec. 16 - Friday, Dec. 17 ($199-349)

Thursday, Dec. 16 at 2 pm ($45)

Friday, Dec. 17 at 10 am

That's all for this month! Send me an email if there's anything at your organization you'd like me to include in the next newsletter: clovell@scrlc.org | Claire Lovell, Digital Services Librarian