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

Please take note of the ARPA funding announcement below! If you want to create an online exhibit or curriculum toolkit to meet the output requirements, you can use our nyheritage.org and LibGuide platforms. Somehow, someway - we can help you make the most of those ARPA dollars!

This collection from the History Center in Tompkins County contains nearly 300 images of Ithaca buildings. It was created to help support HistoryForge and funded by a SCRLC RBDB grant.

Your Home Public Library in Johnson City, a member of the Four County Library System, already had a collection of digitized high school yearbooks. They shared their PDFs with me and I quickly added copies to NY Heritage so that more people could find them. If you have a collection like this, let me know! We strive to make NY Heritage a comprehensive and fully representative digital history resource.

Through the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA), the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) and the New York State Library, SCRLC is able to offer grants of up to $12,000 for libraries and museums to partner on a variety of projects. Applications are due by October 22. Email me with any questions!

The 9th and final call for CLIR's audio or audiovisual digitization grants is now open. Grants are $10,000 to $50,000 and can cover 100% of the cost of a vendor. Read more here. They have an information webinar about the grants on Wednesday, October 6 at 2 pm.

These discretionary grants from New York State can provide funding for activities like general preservation surveys, environmental surveys, photograph surveys, rehousing, repair, reformatting to microfilm or the reformatting of photographs to more stable photographic media, improvement to environmental controls and training activities. Last year's grant awards ranged from $8,000 to $40,000.

The Chemung County Historical Society is doing their annual ghost walk tours as a fundraiser, and they've thoughtfully begun a new, second style of tour. This new tour is offered in the afternoon for the sake of daylight, starts at the cemetery (rather than using a bus), and covers .75 miles in 1.25 hours, so anyone with a wheelchair or stroller can enjoy the historical fun. Another historical society in our region has had to cancel an upcoming walking tour because they realized, upon visiting the site, that it wasn't safe enough for a tour. That precaution is a good reminder for all of us!

Cortland County Historical Society embraced the social media network TikTok with the help of a young volunteer, who built up an audience of over 13,0000 between January and June of this year. Many of the videos feature clothing from their collection with historical context given as a voiceover while unboxing. 

The Greater Oneonta Historical Society welcomes everyone to come celebrate the retirement of their longtime executive director, Bob Brzozowski, on Tuesday, October 19 at the Foothills Performing Arts Center from 6 to 8 pm. Bob served on GOHS's board from 2003 to 2009 and as executive director from 2009 to 2020. GOHS is also having its Annual Dinner on October 14 at Toscana.

For the second year in a row, the executive director of the History Center in Tompkins County biked hundreds of miles in a day to raise money. This year, the theme of "Traverse Tompkins" was "Finding Fires." Congratulations to Ben and his team, whose efforts raised over $10,000!

Congratulations to HistoryForge, which won a 2021 Preservation Award from Historic Ithaca!

Corning Museum of Glass has a great looking exhibit on display now through December: Fire and Vine: The Story of Glass and Wine, curated by Katherine Larson.

Celebrate the archives this month! On Wednesday, October 13, follow and participate in #AskAnArchivist on Twitter. Find ideas from SAA about promotion here.

Erika Sanger of the Museum Association of New York asks "What does audience engagement look like in your museum?" Send your pictures to Megan Eves with a caption of 100 words or less with the name of your museum and text that describes the activity in the picture. MANY will use these for advocacy.

Tuesday, October 5 at 9:30 am

Tuesday, October 5 at 4 pm

Wednesday, October 6 at 10:30 am

Wednesday, October 6 at 2 pm

Thursday, October 7 at 4 pm

Friday, October 8 at 11 am

Tuesday October 12 through Friday, October 15

Thursday, October 14 at 10 am

Thursday, October 14 at 11 am

Tuesday, October 19 at 3 pm

Wednesday, October 20 at 9 am

Wednesday, October 20 & Thursday, October 21

Wednesday, October 20 at 12 pm

Wednesday, October 20 at 2 pm

Wednesday, October 20 at 4 pm

Thursday, October 21 at 2 pm

Thursday, October 21 from 3 to 6 pm

Thursday, October 21 at 4 pm

Friday, October 22 from 9:30 am to 12:30 pm

Friday, October 22 from 10 am to 3:15 pm

Monday, October 25 at 12 pm

Tuesday, October 26 through Thursday, October 28

Register with the code 21ES for a $100 discount

Wednesday, October 27 at 2 pm

Thursday, October 28 at 4:30 pm

Wednesday, October 6 at 12 pm

Wednesday, October 20 at 6:30 pm

Wednesday, October 27 at 5:30 pm

NYLA Conference in Syracuse

Wednesday, November 3 - Saturday, November 6

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