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

The South Central Regional Library Council has a new opening: Outreach Services Librarian. If you know someone interested in working in one of the best workplaces around (and with some of the best colleagues), send them our way! We need someone who can lead the council's DEIJ efforts, serve our hospital library program, and handle resource sharing. Read more here and spread the news, please!

Supported by ARPA funding, intern Sam Preston and I put together an exhibit to reflect a natural disaster that struck fifty years ago: Hurricane Agnes. Thanks to the generous contributions of many organizations around the region, we were able to show the flood's devastation from county to county. Please check it out and send me an email if you have anything you'd like added to the digital collection!

* If you're in Elmira this summer, be sure to visit Chemung County Historical Society, as they have an excellent physical exhibit about the flood called "When Waters Recede." Big Flats Historical Society is also selling a pictorial book about the flood.

Southworth Library Association worked with the Dryden Town Historical Society this spring to put together two digital collections, as well as a circulating kit for patrons and a few events. Dryden was once home to a massive annual agricultural fair. The fair collection has great pictures, including a 1909 postcard of "Zingerella" performing. The Dryden Women Collection is a fascinating look at how integral women have been in the farming community. Of particular note is Mary Thorp Monroe of Dryden, who traveled around the northeast as a paid speaker, instructing women in the raising of poultry to earn money (and therefore a degree of independence). On Google Books, I found a transcript of a brief and charming lecture she gave in Connecticut, which I recommend if you have a few minutes: "My Friend the Hen," on page 75.

Thanks to the generosity of a private donor, Houghton College's Willard J. Houghton Library was able to digitize their most recent 30 yearbooks. They've also been selected for a 2022-2023 Technology and Digitization Grant from SCRLC for the remaining 60 yearbooks, so look for that later this year.

Another of the ARPA projects this spring was from Chenango County Historical Society. Intern Zac Greenfield has done a phenomenal job of digitizing material, including these glass negatives taken by Vernon Duroe, a photographer and professor from Norwich. Few of the subjects are identified by name, but the pictures are fun to look through, like this class photo showing 1910s children goofing around.

SUNY Cortland Archives and Special Collections department worked with the Cortland County Historical Society this past spring to record 21 original oral history interviews and digitize a collection of SUNY Cortland scrapbooks. The scrapbooks document college activism and visitors like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The oral histories cover a broad swath of community members who were active in Cortland life.

One of the oral history interviews done for The People's Record of Cortland County was with Jim and Jean Weiss, a married couple who became political activists in the late 1980s when then Governor Mario Cuomo considered their town for a low-level radioactive waste (LLRW) dump site. This collection from the Weiss family documents their founding of Citizens Against Radioactive Dumping (CARD).

ICYMI: DHPSNY Summer 2022 Planning & Assessments

Apply by July 29 to get a free, virtual consultation about your archival needs, preservation needs, or strategic planning. See a webinar about the assessments here. The deadline has been extended.

ICYMI: Humanities Collections and Reference Resources

These grants support intellectual access to collections of rare books, manuscript and archival materials, born-digital records, maps, still and moving images, sound recordings, art, and objects of material culture. Awards also support the creation of reference works, online resources, and research tools of major importance to the humanities. Applications are due July 19.

There was an email announcement recently sent out to the SCRLC general listserv, but in case you missed it, here are the awardees for our 2022-2023 Technology and Digitization grants. This was our most competitive year yet and we are so excited to see these projects come to fruition!

Welcome to Haley Shear, who's replacing Joe Festa as the librarian at Fenimore Art Museum. Also of note, Fenimore is hosting the Mobile Hotshop from the Corning Museum of Glass between July 11 and 18, and the week will be full of free outdoor demonstrations and family-friendly activities.

Speaking of CMoG, we were excited but sad to hear that Richard Urban, who's on our Digital Advisory Committee, is departing the museum for a very cool position in OCLC: Senior Program & Engagement Officer for Data Science and Next-Generation Metadata. He doesn't have to leave the area, thankfully, and we can keep track of his next-generation thinking at OCLC's blog, https://hangingtogether.org/.

CMoG is bringing back their fantastic Little Gather series this summer, which includes partnering with Southeast Steuben County Library to extend learning past the event. Tell your local parents about it!

On Saturday, July 16, the Ulysses Town Historian, John Wertis, will give what promises to be a fascinating lecture for history-minded folks. He'll talk about the "diversity, origin, appropriateness, ownership, and maintenance" of historic markers along the Ithaca-Geneva Road in Trumansburg.

Bob Kibbee, retired Map & Geospatial Librarian at Cornell University, passed away last month at 77. He was a superlatively kind and smart man, whose passion for local history, maps, and genealogy led to the HistoryForge project. Read the heartfelt obituary by History Center in Tompkins County staff here.

Seneca Falls Historical Society thought of a new way to bring in visitors: a hide-and-seek playing rubber duck named Norman. Each day in the first week of July, they hid Norman in different parts of the museum and offered visitors a clue. Kids who found Norman won a free book and adults won 30% off in the gift shop. Do you have a potential (and small) mascot who could play hide and seek?

If you need a good reason to visit the Finger Lakes brewing scene, LyonSmith Brewing is donating $1 to Yates County History Center for every pint on weekends in July. Last month, YCHC also hosted Eric Lewis and Emily Oberdorf, who taught attendees how to properly clean cemetery stones. This kind of workshop would be great to imitate all over the region!

Tuesday, July 12 at 2 pm

Tuesday, July 12 at 4 pm

Wednesday, July 13 at 10 am

Thursday, July 14 at 11 am

Thursday, July 14 at 1:30 pm

Friday, July 15 at 10:30 am

Tuesday, July 19 at 10 am

Tuesday, July 19 at 2 pm

Wednesday, July 20 at 2 pm

Wednesday, July 20 at 4 pm

Tuesday, July 26 at 4 pm

Wednesday, July 27 at 3 pm

Thursday, July 28 at 1 pm

Thursday, July 28 at 4 pm

Friday, July 29 at 10 am

August 25 - 27

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: [email protected] | Claire Lovell, Digital Services Librarian