It's Gathering and and Conference planning season again. For the third year in a row my work is planning a large Gathering and Conference for a summer long weekend. This year's Gathering is occurring on the long weekend in August and I am substantially more involved in the planning and implementation of the Gathering. … Continue reading Volunteers and Heritage Events
Checkout a Person: National Human Library Day
Tomorrow, January 26th 2013, is National Human Library Day in Canada. The day is sponsored by CBC and invites Canadians to interact with 'human books' at 15 libraries and cultural centers across the country. The CBC is also hosting an online component of the program where individuals can interact with human books via webcam, text, … Continue reading Checkout a Person: National Human Library Day
Archival Outreach and Community Based Heritage
Recently I've been spending a lot of time thinking about the role archives can play in community based heritage initiatives. The bulk of my thoughts have centered on the idea that archives have the potential to become community heritage hubs and places of active history. Of course, just because archives have the potential to do … Continue reading Archival Outreach and Community Based Heritage
Creating Archival Professional Development Workshops
Over the course of the spring and summer my work is holding weekly events focused on library and archives professional development, training, and themes. The sessions will be open current staff, university faculty, and local professionals. As part of this series a colleague and I are going to be facilitating three sessions focusing on archives. … Continue reading Creating Archival Professional Development Workshops
Conceptualizing Rural History
Last week a co-worker who is currently reading up on the history of her city asked me if I had ever been interested in the town history of where I grew up. This simple question had me stumped. The majority of my life I have lived outside of town, and didn't readily identify with a … Continue reading Conceptualizing Rural History
Collaborative History: Editing Mayham
The fist Knox Church, ca. 1910I've recently been working on an editing project that has me simultaneously enthralled and going a bit squirrely. The project is a church history that highlights a congregation's journey from 1862 to 2012. As you might have guessed, the impious for this project is that 2012 marks the 150th anniversary … Continue reading Collaborative History: Editing Mayham
Unique User Groups and Heritage Organizations
The users groups of heritage organizations vary greatly from organization to organization. People who frequent a university archive, a children's museum, and a local history corner at a public library typically have very different needs. Providing quality programming depends on heritage institutions knowing their users and gearing specific programming to different types of users. One … Continue reading Unique User Groups and Heritage Organizations
Quilts Galore
In my previous job as a Digitization Facilitator, for an OurOntario project, I had the opportunity to work with a number of great local history collections. A few of these collections contained quilts made and donated by community members. I was instantly impressed by the work and community memory contained in so many of these … Continue reading Quilts Galore