_{R A O   N E W S                                 Issue 9, Spring 2003
  Newsletter of the Reference, Access, and Outreach Section of The Society of American Archivists}

FROM THE CHAIR REFERENCE IN THE ARCHIVES MEMBER NEWS OUTREACH WEBSITE REVIEW OFFICERS

FROM THE CHAIR by Kathie Johnson

As the Chair of the Steering Committee of the Reference, Access, and Outreach Section, I feel very out of touch with the membership.  As many of you know, I missed attending SAA in Birmingham due to health problems.  After a difficult several month period, which included an angioplasty with a stent in April and a hospitalization in June, I required emergency open-heart surgery on August 6.  The stent had become 95% blocked with scar tissue and the only solution was by-pass.  I am happy to report that although August was a pretty miserable month, I am now eating healthily, exercising regularly, and feeling pretty close to my old self.  I am told that it can take up to a year to fully recover so I am pacing myself!

On to the business of the RAO section - the members of the Steering Committee and I were busy during September and early October reviewing session proposals for the 2003 meeting.  We endorsed twelve proposals and after reading these innovative and exciting ideas, I am anxiously looking forward to the meeting in Los Angeles.  Our next job will be to plan the program for our section meeting and I have already received some inquiries about that as well.  If you have any ideas for a program that you would like us to consider, please contact me at kbjohnson@louisville.edu.

Looking forward to seeing you in LA.

REFERENCE IN THE ARCHIVES  edited by Ellen Swain

THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA CLAUDE MOORE HEALTH SCIENCES LIBRARY OPENS THE PHILIP S. HENCH WALTER REED YELLOW FEVER COLLECTION WEBSITE 

Charlottesville, VA – The opening of The Philip S. Hench Walter Reed Yellow Fever Collection Website marks the completion of a two-year project at the University of Virginia Claude Moore Health Sciences Library funded in part by a $250,041 National Leadership Grant by the

federal Institute for Museum and Library Services (IMLS).  The project identified, digitized, transcribed, preserved, created enhanced searching options, and now provides worldwide access via the Web to 5,500 original documents, photographs, and artifacts in the Health Sciences Library's archive on Walter Reed and yellow fever.  The library project team, led by Joan Echtenkamp Klein, worked closely with David Seaman, Director of the Electronic Text Center at the University of Virginia Library.  "Significant collaboration among all team members was instrumental in the project's success," according to Linda Watson, Health Sciences Library Director. 

Like the contemporary AIDS epidemic, yellow fever was a deadly scourge that had a devastating effect on lives and economies throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.  In 1900, Walter Reed, M.D., and his fellow members of the United States Army Yellow Fever Commission made the discovery that a mosquito was responsible for the transmission of yellow fever.  "The prayer that has been mine for twenty or more years that I might be permitted in some way or sometime to do something to alleviate human suffering has been answered," wrote Walter Reed, an 1869 graduate of the University of Virginia School of Medicine, to his wife Emilie on December 31, 1900.  The Yellow Fever Commission's experiments in Cuba were a great breakthrough in medicine for which Walter Reed was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor and elevated to the status of American medical hero.  

Philip S. Hench, M.D., awarded the Nobel Prize for his discovery of cortisone, was fascinated by the story of Walter Reed and the Yellow Fever Commission and made it his life's work to collect everything available relevant to this public health story.  He met and befriended all the people associated with the story or their relatives, most of whom gave him original family documents and photographs.  The extensive archive that Hench compiled was given to the University of Virginia after his untimely death - he did not live to write his definitive book on Walter Reed and yellow fever -- and is the cornerstone collection in the Claude Moore Health Sciences Library's archive. 

Joan Echtenkamp Klein
Assistant Director for Historical Collections & Services The Claude Moore Health Sciences Library
http://www.med.virginia.edu/hs-library/historical/

OUTREACH edited by Coralina Daly

Encoded Archival Description: Solution to Archival Automation and Access?
by Jennifer Gunter

Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University’s Digital Library and Archives’ Special Collections document the history of Virginia, the Railroad, the Civil War, women in architecture (internationally), science and technology, science fiction, culinary history, natural history, as well as, the history of this land-grant agricultural extension college.  Access to these collections relies heavily upon word-of-mouth and Google searching.  How should Virginia Tech’s Special Collections make its collections more accessible and automate internal collection management?  Exploring alternatives has led to an interesting solution:  Why not employ Encoded Archival Description (EAD) to accomplish description and collection management?  It almost sounds too easy.  

The biggest challenge to extensively documenting collections should not be a surprise – it is hard to automate with a small staff and staff turnover. The result is that collection documentation systems currently in place are, leaving the present staff with the difficult task of maintaining a confusing array of diverse information pools.  Three recent collaborations are evolving that perhaps might offer a dynamic solution to our access challenges. 

Firstly, Virginia Tech’s participation in the Virginia Heritage Project (VHP) is proving to be a windfall.  The project created and sustains a statewide union database of EAD-tagged guides to the historical collections in the Commonwealth of Virginia. As of November 2002, Virginia Tech has contributed 60 finding aids to the database, which means they are already encoded in XML EAD. Luckily, the VHP’s foresight in choosing to encode finding aids in XML EAD proved fortunate; XML has become the digital publishing standard of the future and participating gives Virginia Tech a leg up in automating our collection documentation systems and perhaps other important resources such as the MARC catalog record.  

In the fall of 2002, the Society of American Archivists co-hosted with Virginia Tech its “Archival Cataloging as a Component of Description Workshop”.  Bringing the workshop to Special Collections gave the staff training in archival cataloging (as opposed to bibliographic cataloging), a very important first step toward getting our manuscript collections catalogued and included in the library’s OPAC.  Inclusion in local and national union catalogs will increase access to our unique collections tremendously.  Students conducting research in Newman Library utilizing the online catalog will begin to pull records for archival collections as well as the general collections. 

While the prospect of cataloging is exciting and would certainly improve access to the repository’s rare and unique collections, the task is not easily accomplished with a small staff.  Fortunately, Katherine Wisser, Doctoral student at UNC-Chapel Hill’s School of Information and Library Science and North Carolina State University Libraries Fellow in the Cataloging Department, paid Tech a visit and shared with us how we might cross-walk data from the EAD finding aids into a MARC record. 

With guidance from neighboring institutions like NC State and help from Library colleagues like Systems and Technical Services, Special Collections hopes to begin cross-walking from finding aids published online to MARC catalog records, greatly enhancing public knowledge of our collections without having to increase significantly our descriptive work.  But that’s not all. 

Could EAD provide the framework for accessioning, rather than attempting to maintain our current myriad of files?  EAD’s front matter, header, and archival description (the first sections of the EAD finding aid) directly correspond to most of the fields in our accession record (which correspond to MARC fields.)  The beginning portion of an EAD finding aid for a new archival collection utilizes the description accomplished in the accession and can be expanded as the collection is processed. Can it all be as simple as that? Virginia Tech’s Digital Library and Archives’ Special Collections is very excited about developments in access and seeks to employ and develop standards as much as possible, maximizing staff resources and access to our collections. 

Jennifer Gunter is the Coordinator for Special Collections at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, VA

MEMBER NEWS by Ginny Kilander

Member News is your opportunity to tell us about yourself, your job, and your interests.  Is your facility about to open a great exhibit?  Did you just acquire a collection you would like to publicize?  Have you just changed jobs or careers?  Submit your entry to this column and share your Member News!  Please submit your brief biographical statements, announcements, press releases and other news to the Member News editor for inclusion in the next issue. Thanks for your contributions!

• Georgia Archives News

The Georgia Archives is on the move! Please visit www.GeorgiaArchives.org <http://www.GeorgiaArchives.org> for the move schedule, faq, fast facts, and construction photographs. If you have any questions, please contact Pamela Coleman, Public Programs Coordinator, at 404-651-6474 or pcoleman <mailto:pcoleman@sos.state.ga.us>@sos.state.ga.us <mailto:asmith@sos.state.ga.us>.

• Jessica Silver is the new Public Services Librarian at the University of California, San Diego's Mandeville Special Collections Library
  (http://orpheus.ucsd.edu/speccoll/).. Her focus at Mandeville Special Collections includes reference services, outreach and
  instruction, and collection development.

• To promote the Society of Southwest Archivists' annual meeting May 22-24, 2003, in New Orleans, the SSA 2003 local arrangements committee has developed several outreach tools.

The first is an extensive website providing information for the meeting. Images reflecting New Orleans' unique culture illustrate the site, including original Carnival float and costume designs from the turn of the century.

In addition to standard meeting information, such as workshop, registration, and hotel information, the website includes several innovative features. Among them are online hotel registration, links to information about area archives, links to information about the Louisiana Purchase Bicentennial in 2003, and a section of "insider tips" for enjoying New Orleans. We invite you to visit the website at:

<http://specialcollections.tulane.edu/SSA/SSA2003.htm>

To receive a complimentary bookmark and more information about the meeting, please visit the website or contact:

Leon C. Miller
Manuscripts Librarian, Howard-Tilton Memorial Library
Tulane University, New Orleans LA 70118
 lmiller@mailhost.tcs.tulane.edu <mailto:lmiller@mailhost.tcs.tulane.edu>

The website will be updated throughout the year, so please check back often for new features and information.

• Special Collections, Tulane University, has two new online exhibits, "Louisiana Political Ephemera in the Special Collections Vertical Files" and "Science Fiction and Fantasy in Special Collections." Their direct URLs are:

<http://specialcollections.tulane.edu/PolyEph/Political_Ephemera.htm>

Political ephemera comprise a large portion of the division's Louisiana vertical files. The exhibit is intended to teach viewers about the surprising range of information such items preserve and how they can be used for research.

<http://specialcollections.tulane.edu/scifi.html>

The SciFi and Fantasy online exhibit uses items from the collection to introduce viewers to the strengths of the collection and illustrate topics such as SciFi marketing and science fiction art

You may view all of the Tulane Special Collections online exhibits by visiting the Special Collections home page (specialcollections.tulane.edu) and selecting "Online Exhibits" on the left under "Our Resources."

calendar by Jim Cross

January-June 2003 

Jan 15, 2003 Deadline for submissions of guides, inventories, and other finding aids to the MARAC Finding Aids Award Committee. Web pages and other electronic formats will be accepted provided that the Committee has the appropriate software to view the submission. Send two copies of each submission to Chair. More details on the scholarship can be found at http://www.lib.umd.edu/MARAC/scholar.htm.  

Jan 24-29, 2003 American Library Association (midwinter); Philadelphia, PA at the Pennsylvania Convention Center  See http://www.ala.org/events/midwinter2003/ for more information. 

Jan 27-Feb 4, 2003 Modern Archives Institute; Washington, DC. MAI is a two-week class in archival administration offered by NARA's Staff Development Services in cooperation with the Library of Congress. Cost: $645. Contact Modern Archives Institute at: Tel: 301-713-7390; Fax: 301-713-7342; email at: mary.rephlo@nara.gov; or go to the Web site at www.nara.gov/arch/profdev/mai.html. For scholarship information contact Mary Rephlo at 202-501-5385 x 279; Fax: 202-208-1903; or Email: mary.rephlo@nara.gov            

Feb 28, 2003 Deadline for Colonial Dames Scholarship award, enabling two archivists each year to attend the Modern Archives Institute at the United States National Archives and Records Administration in Washington, DC. This deadline is for the Summer 2000 institute.        

March 13-15, 2003 “Looking Forward: Looking Back”- 10th Annual Meeting of the American Association for History and Computing; Indianapolis, IN. See http://www.theaahc.org/annual.htm for more information about the conference.          

April 9-12, 2003 Society of California Archivists and Northwest Archivists joint annual meeting; Sacramento, CA at the Capitol Plaza Holiday Inn. For more information go to http://www.calarchivists.org/.            

April 10-13, 2003 Association of College and Research Libraries: Charlotte, North Carolina. Details on the meeting program can be found at http://www.ala.org/acrl/charlotte/.

April 11-12, 2003 "New England Archivists Meeting"; Simmons College in Boston, MA. See http://www.lib.umb.edu/newengarch/meetings/index.html for more information about the meeting. 

April 11-12, 2003 Visual Resources Association 21st annual conference; Houston, Texas at the Warwick Hotel. Sessions include “Integrating Digital Images into the Curriculum” and “This Better Be Good: Issues in Teaching with Technology.” More information can be found at the following web site: http://www.vraweb.org/2003conference/main.html        

April 24-26, 2003 Archives Association of British Columbia Annual General Meeting; Nanaimo, British Columbia. See http://aabc.bc.ca/aabc/conference2003.html for details.     

April 24-26, 2003 MARAC Spring Meeting; Trenton, NJ. Additional information about the meeting can be found at http://www.lib.umd.edu/MARAC/maraccon.htm.       

May 22-24, 2003 Society of Southwest Archivists Annual Meeting; New Orleans, LA at the Embassy Suites New Orleans. See http://specialcollections.tulane.edu/SSA/SSA2003.htm for more information.         

May 25-30, 2003 IASSIST annual conference; Ottawa, Canada. See the following web site for additional information: http://iassist2003.ssc.uwo.ca/.          

May 29-June 2, 2003 Association for Computers and the Humanities (ACH) and the Association for Literary and Linguistic Computing (ALLC) "Web X: A Decade of the World Wide Web"; University of Georgia, Athens, GA. http://www.english.uga.edu/webx/            

June 7-12, 2003 Special Libraries Association Annual Conference; New York City, NY. Additional information can be found at http://www.sla.org/content/Events/conference/2003annual/index.cfm.         

June 10-11, 2003 Archives Association of Ontario conference; Toronto, Ontario, Canada at St. Michael's on the University of Toronto campus. See http://aao.fis.utoronto.ca/ for details about the conference.          

June 10-14, 2003 Association of Canadian Archivists annual conference; Toronto, Canada. For more information visit their web site at http://archivists.ca/conferen/index.htm.           

June 15-27, 2003 17th Western Archives Institute; San Francisco State University, CA. Contact: Nancy Zimmelman, Administrator, Western Archives Institute, 1020 O Street, Sacramento, CA 95814 Phone: (916) 653-7715, ArchivesWeb@ss.ca.gov.          

June 19-25,2003 American Library Association; Toronto, Canada. For program updates see http://www.ala.org/events/annual2003/

WEBSITE REVIEW by Jessica Lacher-Feldman

The Art of Books: German Decorative Trade Bindings from Collections of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Libraries. http://digital.library.wisc.edu/1711.dl/DLDecArts.GerDecBind

This website is an excellent resource for those with an appreciation and interest of book design and decorative trade bindings. The bindings in the exhibit were selected from the collections of the Memorial Library at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and from private collections. 

The exhibit brings together nearly one hundred titles from the period of 1870-1920, and explores through example the Jugendstil and Arte Deco movements of this period.  According to the introduction by Lou Pitschmann, “virtually all publications intended for the mass-market were issued in trade bindings that bore at least some attention to decorative detail”.  

The exhibit includes the front covers as well as the title pages for each work.  Images themselves are available in high-resolution jpgs, with a higher resolution jpg made available to gain greater detail.  

The works are browsable by author; binder and city; publisher and city, as well as chronologically. This allows for opportunities to easily access groups of works by city or binder, gaining a better understanding of the differences in materials and design styles. 

Also made available on the site are digital surrogates of contemporary support documentation about the binding trade, including the entire works, Der Buchbinder von Max Eschner (1911), Jahrbuch der Buchbinder-Innung zu Leipzig  (1914), and Der Leipziger Buchbinder im Wandel der Zeiten (1925).  

OFFICERS  

Society of American Archivists (2003)