On April 2, 2015, The Society of Ohio Archivists (SOA) announced the names of scholarship recipients for the “2015 SOA Merit Awards, New Professional Scholarships, and Student Scholarships to the SOA Annual Meeting Competition”. I was awarded the new archival professionals award. As a new transplant to the Miami Valley Area from Durham, I had limited knowledge of the Ohio landscape. Attending a variety of conferences as a student intern and employee in North Carolina gave me a great lay of the land and connected me with organizations with whom to collaborate. I applied for the scholarship on account of the opportunity for networking with Ohio repositories and build strong relationships with OhioLink, OPAL Consortium, local public libraries, museums and historical institutions, and the African Methodist Episcopal Church.
 |
| Receiving my award from SOA President Judith Wiener |
The scholarship for archival professionals with three years or less experience in the workplace will provide funding to attend the associations’ annual spring meeting on Friday, May 15, 2015 at the OCLC Conference Center in Dublin, Ohio. The scholarship consists of conference registration (including lunch), a one year membership to SOA, and a $100 travel stipend. Awardees are required to write about their experience for publication in the Ohio Archivist newsletter.
Here goes:
I carpooled with the Greene County Archive crew to Dublin for the
Archives Amplified themed meeting. In addition to hearing about the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum at The Ohio State University from Jenny Robb, Curator and Associate Professor, I attended the following sessions, "Delivering the Ohio Department of Health and Death Certificates Digitally", "The Value-Added Archivist: Becoming an Integrated Part of the Academy", "Creating Digital Stories and History Harvests for Outreach and Instruction", and "Out of Site: Coordinating a Large-Scale Move of Archival Materials".
All of the sessions were great but I was most intrigued by the Value-Added Archivist presentation in which the flipped classroom model was highlighted. We were challenged to think about creating a strategy for archives integration into the curriculum, determining research and teaching needs (not digitizing for digitizing sake, and defining the first steps in creating assignments for sustainable projects.
As the adolescent who spent way too much time on Ancestry.com when the site first launched I was fascinated by the Health and Death Certificates presentation. The Ohio History Connection provides access to 2,000,000 digitized 1954-1963 Ohio Department of Health and Death certificates for patrons to research. The presenters shared Orville Wright's death certificate with us and explained how they created an online index and email system for sending PNG copies of certificates to patrons for a $7 a pop.
The first thing I noticed about the SOA membership much like ATLA is that it is small and everyone knows one another, therefore it is fairly easy to get involved in committees and approach colleagues about tangible collaborations. I volunteered to serve on the Advocacy Committee.
 |
| Dreamy |
 |
| General Session Room |
 |
| View of the OCLC Building from the 2nd floor where look was served |
 |
| Take 2 |
 |
| The Merit Award and Scholarship Recipients |
As the adolescent who spent way too much time on Ancestry.com when the site first launched I was fascinated by the Health and Death Certificates presentation. The Ohio History Connection provides access to 2,000,000 digitized 1954-1963 Ohio Department of Health and Death certificates for patrons to research. The presenters shared Orville Wright's death certificate with us and explained how they created an online index and email system for sending PNG copies of certificates to patrons for a $7 a pop.
All of the sessions were great but I was most intrigued by the Value-Added Archivist presentation in which the flipped classroom model was highlighted. We were challenged to think about creating a strategy for archives integration into the curriculum, determining research and teaching needs (not digitizing for digitizing sake, and defining the first steps in creating assignments for sustainable projects.
No comments:
Post a Comment