CSUMC AWARDED PRIZE FOR ARCHIVING PROJECTS | WISCONSIN ORAL HISTORY DAY TO BE CELEBRATED APRIL 14
CSUMC AWARDED PRIZE FOR ARCHIVING PROJECTS
CSUMC has been selected as one of two recipients of the 2007 Brenda McCallum Prize from the American Folklore Society’s Archives and Libraries Section. Honoring exceptional work dealing with folklife archives or the collection, organization, and management of ethnographic materials, the prize has been awarded annually since 1994 for noteworthy products or documented activities that provide education, techniques, or services to those who collect, organize, and preserve folklife materials, either on the individual or institutional level.
Janet C. Gilmore (Department of Landscape Architecture and the Folklore Program) and her archiving team won the prize for their survey report on the region’s wealth of public folklore archival collections, and their creation of a growing repository of detailed online collection guides that provide project histories and virtually organize the scattered yet rich documentary record.
The Survey of Public Folklore Collections in the Upper Midwest, 2005-2006 report, funded by the National Historical Publications and Records Commission, resulted from a survey of key public folk arts and folklife collections identified in Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Wisconsin and the western Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Archivist Nicole Saylor visited repositories, inventoried collections, assessed conditions and accessibility, and prepared the draft report. A revised online version of the report will debut in 2008 on the CSUMC web site.
Since 2006, Janet Gilmore, Nicole Saylor, and Karen Baumann have overseen the publication of eighteen collection guides as “Public Folk Arts and Folklife Projects of the Upper Midwest” in the University of Wisconsin Digital Collections’ Archival Resources in Wisconsin: Descriptive Finding Aids (http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/w/wiarchives/csumc.html). Developed with funding from the National Endowment for the Arts, these resources capture project histories and convey a comprehensive sense of the ethnographic documentation created from public folk arts projects conducted in the Upper Midwest from the 1970s on. The online guides virtually organize collections that often are scattered over several repositories, and make the material much more accessible to scholars and the general public.
The South Georgia Folklife Project also received the 2007 McCallum Prize. A list of McCallum Prize recipients and brief statements of their research topics may be viewed at: http://www.afsnet.org/sections/archives/prize.cfm
WISCONSIN ORAL HISTORY DAY TO BE CELEBRATED APRIL 14
April 14, 2008 will mark the first Wisconsin Oral History Day, organized by the UW-Madison Oral History Program, a part of UW Archives and Records Management.
The event will take place in Madison at the Pyle Center on the UW campus, April 14, from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. A morning workshop with UW oral historian Troy Reeves focuses on how to conduct oral history interviews. The cost of the workshop, with lunch, is $40. Afternoon sessions are free, and feature two talks: Doug Boyd of the University of Kentucky Libraries will speak about oral history in a digital environment, and Jennifer Abraham of Louisiana State University will speak on oral histories of Hurricanes Betsy and Katrina. In addition, two Round Tables will explore various oral history projects in the state.
For a full description of the day’s schedule, please visit: http://www.slis.wisc.edu/continueed/oralhist
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