Friends and kindred spirits,
The choice to create this blog was born of a need to try and reach as many of those in Area 83 that are or want to be doing something archives. It can sound like such a large task - being elected to be an archives chair, trying to get an active committee going, grappling with what seems like innumberable tasks such as oral histories, group histories, memorabilia vs. artifactual and archival material, preservation and conservation! We have precious little time in our busy days with meetings and our group service commitments that it seems that we may indeed have bitten off more than we can chew, except that the rewards are so great. To sit down with a longtimer as they reminisce about times gone by, to actually hold the first edition of our meeting in print, the Grapevine, to listen to Bernard Smith orate on the spiritual vision of the Alcoholics Anonymous movement and to share these 'spiritual goose bumps' with kindred spirits, all these conspire to evaporate the trudging that this work sometimes is.
As the archivisit for Area 83, it is my intent to make this piece of your service journey as smooth as possible. As I gain more skill with posting documents and so on, you will be able to download what you need for your group and district to record oral and group histories.
I will be regularly posting information that will be helpful to you in carrying out your responsibilities as archives chairpersons and archivists.
You will want to put into your calendars June 9th, 2007. It is the 2nd Annual Area 83 Archives Workshop to be held in Kingston. We are still working on getting the location settled - we are deciding between two group meeting locations (visit again soon and this will be posted). The day will commence at 10:00 and end around 3:00. We will have 3 hour long seminars on oral histories, data storage methods, and preservation of paper and textiles. For those interested we are working on arrangements with a local archives to get a first hand experience of a working archival collection. There will be a pot luck - these are always great fun.
Pass the information along and visit this blog often for updates on archives events throughout Area 83.
