Join us October 27 from 2-4pm on Zoom Webinar.
Free to attend and open to all!
Discover the remarkable archival resources available in the Rochester region at the 6th annual Rochester Archives Fair!
Area institutions will highlight their unique collections and be available to discuss the archival treasures they preserve during the Virtual Archives Fair event on October 27 from 2-4pm.
This year’s theme, “Making Connections”, will explore the connection between archives and the communities they serve. Join us as we celebrate local collections and Archives Month through:
- Exhibitor Introductions from 8 archival institutions
- Lightning Talks
- Ask an Archivist Q&A
Whether you are interested in history, genealogy, primary sources, or enjoy learning, this FREE event will introduce you to our area’s special collections, archives, libraries, and historians.
Featured Lightning Talks and Speakers:
- “A Gamut of Games: Creating The Sid Sackson Portal” – Julia Novakovic, The Strong National Museum of Play
- “Community Engaged Archives: the Community Curator program at VSW” – Tara Merenda Nelson, Visual Studies Workshop
- “Making Change Through Changemakers” – Stephanie Ball, Rochester Museum & Science Center
- “Audio Media: A Preservation Frontier” – Brandon Fess, Rochester Public Library
- “A Roadmap for Preserving Your Family Archive” – Kate Jacus, Archival Methods
Featured Archives and Institutions:
- Rare Books, Special Collections, and Preservation, River Campus Libraries, University of Rochester
- Rochester Medical Museum and Archives
- The Strong National Museum of Play
- Visual Studies Workshop
- Rochester Museum & Science Center
- Rochester Public Library
- Archival Methods
- Archives of the Sisters of St. Joseph
Not able to make the live event? Register for the recording!
Note: A closed captioned version of the recording will be available within 1 month of the event.
Lightning Talk Descriptions
Making Change Through Changemakers
The Rochester Museum & Science Center’s (RMSC) most recent featured exhibit; The Changemakers: Rochester Women Who Changed the World, celebrated over 200 diverse Rochester and Haudenosaunee women who acted as trailblazing advocates, organizers, inventors, and entrepreneurs to change our world. The Changemakers was a community curated exhibit aimed to inspire and empower others to become Changemakers by sharing stories of regional innovators just like them. This was accomplished by working with over 50 community members, 11 local organizations, and three Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion consultants to ensure authentic representation of these diverse women. By using this exhibition creation model, the RMSC sought to give agency to community members and strengthen these relationships.
In this talk, you’ll hear about the archivist’s role in the development of this exhibition and the path it took to build relationships with community members that ultimately led to more authentic storytelling and the strengthening of the RMSC archives and collections. The use of primary source material was vital to the creation of The Changemakers which required extensive historical research and the sourcing of over 600 images from the RMSC and beyond. The effects of The Changemakers surpassed the run of the exhibition leading to the creation of oral histories and addition of new collections to the Museum.
Presented by Stephanie Ball, Archivist & Librarian, Rochester Museum & Science Center
A Gamut of Games: Creating The Sid Sackson Portal
In 2019, The Strong received a grant from the National Historical Publications and Record Commission (NHPRC) to digitize materials from–and create an online research portal for–one of its most popular game-related archival collections: the Sid Sackson diaries. This talk will showcase the life and illustrious career of Sid Sackson, the stages of this grant project, and the materials now publicly accessible to the world via The Sid Sackson Portal. The Sid Sackson Portal will allow researchers and game enthusiasts worldwide to access 35 years’ of diaries from one of the 20th century’s most celebrated independent game designers. Transcriptions of the diary pages will be created through crowdsourcing, which will let participants have a stake in the project and make connections to other games, people, and companies of the time.
Presented by Julia Novakovic, Archivist, The Strong National Museum of Play
Community Engaged Archives: the Community Curator program at VSW
The Community Curator program at Visual Studies Workshop invites community groups in the Rochester region to curate film screenings using VSW’s collection of over 10,000 film and video titles. Participants in the program work the Curator of Moving Image Collections to research and select a full program of films that speak to the interests of the group, while opening a broader dialog with the Rochester community. Participants receive a $350 stipend for taking part in the program. The goals of the Community Curator program are to empower cultural organizations to create their own media programming, activate community-level research within the archive, expand global and cultural awareness among Rochester’s communities, and strengthen ties between students, artists, and individuals that will cultivate multicultural relationships. Since 2018, VSW has worked with grassroots groups in the Rochester region with an established history of activity involving social justice, civil rights, racial equality, media literacy, international education, nonviolent political protest, religious tolerance and LGBTQ rights, as well as public educators, media groups, and youth from Rochester Public High Schools. This talk will highlight the benefits this program has had for both the archive and the audience.
Presented by Tara Merenda Nelson, Curator of Moving Image Collections, Visual Studies Workshop
Audio Media: A Preservation Frontier
When was the last time you put on a record or inserted a tape in a cassette player? Outside the vinyl revival of the last decade, physical audio media (records, tapes, CDs, etc.) are slowly disappearing from our lives. Archival collections, however, are home to vast quantities of historic audio recordings on a variety of audio media formats. Unfortunately, the combination of technological obsolescence and degrading media makes it ever harder to play back and preserve many of these items. Thus, understanding how to identify various types of audio media and prioritize those most in need of preservation is an important skill for everyone from family historians to professional archivists.
Audio preservation is both a fundamental concern in contemporary archives and preservation, and an area in which obtaining professional instruction can be difficult. On a most basic level, this talk will connect viewers with Brandon Fess, who is an experienced audio archivist. Of course, the concept of connection goes further than this; as the topic of audio archiving is one that connects people across the archives world, from amateur family historians to specialists. But the strongest form of connection comes from the potent immediacy that hearing historic audio has upon the listener. Hearing literal voices and sounds of the past connects the listener directly to the person or people who created them. Hearing the voices of ancestors, artists and orators can be a uniquely emotional and powerful experience, one that can only be enabled and preserved for future generations through media preservation and audio archival practice.
Presented by Brandon Fess, Special Collections Librarian, Rochester Public Library
A Roadmap for Preserving Your Family Archive
Not sure where to start with organizing and preserving your photos and family heirlooms? This talk will outline a roadmap called “The 4 Ds” for your preservation project: Decide, Document, Digitize, and Determine. This framework can help you break down a project into manageable sections and ensure that the information and stories that make up your family legacy are as preserved and accessible as the objects themselves!
Presented by Kate Jacus, Marketing Coordinator, Archival Methods
By attending this event, you agree to our Code of Conduct.
We are committed to offering inclusive, diverse, and equitable services to all of our members. To request specific accommodations, please contact RRLC at least five business days ahead of the event.
This event is presented by the Rochester Area Special Collections, Archives, and Libraries (RASCALs) group of the Rochester Regional Library Council (RRLC).