Archives Month
Celebrating the American Record
October is Archives Month. Archives Month is a collaborative effort by professional organizations and repositories around the nation to highlight the importance of records of enduring value. An archives is a place where people go to find information. Archivists are professionals who assess, collect, organize, preserve, maintain control of, and provide access to information that has lasting value, and they help people find and understand the information they need in those records.
2009
The SLAC Archives & History Office observed Archives Month 2009 with another contest to share the inside story on working at this lab. Due to insufficient participation the contest was cancelled. We sent the 4 entrants each a participant prize. Be sure to stay tuned for news of next year’s Archives Month activity (October 2010).
2008
The SLAC Archives & History Office celebrated Archives Month 2008 with a contest to help complete our collection of SLAC published newsletter. Archives staff identified gaps in our holdings of SLAC popular periodical publications—like SLAC News, Beam Line, The Interaction Point (TIP), SSRL Users Newsletter, Computing@SLAC, etc. We received 112 gap-filling newsletter issues from present and former lab staff. The winners of the random drawing were Cherrill Spencer, David Aston, John Halperin, and Ruth McDunn. Cherrill Spencer also earned a special commendation prize for the highest number of valid entries which filled 75 gaps!
We continued to reap the rewards of our contest throughout the year. Just before the winter shutdown, Ray Wallace, formerly of Power Conversion, brought in a stack of newsletters that he had saved over the years. The contest is over, but we are still accepting donations.
SLAC Today articles
- 10/1/2008 "Celebrate American Archives Month at SLAC and Win!"
- 10/31/2008 "Archives Month Contest Ends Today"
- 11/4/2008 "Archives Month Contest Yields 112 Needed SLAC Publications"
2007
The Society of American Archivists Student Chapter at San Jose State University's School of Library and Information Science toured the Archives of the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center on the afternoon of October 24, 2007. The tour began at the SLAC Visitor's Center and then proceeded to the Technical Division's Klystron exhibit, and the SLAC Research library. Jean Deken gave the group a presentation on the operation of the SLAC Archives and discussed some of the challenges faced in preserving the early web at SLAC and SLAC's efforts at archiving electronic records. Laura O'Hara and Kathy Restaino then gave the group an in-depth tour of the Archives' storage and processing areas, and answered questions about policies and procedures.
