The Special Collections and Library team started off the Winter Season with a party for the Governor, complete with cookies and punch. Well, really, the Governor was having the Inauguration reception here at the Thomas D. Clark Center for History and the SC&L staff watched from the windows above Commonwealth Hall. We did not have too many researchers on Tuesday, mostly lots of folks taking the opportunity to look around. They got to see the SC&L team hard at work cataloging manuscripts.
So what did we accomplish in our first week? Well let me tell you! We cataloged 183 small manuscript collections, 20 large manuscript collections and 17 oversize collections. One of my favorite discoveries was a trio of hotel registers from around central Kentucky covering the time period of the Goebel assassination. Apparently, the investigators collected these registers in the hopes that they would show the activities of the assassins. On a side note, how many people remember actually signing into a hotel register?
Another highlight was SC 574 the George Delph account ledger, which has marginally interesting account information on a dry goods enterprise in Nicholas County. It was later used, however, as a scrapbook by an unknown collector who decorated its pages with cut out images of fashion plates, political cartoons and product labels. You can look forward to digital images appearing in the Digital Collection soon.
We also got together late Friday afternoon with our colleagues at the Kentucky Department of LIbrary and Archives to show them what we would be doing this Winter Season. Since they will be answering lots of questions about our activities, we thought we would invite them in for a tour.
Not to be outdone, our Oral History staff met with 10 young women as part of the Staging Voices program with the Kentucky Commission on Women. These high school students are learning how to create a theater piece using oral history as the raw material for their inspiration. They will be doing 6 or 7 interviews with women who have served as advocates for women or who have effected change in the lives of other women. The students came in on Saturday to learn how to use the equipment and to do a practice interview with Sheila Mason Burton, who inarguably has done much for women in Kentucky.
Well, it is time to get to work. Stay tuned for our next update on Tuesday December 27! Merry Christmas everyone!
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