Pullman National Monument and State Historic Site tells the story of America’s first planned model industrial community, the sleeping car magnate who created it, and the workers who lived there. The park is significant for its influence on railroad transportation, industrial innovation, urban planning and design, and the American labor and civil rights movements, including the 1894 Pullman Strike and Boycott.
To sign up or to be added to waitlist, click here.
Date and time of the...
The Chicago Maritime Museum offers visitors a chronological walk through the eras of French fur traders, sail and steam-powered vessels, modern commercial Great Lakes frigates, recreational sailing, and the Ralph and Rita Frese Canoe Collection.
Two permanent exhibits, opened in May, focus on the Lady Elgin, the deadliest disaster on the open waters of the Great Lakes, and on Captain Bill Pinkney, the first Black sailor to solo-circumnavigate the globe around the five Great Capes.
To sign...
Founded by Jeanne Gang in 1997, Studio Gang is an architecture and urban design practice headquartered in Chicago with offices in New York, San Francisco, and Paris. We are excited to welcome SAA conference attendees for a tour of the Studio’s Visible Archive, a new space in our Chicago office, dedicated to the conservation and display of our diverse collections of design records. (Please note: no photography except when given permission.)
To sign up or to be added to waitlist, click here...
Visit one of the largest public library buildings in the world, see highlights from our Special Collections Unit at Harold Washington Library, and learn how we have approached different archival and preservation challenges.
To sign up or to be added to waitlist, click here.
Date and time of tour: Wednesday, August 14, 1:00 PM
Approximate Duration: 90 minutes
Additional questions, please contact: Beth Bruins | Librarian | bbruins@chipublib.org
Capacity: 25 people
Location:...
Located in Chicago’s Prairie Avenue district, Glessner House is a cultural center and museum, showcasing revolutionary design and celebrating the cultural arts from the late 1800s to the present day. Designed by the legendary American architect Henry Hobson Richardson, this architectural marvel was completed in 1887 and continues to be a renowned treasure in the city of Chicago. John Jacob Glessner, Frances Macbeth Glessner, and their two children, George and Frances, called Glessner House home...
The circulation desk at the UIC Library of Health Sciences, from https://library.uic.edu/
Join Megan Keller Young, Special Collections Librarian, University of Illinois Chicago’s Health Sciences Library, and Nathalie Wheaton, Archivist, RUSH University Medical Center Archives, for tours of their health-related collections in the heart of the Illinois Medical District. Attendees will view rare books and archival collections documenting the medical and health history of the Chicago area...
Founded in 1887, the Newberry Library is one of Chicago’s most historic cultural institutions. Come have an introduction to the Newberry’s collections, view exhibitions such as Indigenous Chicago and Chicago Style: Mike Royko and Windy City Journalism, and enjoy an overall orientation of this historic institution.
To sign up or to be added to waitlist, click here.
Date and time of tour: Wednesday, August 14, 10:00 AM – FULL
Approximate duration: 1 hour
Capacity: 15 people...
Klaus Mäkelä leads the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in Orchestra Hall (Todd Rosenberg Photography)
Formed in 1990 during the CSO’s centennial season, the Samuel R. and Marie Louise Rosenthal Archives of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra Association house an extensive collection of audio-visual materials, programs, photographs, newspaper clippings, and administrative records documenting the activities of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Chicago Symphony Chorus, Civic Orchestra, and Orchestra Hall...
This is the newest post in our There’s an Archivist for That! series, which features examples of archivists working in places you might not expect. In this article, Donna Wojcik talks about her job as Research/Archivist/Oral Historian for the New Mexico Farm and Ranch Heritage Museum.
1. How did you get your gig?
I started volunteering at the New Mexico Farm and Ranch Heritage Museum when it opened in 1998, serving as a greeter and oral history transcriber. I became a full-...
The largest African American history and literature collection in the Midwest, the Vivian G. Harsh Research Collection of Afro-American History and Literature documents the Black experience with a strong focus on Chicago. Join staff for a tour of the public spaces, staff spaces (stacks) and our current exhibit “Harsh and Woodson: Curators of Black History.”
To sign up or to be added to waitlist, click here.
Date and time of the tour: Wednesday, August 14, 2:00 PM...
This post is part of the Intergenerational Conversations series.
Review of Trudy Peterson, “Reading, ’Riting, and ’Rithmetic: Speculations on Change in Research Processes,” American Archivist 55, no. 3 (1992): 414–419, https://doi.org/10.17723/aarc.55.3.r34727q673748802.
By Elliott Kuecker, Teaching Assistant Professor, School of Information and Library Science at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill [PDF Full Text] | [PDF Article + Full Text]
In 1991, Trudy H. Peterson,...
The Union League Club of Chicago (ULCC) was founded in 1879. It traces its origin to the Union League of America (ULA), a Civil War–era organization formed to support Abraham Lincoln and to help preserve the Union. The tour is of the ULCC archives that document members’ contributions to community, country, and culture.
To sign up or to be added to waitlist, click here.
Date/Time of the Tour: Wednesday, August 14, 10:00 AM – FULLWednesday, August 14, 1:00 PM
Approximate Duration:...
This series celebrates all the great information that exists in ArchivesAWARE!
This interview originally published on May 2, 2016, is one of the most popular posts on the blog.
Among the resources in SAA’s advocacy toolkit is Public Relations and Marketing for Archives: A How-To-Do-It Manual (2011), edited by Peter Wosh and R. James and co-published by SAA and Neal-Schuman Publishers, Inc. Today we bring you an interview with Peter Wosh, Professor of History and Director of the Archives/...
Disaster Planning for Special Libraries
By Guy Robertson. Cambridge, MA: Chandos Publishing, 2020. 320 pp. $78.95. eBook ISBN 9780081010501; Paperback ISBN 9780081009482.
The Disaster Planning Handbook for Libraries
By Mary Grace Flaherty. Chicago: American Library Association, 2021. 168 pp. $54.99; ALA members $49.49. Paperback ISBN 9780838937990.
Reviewed by Katy Sternberger, CA, DAS; Archivist, Portsmouth Athenaeum [PDF Full Text]
Disaster planning can sometimes feel...
Article originally published in the March/April 2024 issue of Archival Outlook.
The Frank Lloyd Wright Home and Studio in Oak Park, Illinois. Courtesy of Oak Park Public LIbrary Special Collections.
This summer marks the fiftieth anniversary of the landmark restoration of the Frank Lloyd Wright Home and Studio, located at 951 W. Chicago Avenue in Oak Park, IL. Wright is best known for founding the Prairie School style of North American architecture and designing homes for wealthy...
Article originally published in the January/February 2024 issue of Archival Outlook.
Tell me, does this sound familiar? Often times when my mind is wandering, thinking idly perhaps about oat milk, sooner or later I’ll discover myself wondering “Who was the first person to drink oat milk anyway? When was oat milk even invented?” It’s not that I’m all that invested in the answer per se but my day is effectively over unless I can even nominally satisfy my curiosity. Perhaps my kind of curiosity...
By Rose Buchanan and Stephanie Luke, Reviews Co-Editors [PDF Full Text]
“Archives are, by their nature, intergenerational voices. They allow our ancestors to speak to us and for us to speak to our descendants. Given this reality, archivists should value the messages that our predecessor comrades bring forward. . . . This series provides archivists with the opportunity to be in community with other archivists both through space and time.”
—Terry Baxter, 77th SAA president
In 2023,...
By Ellen Cunningham-Kruppa. Ann Arbor, MI: The Legacy Press, 2019. 294 pp. Hardcover $65.00. ISBN 9781940965154.
Reviewed by Courtney M. Gillie, Project Archivist, The State Historical Society of Missouri [PDF Full Text]
Mooring a Field by Ellen Cunningham-Kruppa is a thoughtful look into the sidelining of career conservators and preservationists like Paul Noble Banks. Banks was a forerunner in the field of book conservation and created the first degree-granting program in library...
This post is part of the Intergenerational Conversations series.
By Rose Buchanan and Stephanie Luke, Reviews Co-Editors [PDF Full Text]
The Intergenerational Conversations series is intended to foster dialogue between the past and the present by allowing new voices to revisit, reevaluate, and respond to professional literature that shaped the archival field. In its inaugural year, we felt there was no better focus than the work of Society of American Archivists (SAA) Fellow and past...
Visit Special Collections at the Oak Park Public Library and embark on a tour of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Home & Studio in a limited capacity repository tour. In celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Home & Studio’s restoration and landmark designation, OPPL’s Special Collections team and the Frank Lloyd Trust are inviting SAA conference attendees to witness artifacts like the Wasmuth Portfolio of line work perspectives in the Reading Room, walk through Scoville Park...
Edited by Jidong Yang. Association for Asian Studies, Inc., 2022. 368 pp. Hardcover $60.00. ISBN 9780924304989.
Reviewed by Hali Allen, State Historical Society of Missouri [PDF Full Text]
I recently read Beyond the Book: Unique and Rare Primary Sources for East Asian Studies Collected in North America, edited by Jidong Yang. This book delves into the histories and cultures of East Asia by examining and describing in detail the rare, and very few, archival collections of Chinese, Japanese...
This post is part of the Intergenerational Conversations series.
Review of John Fleckner, “Reaching Out: The Place of Records Surveys in Archival Practice,” The Midwestern Archivist 2, no. 1 (1977): 14–21.
Reviewed by Jordan Jancosek, Archivist, Accessioning and Collection Management, Brown University [PDF Full Text] | [PDF Article + Full Text]
John Fleckner’s 1977 article, “Reaching Out: The Place of Records Surveys in Archival Practice,” tackles an archival practice that is...
In this episode, cohosts Chris Burns and Camila Zorrilla Tessler speak to counterculture historian and archival music producer Pat Thomas about his new book Material Wealth: Mining the Personal Archive of Allen Ginsberg. Join us for a discussion about Pat’s research process, favorite items from Ginsberg’s collection, and thoughts on Ginsberg’s legacy.
Read the transcript.
Episode Extras
Order your own copy of Material Wealth: Mining the Personal Archive of Allen Ginsberg...
In this episode, cohost Chris Burns speaks with dindria barrow, Marika Cifor, Sarah Nguyễn, and Anna Trammell about their work on The Community Archives Center Toolkit, which was collaboratively developed by the Tacoma Public Library and the University of Washington.
This free resource is now available for other libraries and archives to use in creating community-focused projects. Listen to learn more about the toolkit and how you might use it at your institution.
Read the transcript...
