Rockefeller Archives Trip

On Friday the 29th of October, somewhere around 11 of us drove down for our planned Rockefeller Archives / other stuff in Sleepy Hollow trip. The drive took around 2-2.5 hours, and our first stop on the trip was the Headless Horsemen diner (no archivists heads were lost, thankfully)!

After we all ate, we took what should have been an extremely short and straightforward drive to the Rockefeller Archives center. However, some navigational mistakes might have been made in the course of the next 15 minutes. Adventures were had, and we made it to the facility. At the facility, we first took a tour of the museum portion of the facility and then we were taken to the underground archival vaults. We were able to see a workspace where non-traditional archival materials were maintained (films, random art projects, etc.), a large amount of unprocessed materials, and then more traditional stuff (boxes, boxes everywhere!).

After the archives center, we elected to take a trip to the Old Dutch Church cemetery (the massive Sleepy Hollow cemetery), which was a short drive from the Rockefeller facility. Though we didn't have too much time to linger at the cemetery, we had a lot of fun poking around at various graves (famous people and otherwise). Washington Irving was one of the many in residence. From the cemetery, we took a short (actually quite long due to traffic) drive over to Washington Irving's house.

At Sunnyside, we were taken on a special guided tour by the director herself! As we were taken through the house, we were educated on the history of Irving, the development of Sunnyside, and the stories of those who often lived there with him. Unfortunately, we could not take pictures of the inside of the house, but there were many of the outside of the house.


Finally, we headed to a quick dinner and then took our various vehicles back towards Albany.

For those interested in looking at some pictures, I've posted a link to my flickr for the photos taken here.

If anyone has any other pictures they would like to contribute, let me know and I can add a link.

Hello!

My name is Kevin Robbitts, and I've recently been added as the assistant webmaster for this student chapter of the SAA - and this is my brief introduction post. This is my first semester at UAlbany, and I am in the LIS track of the M.S. Information Studies program, though I am also completing the archives track coursework. I received my undergraduate degree at the University of New Hampshire with a B.S. in Environmental Conservation Studies, a minor in Forestry, and I also studied the Japanese language for three years. While there, I worked at the UNH Main library and storage branch for four years, which eventually led me to seek this degree.

I don't have too much else exciting to say, other than that I would like to develop my skills of web design (thus my seeking of this position). Hopefully I can become an asset to this blogging project. Like Mike did before me, I intend to find a general posting schedule (current plan is to post weekly, though I have not yet decided on a day) and to hopefully post some enlightening and hopefully pertinent material. I look forward to working with and/or entertaining you.

Slater trip recap

For those of you who were not able to make the Slater trip, here is a recap.   About 10 people attended.   We started off with a tour of the ship.   After that we were treated to a tour of the Slater's museum.  Their collection includes military uniforms, photographs, and various other artifacts.   This is not something that the public is normally allowed to see so it was a real treat.   The curator of their collections was on hand to answer questions as well.    Even if you were able to attend the Slater is always undergoing restoration so it is worthwhile making a return visit. 

Two More Announcements

I have two announcements to make.   The first is that the trip to the USS Slater has been booked.   As of right now it will take place on Sunday, September 25th at 1 PM.   The Slater has a sizable parking lot (with overflow space if that is needed) so carpooling is not strictly necessary, but could be arranged if desired.   There is no fee to park.   Unfortunately I will not be able to make the next few meetings so if anyone has any questions, please feel free to e-mail me at mpaulmeno@albany.edu.  

The second announcement is that our poster from this year's SAA Conference is now online.   You can view it by going to our website.  For those of you who do not know, SCSAA got the opportunity to take a behind the scenes tour of the Yale University Manuscripts and Archives as well as the Cushing Center, which is a combination museum/archive/rare book collection that displays a number of artifacts including the brains of some of Dr. Harvey Cushing's patients.   We decided to make a poster out of it and it was well received. 

Announcement

On behalf of all the SCSAA Officers it is my pleasure to announce that we have a new assistant web master, Kevin Robbits.    In the future he will be posting in this blog and eventually taking over as webmaster after I graduate next year. 

Two pieces of business

There are two announcements from SCSAA. The first is that I have posted a few pictures taken from our trip to Chicago. Most are of the city itself, particularly Millennium Park. However there is one picture of an Emmy that I was able to take while at DePaul University. Click on the link to view them.

Also, I mentioned that I learned of a conference put on by the SAA Student Chapter at the University of Indiana at Bloomington. They have a website where you can find more information about the group and their previous two conferences. There is also a blog, which was recently created. The next conference is planned for March 2012, with a call for papers being in October. While Indiana is a bit of a hike from Albany, this conference sounds like a great way to network with other students and recent graduates.

Conference Summary

The 2011 Annual Meeting is now officially over. For us, it ended Friday night when we left Chicago. Our last day was a but different than the other two. I chose to skip the panels in the morning and get some sleep before checking out. In the afternoon, we had a bit of a treat. Amber was able to arrange a behind the scenes tour of the Archives and Rare Books department of DePaul University. For those of you who are unfamiliar with it, DePaul University is a small Catholic University in Chicago. Their Archives and Rare Books collection contains a wide variety of material from University records to the papers of a number of prominent Catholic priests and nuns, to a theater collection. They even have an Emmy Award, a picture of which I will post online soon.

Overall I found the conference an enjoyable experience. Simply being surrounded by people with similar interests made the trip worth it. Admittedly it was a but awkward being a student since most of the professionals tended to ignore us. So this year was a trial run of sorts to help prepare for future meetings. It has been my experience that one must go to a conference several times to really get comfortable with, and take advantage of, the experience. I have also noticed at other conferences that there is usually a group of "regulars" that attend every year and SAA is probably no different. So I look forward to being able to attend next year's annual meeting in San Diego.

On a different note, the officers spent some time discussing the upcoming semester. Due to scheduling conflicts, the meetings for this fall have been moved from Tuesday to Wednesday. They will still be held at 3:30 PM in the Draper Student Lounge. Our first meeting will be on September 7th, which is in the second week of classes. We are also planning on having roughly one event a month. For the upcoming semester we have planned a trip to the USS Slater, a trip to the Rockefeller Archives Center and Sleepy Hollow, and a panel session with some local archivists.