Each October, AHA! joins the national archival community in celebrating American Archives Month by hosting a slate of events designed to support, promote, and celebrate the work of archival repositories and organizations in Houston.
Archives Month 2026
October 3: Archives Blitz!
Date and Time: Saturday, October 3, 2026 | Time TBD
Location: Lunar and Planetary Institute, 3600 Bay Area Blvd, Houston, TX 77058
Registration link will be available here on Tuesday September 1 at 10:00 AM CT.
Archives Blitz is an annual service day when we invite AHA members to volunteer their time and skills to help a local archives organization with a project they need an extra hand with. Blitz activities may include rehousing archival materials, data entry, digitization, arrangement, and description. The ultimate goal of this program is to provide support for our partner and peer organizations by offering our time, expertise, and passion for archives.
This year, we will be volunteering to scan maps held by the Galveston County Historical Museum.
October 17: Collection Highlight at the Menil
Date and Time: Saturday, October 17, 2026 | 11:00 AM – 12:30 PM
Location: The Menil Collection, 1533 Sul Ross St, Houston, TX 77006
Registration link will be available here on Tuesday September 1 at 10:00 AM CT.
The Menil Library is excited to highlight some of our rare and unique treasures, including a selection of livres d’artistes, focusing on the intersection of art, macabre themes, and surrealism. Featured items include Édouard Manet’s Le Corbeau, a variety of titles written and illustrated by Edward Gorey, a stunning copy of the Limited Editions Club’s publication of The Fall of the House of Usher featuring illustrations by Alice Neel, along with a few other published works related to surrealism.
This program will be led by Donna Török-Oberholtzer. As Associate Librarian for the Menil Collection Library, Donna oversees library operations and stewards the museum’s special collections. Grounded in her experience with painting and printmaking, her work focuses on preserving historical materials, expanding resource accessibility, and supporting research in art history and visual culture.
This program is limited to 25 attendees. Attendees should plan to meet in the foyer of the main building (located at 1533 Sul Ross St, Houston, TX 77006). While there is parking available at 1515 West Alabama Street, visitors can park on the streets around campus where permitted. Should anyone require assistance, they are more than welcome to call Donna directly at 409-539-0613.
October 22: Archives on Tap: Documenting Texas Craft Brewing
Date and Time: Thursday, October 22, 2026 | 6:00 – 7:30 PM
Location: Saint Arnold Brewing Company, 2000 Lyons Ave, Houston, TX 77020
Registration link will be available here on Tuesday September 1 at 10:00 AM CT.
Join us at Saint Arnold Brewing Company — the oldest craft brewery in the state of Texas — to soak up the remnants of Oktoberfest and Archives Month together! We are thrilled to be joined by Travis Williams, Archivist & Special Collections Librarian at St. Edward’s University, who will be speaking about the Texas Craft Brewing Collections, which aim to capture the history and culture of Texas’s craft brewing scene by documenting over 200 breweries across the state. He will be speaking about how the project began, how it has grown, what the collections consist of, our outreach efforts, and our hopes for the future. Join us in the beer garden to learn about this fascinating collection while enjoying a brew or a bite with folks who share a passion for both history and hops!
Travis has served as the Archivist & Special Collections Librarian at St. Edward’s University in Austin for seven years. His archival outreach event, “Hillhops: A Celebration of Texas Beer History” has won awards from the Texas Digital Library Consortium and the Texas Historical Records Advisory Board. He co-authored the module “Lights, Camera, Archives!” for “Engagement in the Digital Era”, published by the Society of American Archivists, in 2020. Outside of the library he is a writer, actor, and independent filmmaker.
October 30: Spooky Stories from the Stacks
Date and Time: Friday, October 30, 2026 | 12:00 – 1:00 PM
Location: Zoom
Registration link will be available here on Tuesday September 1 at 10:00 AM CT.
Join us for the second iteration of Spooky Stories from the Stacks, a virtual roundtable where archivists will share our encounters with haunting histories, macabre and mystical materials in our collections, eerie repositories, and anything else that’s sent a shiver down our spines while working in the stacks! We welcome your spooky story submissions; if you don’t want to be the one to share your story, one of our AHA hosts will be happy to share it on your behalf. We hope you’ll join us to close out Archives Month 2026 and welcome Halloween!