Category Archives: Announcements

HMRC Event: How to Research a Historic Property

November 11, 2017   11am-1pm

The Houston Metropolitan Research Center’s Architectural Archivist will present on the basics of how to research a historic property.  This will include how to date buildings, find original residents, and which local organizations can help.

Highlighting HMRC’s value to building research, this event will also include an Architectural Orientation to the Texas Room to introduce the public to our collections and how to access them through the reference desk.

This program goes beyond our monthly Texas Room Orientation to focus primarily on HMRC’s architectural collections.  Customers will learn about architectural drawings, archival collections, books, and other materials that are useful in historic building research.

Parking is available under the Central Library building, with entry on Lamar Street.  For questions, please contact Samantha Bruer at samantha.bruer@houstontx.gov or 832-393-1376.

Preservation 101 Lecture

Library: Heights Neighborhood Library

Date: 10/26/2017

Room: Heights Library Meeting Room

Time: 6:30PM – 7:30PM

Type: Featured Event, Lecture, Workshops & Training

Age Group: adults, young adults ages 18-35 years, seniors

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Preservation 101 – The Houston Metropolitan Research Center invites you to join us in celebrating Archives Month 2017 with a Preservation 101 program at the Heights Neighborhood Library.  This talk will cover preservation fundamentals, how and why the library the preserves its collections, and give some ideas that might be useful in your own home. Learn best practices and tips for storage and handling of family documents and photos. This talk is part of a series of presentations put on by the Houston Metropolitan Research Center to celebrate Archives Month 2017.

http://houstonlibrary.org/learn-explore/library-events/hmrc-lecture-12

Preserving School Memories Lecture

HMRC Lecture

Library: Heights Neighborhood Library

Date: 10/19/2017

Room: Heights Library Meeting Room

Time: 6:30PM – 7:30PM

Type: Featured Event, Lecture, Workshops & Training

Age Group: adults, young adults ages 18-35 years, seniors

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Preserving School Memories: Storing and Maintaining School Memorabilia – The Houston Metropolitan Research Center invites you to participate in a program about preserving your memorabilia at the Heights Branch as a part of our Archives Month festivities. Memorabilia comes in many different forms – trophies, letterman jackets, ribbons, etc. –  and provides a unique challenge to preserve it for future generations. This program will discuss common types of school memorabilia and ways to preserve them. Examples will be shown from our school memorabilia collections. This talk is part of a series of presentations put on by the Houston Metropolitan Research Center to celebrate Archives Month 2017.

http://houstonlibrary.org/learn-explore/library-events/hmrc-lecture-11

Harvey Resources

How to Help

Donate to the Society of American Archivists’ National Disaster Recovery Fund.

Donate to the AASLH Hurricane Harvey Cultural Relief Fund.

Community Resources

Resources For Archives & Archivists

Houston Archives Collective Meet & Greet

Please consider stopping by the Houston Archives Collective’s first meet & greet gathering at Brasil Houston Tuesday, August 1st, at 6 pm-7:30 pm.
HAC is an informal group and space for exchange and collaboration between professional archivists and librarians with individuals in the community interested in archives and Houston history.

TX-CERA Sponsored Safety Workshop

TX-CERA is hosting a safety and disaster planning workshop July 24th at the MFAH. The workshop is targeted at cultural heritage staff that may work with mold and soot hazards impacting their collections. Staff so often plunge right into hero mode once a disaster hits their collections and inadvertently put themselves at risk while trying to rescue those collections. We hope to avoid that by this type of workshop.

Learn more about the event here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/safety-training-for-museum-library-and-archives-professionals-tickets-35122002856

Event: Architectural Orientation at the HMRC

May 10, 2017   6:30-8pm

HMRC is hosting an Architectural Orientation of the Texas Room to introduce the public to our collections and how to access them through the reference desk.  This program goes beyond our monthly Texas Room Orientation to focus primarily on HMRC’s architectural collections.

Guided by Architectural Archivist, Samantha Bruer, customers will learn about architectural drawings, archival collections, books, and other materials that are useful in historic building research.

Parking is available under the Central Library building, with entry on Lamar Street.

For questions, please contact Samantha Bruer at samantha.bruer@houstontx.gov or 832-393-1376.

Dues Payments Made Easy!

Greetings AHA!

We’re so happy to report that you can now pay your AHA! membership dues with any major credit card! We have setup an account with Squareup.com to handle credit card transactions. To cover the transaction fee, a convenience charge of $1 will be added to the regular $10 membership. As always you can still pay dues by cash and check. See the AHA Credit Card Flyer for more details.

Cheers!

Sandra Yates
AHA! Treasurer

Sandra E. Yates, MSIS, CA, DAS
Archivist & Special Collections Librarian
McGovern Historical Collections
Texas Medical Center Library
syates@library.tmc.edu
p: 713-799-7176
f: 713-799-7876

Website: www.library.tmc.edu/mcgovern
The Black Bag: http://mcgovernhrc.wordpress.com

The Year Ahead for AHA!

Dear AHA! Members,

Thanks to all who joined us recently for the inaugural monthly AHA! Happy Hour—it was a great evening of discussion and socializing. We had a productive executive meeting and brainstormed ideas for an exciting upcoming year.

One thing that came out of this gathering was a thoughtful review of AHA’s mission statement. Reflecting on the organization’s stated mission energized board members and others present. It also provided guidance as we seek to align AHA’s activities with this mission.

AHA! exists to increase contact and communication between archivists and those working with records, to provide opportunities for professional development, and to promote archival repositories and activities in the greater Houston, Texas area.

As we craft programming and communications for the year, we’ll seek to ensure that all three of these pieces are actively cultivated. Improved communication, increased fellowship, and opportunities for training and knowledge-sharing all seem like areas ripe for connecting and developing our membership. The big-ticket item—the Houston Archives Bazaar—naturally fits the focus of promoting our work within and beyond Houston. By deliberately aligning our activities with the stated mission, it is our hope that we can better serve and connect Houston’s archival community—that’s you!—as well as the communities we serve.

As we look ahead to the year, we’d like to begin by getting your input on what you’d like to see from AHA! Please take a moment to fill out this member survey.

We hope that you’re as excited as we are about the upcoming year!

Sincerely,

AHA! Executive Board

Emily Vinson, President
Matt Richardson, Vice-President
Lisa Cruces, Secretary
Sandra Yates, Treasurer

Archie Motley Memorial Scholarship Applications Solicited

Archie Motley Memorial Scholarship Applications Solicited

The Midwest Archives Conference is soliciting applications for the 2017 Archie Motley Memorial Scholarship for Minority Students (http://www.midwestarchives.org/motley). The scholarship is designed to provide financial assistance to minority students pursuing graduate education in archival administration and to encourage ethnic diversification of the MAC membership and of the archival profession as a whole. Two $750 scholarships, accompanied by one-year memberships to MAC, will be awarded.

In order to be eligible for a scholarship, the applicant must be of African, American Indian, Asian or Pacific Islander, or Latino decent; must be a student currently enrolled in or accepted in a graduate, multicourse program in archival administration; and must have a grade point average of at least 3.0 (on a 4.0 scale) in his or her academic program. If the program is not listed in the SAA Directory of Archival Education, http://www2.archivists.org/dae, the applicant must provide proof of the multicourse standard by submitting copies of course descriptions from the institution’s current departmental catalog. Applicants are not required to be residents of or attend school in the MAC region.

Applications are due March 1, 2017 and must include the following documents:

Completed applications should be sent to:

Rachel Howard
Digital Initiatives Librarian
University of Louisville Libraries
Archives and Special Collections
Louisville, KY 40292
Telephone: 502-852-4476
Email: rachel.howard@louisville.edu

Applications must be emailed or postmarked by March 1, 2017.

Awards will be announced no later than June 1, 2017.