Reaching Out

This year we began a public program series in and for the community. There were six 90-minute programs on weekday evenings at the Public Lands Information Center downtown:

• "The Reel Story of Rampart Dam: Archival Film as History" by Dirk Tordoff.
• "Oral History: Preserving Stories of Work, Family and Community" by Mary Larson.
• "There's Gold in Them Thar Archives" by Gretchen Lake.
• "The Imaginary Geography of Fairbanks and Alaska" by Marvin Falk.
• "Something Old, Something New: the Fairbanks Winter Carnival" by Lake and Tordoff.
• "Preserving Your Family Photos with Old and New Technologies" by Richard Veazey.

Ron Inouye organized these events and provided the strong publicity (including interviews on KUAC-FM) that drew a total audience of 200.

800 people benefited from other APR presentations. Mary Larson, Robyn Russell, Gretchen Lake, Peggy Asbury, Dirk Tordoff, and Tamara Lincoln made presentations to 12 UAF classes in 7 departments. Lake made 15 presentations to 448 Elderhostel visitors. Tordoff gave 5 historical film showings at Denali Center and offered highlights of historical mining footage at the International Mining Symposium. Larson's Saturday afternoon oral history workshop drew 20 participants and a lead article in the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner. She also made a presentation to the Fairbanks Genealogical Society. Rose Speranza made 6 presentations to fifth- and sixth-graders from the Ryan Middle School. Richard Veazey brought in Boy Scouts from several troops for their genealogy merit badge, and Tordoff brought in Cub Scout Pack 20 to learn how to use newspapers on microfilm.

Many APR staff members contribute to Alaska-centered organizations and research. Gretchen Lake is president of the Alaska Historical Society, serves on the Alaska State Historical Records Advisory Board and the Fairbanks City Museum Board of Directors, and sat on the organizing committee of the International Mining Symposium. Will Schneider, Mary Larson, and Karen Brewster presented papers at the annual meeting of the Alaska Anthropological Association. Schneider co-authored an article comparing oral history in Alaska and South Africa, and he will co-chair the program committee for the 1999 meeting of the Oral History Association in Anchorage. Tamara Lincoln made a presentation on "The Diary of Helen E." for the Literacy Council of Alaska and represented Rasmuson Library at an invitational conference on Russian-American library cooperation. Ron Inouye and Susan Grigg made presentations at the annual meeting of the Alaska Historical Society and are board members of the Tanana-Yukon Historical Society. Ron reviews books for the American Indian Culture and Research Journal and Polar Record. The proceedings of the 16th Polar Libraries Colloquy, published in August, included papers by Lincoln, Inouye, and Marvin Falk. Other staff members strengthen our community through youth, service, and arts organizations.

Building Collections

Here are some highlights of this year's acquisitions. It was hard to choose.

In film:

• Peasgood/McRoberts, 1940s -- 2 hours+, including sternwheeler travel, Moravian missions, traditional Yupik activities, and church construction at Anaktuvuk Pass.
• KUAC, 1970s - 5 hours+, including the McKinley/Denali Trespass and the first oil tanker from Valdez.
• Meherin/Fagerson, 1930s -- 1 hour, Lower Yukon, including views of Rampart, fishwheels, river activity, and rare footage of a Soviet airplane in Alaska.
• Gustafson/Pflaum, 1930s -- Interior mining, including a short finished piece about the Cleary Hill Mine near Fairbanks.
• Roy S. Dickson, 1930s -- a pilot's unique footage of two wilderness crashes that resulted in rescue.

In photographs:

• White Pass and Yukon Railway Photograph Album, 1898-1899 -- 112 views of workers, construction, and the surrounding landscape.
• El Dorado Panoramic Photograph, 1899 -- full detailed view of the #16 mine at Grand Forks, Yukon Territory.
• Port Moller Album, 1911-1912 -- 300 views of people, street scenes, landscapes, and ships in Port Moller, around the Aleutians, and on the Seward Peninsula.
• Betty Wittenberg Newman Family Collection, 1912-1913 -- an album of views of Nome (loaned for copying).

In manuscripts:

• Harriman Expedition Sketches, ca. 1900 -- 73 of the original drawings that were made from Expedition photographs and used for the engravings in the published report.
• Sourdough Air Transport Records, c. 1930-1950 -- documenting the growth of commercial aviation in Alaska.
• Glen Lyon Campbell Diary, 1899 -- following the seldom traveled and poorly mapped overland route from Edmonton.
• Frank and Eleanor Williams Papers, 1890-1924 -- tracing the day-to-day life of traders in St. Michael.
• Rusty Huerlin Papers -- documenting the career of one of Alaska's premier artists.
  (Note: Some of these collections are not yet available for research.)

In oral history:

• Whaling in the Western Arctic - 11 tapes of interviews with whaling captains on St. Lawrence Island, conducted by Carol Jolles in 1997.
• North Campus Lands Collection - 10 tapes of interviews with UAF scientists discussing their research in the North Campus area, conducted by Sunna Fessler.
• National Park Service-Lake Clark Collection - 24 interviews with Tanaina Athabaskan elders, 1985. They talk about local history and place names in the Lake Clark/Lake Iliamna region.

Arctic Bibliographer Tamara Lincoln orders virtually all current publications about Alaska except those covered by UAF's separate science libraries, and she fills in gaps as out-of-print Alaskana comes on the market. She also collects selectively throughout the circumpolar North. Here are some examples of this year's purchases:

• Baie James et Nord quebecois, dix ans apres = James Bay and northern Quebec, ten years after. Montreal, 1988.
• Hoving, F. Same-folk om unga och gamla [The Sami people: about the young and old]. Stockholm, 1991.
• Miller, Jay. Tsimshian culture: a light through the ages. Lincoln, Nebraska, 1997.
• Radlinski, Ignacy. Slowniki narzeczy ludow kamczackich. 5 vol. Krakow, 1891-1894. (A dictionary of the Ainu, Kamchadel, and Koryak languages.)
• Sibirskaia derevnia v period transformatsii sotsialno-ekonomicheskikh otnoshenii: sbornik nauchnykh trudov. Edited by Z.I. Kalugina. Novosibirsk, 1996.
• South-East Alaska pilot, comprising the coast and off-lying islands from Dixon Entrance to Cook Inlet. Second Edition. London, 1932.
• State and minorities: a symposium on national processes in Russia and Scandinavia, Ekaterinburg, March 1996. Edited by Veniamin Alekseyev and Sven Lundkvist. Stockholm, 1997.
• Williamson, James Alexander. The voyages of the Cabots and the English discovery of North America under Henry VII and Henry VIII. London, 1929.

Out-of-print acquisitions are purchased from more than a dozen specialty dealers in North America and Western Europe. Personal contacts and exchanges from our duplicate holdings are essential to obtain materials from Russia. Lincoln's linguistic range and cultural knowledge are invaluable in selecting across so many cultures. Maria Billings, on part-time loan from Bibliographic Access Management, has been very helpful in sorting gifts and screening catalogs.

The outstanding rare map acquisition of the year was "A Chart of North and South America, including the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, with the nearest coasts of Europe, Africa and Asia." It was published in 6 sheets by Robert Sayer and John Bennett for Thomas Jeffrey's American Atlas (London 1775). Dozens of explorers' routes are plotted, with illustrations of at least 75 associated vessels. There are many notes and commentaries surrounding Hudson and Baffin bays. Alaska is represented by a large island labeled "Alaschka." The voyages in Alaskan waters include those of "Three Russian Ships" (1648), Bering (1741), Chirikov with Delisle (1741), and Sindo (1764-1768).

The outstanding rare book acquisition of the year was Peter Apian's Cosmographia, sive, Descriptio universi orbis. Our edition was published in Antwerp in 1544, twenty years after the first edition. This work describes the figure of the earth, based on ancient sources and discoveries of the late 15th and early 16th centuries. It has a woodcut map of the world that shows a very narrow North America, called Baccalearum [Realm of the Codfish], with a clearly depicted Northwest Passage. This map helped foster a belief in what was later called the Strait of Anian and is now known as the Bering Strait. It enriches our strong holdings in pre-discovery maps of Alaska, which depict a number of theories about the North Pacific and Arctic oceans.

President Jerome Komisar made time for an extended oral history interview with Dan O'Neill in his last month in office. We are grateful to both gentlemen for this addition to our presidential interview series. President Komisar also worked with Gretchen Lake on file transfer to the Archives.

Every one of our acquisitions depends on someone's recognizing the enduring value of these collections. We are particularly grateful for the trust of the Alaskans and Outsiders who commit their archives to our care; for the state funding of some book and all periodical purchases; for the gifts, loans, and counsel of Candy Waugaman; and for the incomparable generosity of Elmer E. Rasmuson.

Use of Collections

Much as we enjoy the treasure hunt, our greatest satisfaction comes from seeing the collections used. Here are some highlights for the year.

Our films, photographs, and graphics continue to be in demand for broadcasts and exhibits statewide and beyond:

• The National Park Service mounted additional photographs in its interpretive centers in Katmai/Lake Clark, Denali, Wrangell St. Elias, and Klondike/Goldrush national parks.
• Photographic images from the James Geoghagen Collection are on permanent exhibit in the Sullivan Roadhouse Museum in Delta Junction.
• The new Crawford Elementary School at Eielson Air Force Base chose many items from the Robert Crawford Collection for display under the 1% for Art Program.
• Images from our rare books, maps, and photographs were featured in Professor Lydia Black's traveling exhibit, "A Good and Faithful Servant: A Bicentennial Exhibit of the Birth of Ioann Veniaminov, 1797-1997, St. Innocent, Apostle of Alaska and Siberia." An international conference accompanied the Fairbanks showing.
• KFXF-FOX 7 in Fairbanks, KAKM Channel 7 and KTUU Channel 2 in Anchorage, the Turner Broadcasting System, and Holland America Westours used film footage for news coverage, advertising, and topical programming.
• Our photographs are featured in five kiosks installed in downtown Fairbanks to provide a historical walking tour. This project was sponsored by the Fairbanks Rotary Club and carried out by Renee Blahuta. Rotary hopes that other organizations will expand it.

Two new books that feature our visual materials are:

• Lael Morgan, Good Time Girls of the Gold Rush (Epicenter Press, 1998) -- richly documented with photographs from APR, the Alaska State Library, the Yukon Archives, and the University of Washington.
• Albert W. Franzmann and Charles Swartz, Ecology of Management of the North American Moose (Washington, DC: Wildlife Management Institute, Washington, DC, 1998) -- delightfully illustrated with Bill Berry's sketches in the chapter headings.

These prominent uses of our special collections are the result of thousands of instances of public service during the year, much of it by telephone, mail, fax, and now the Internet. The Research Room logged more than 2,000 daily research visits. Archives patrons requested more than 2,700 boxes and folders, ordered 20,000 photocopies, and purchased 2,300 photographic prints and slides (up from 1,800 in 1996-97). Oral History patrons borrowed 573 copies of interviews for Research Room or off-site use. The Alaska Film Archives received 73 inquiries. These services were provided by Sylvie Savage, Rose Speranza, Peggy Asbury, Robyn Russell, Gretchen Lake, and student assistants in the Research Room; Dirk Tordoff in the Film Archives; and Richard Veazey, Cal White, and student assistants in the Photo Lab.

An impressive number of Russian scholars find the means to take advantage of research opportunities in APR. Among those who made independent visits this year to study Russian America or the indigenous peoples of the Arctic were Dr. Tatiana Bulgakova (St. Petersburg Institute of Ethnology), Prof. Oleg Bychkov (Irkutsk), Dr. Lydia Feodorovna, and Sergei Slobodin (Northern International University of Magadan). We also welcomed Dr. Tatiana Berdiaeva of the Moscow Academy of Sciences, who studied permafrost and road construction. Among those who extended their visits for the Veniaminov conference were Dr. Chuner M. Taksami (Kunstkamera of Peter the Great and St. Petersburg Institute of Ethnology); Drs. Egor Shishigin, N.G. Samsonov, Anna Shishigina, and Oleg Yakimov (all of Yakut State University); and Prof. Evdokiia Guliaeva (Sakha State Library).

Other visitors came from research centers in Western and Northern Europe. Dr. Felix Torres of the Arctic Institute of Paris, Dr. Jean-Loup Rousselot of the Staatliches Museum fur Volkerkunde in Munich, and Dr. M. Hakapaa of the University of Lapland-Rovaniemi pursued cultural studies. Dr. Kari Hakapaa of the University of Lapland-Rovaniemi, Dr. Sven Gustaffson of the Norwegian Arctic Institute, Jarmo Heikkanen of Finland, and Dr. Tonisson of the Estonian Nature Preservation Society pursued Northern public policy matters such as land settlement law, logging, telecommunications, and the balance between wolf and moose populations.

Preserving Collections and Providing Access

The sharp increase in photo orders from the Archives probably reflects the shift from textual to visual communication that is said to be characteristic of our time. It also owes something to the increasing capacity of our Photo Lab to provide images rapidly in digital form. Whether the customer walks in with a disk or requests transmission via the Internet, the digital form is often preferred because it can be inserted directly in any document that is produced or presented via computer. By acquiring additional workstations, scanners, and drives, and by becoming increasingly adept in their use, Richard Veazey and his student assistants have been able to keep up with the growing number and increasing complexity of orders for digital images. We are particularly grateful to the student assistants who bring computer as well as lab skills to their positions.

Following our patrons' lead, we are beginning to display our images in digital form through our own computing networks. With help from Chris Lott in Academic Media Services, we mounted our first online exhibits on the Rasmuson Library World Wide Web site. Next we will begin illustrating our map and photograph indexes so that patrons will be able to choose from our most popular images via the Internet. The archive of digital images grows daily through patron orders and scans of pre-existing negatives.

We are not, however, abandoning our commitment to film photography. Descendants of Alaska pioneers and collectors of Alaskana are often happy to loan us photographs so that we can make copies for future research, and we use film rather than digital technology because of its preservation quality. We also make preservation copies of deteriorating paper prints, nitrate negatives, and glass plates so that the image will outlive the original medium. Among the items thus preserved this year were three photograph albums from the U.S. Revenue Cutter Bear, a lifeline for the Alaska customs district from 1884 to 1906. This work is done by Cal White, Richard Veazey, and student assistants.

There were two completions in the Project Jukebox multi-media CD-ROM series, bringing the total to 17:

• "Central Reflections Then and Now" was installed at the Central Historical Museum in May, the result of several years' collaboration between the Oral History Program and the Central District Historical Society. It draws on the Society's own Pat Oakes Collection, interviews by Laurel Tyrrell, and interviews already in APR to explore how early settlers view the growth of the area. It was made possible by hundreds of hours of volunteer effort from Laurel Tyrrell and other members of the Society and community and by a grant from the Alaska Humanities Forum (derived from NEH funding).
• Malinda Chase of UAF's Interior-Aleutians Campus brought together 21 interviews from the Elders in Residence Program to highlight the topic of child-rearing in Athabaskan culture. It was supported by the Interior-Aleutians Campus, the Lila Wallace/Reader's Digest Community Folklife Program, and the President's Special Projects Fund. The project will be installed in one or more rural locations in the fall.

Work continued on several National Park Service jukebox projects, including Sitka, Wrangell-St. Elias, Lake Clark, and Katmai (for the communities of Igiugig, Kakhonak, Levelock, and South Naknek). The Park Service also committed funds for the Denali Place Names Project, to be based on fieldwork by Professor James Kari. The Alaska Department of Fish and Game, Subsistence Division, is sponsoring the South Central Communities Project for Chenega, Port Graham, Nanwalek, and Tatitlek. APR staff members do much of the interviewing and technical work on some of these projects, but the growing emphasis is on training community members and agency staff so that they will be able to develop projects on their own.

A special contribution to preservation and access has been to take part in the United States Newspaper Program. This is a massive nationwide effort, organized and partly funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, to locate, identify, preserve, and provide access to all newspapers ever published at any time or place in the present territory of the United States. The Alaska segment was completed on June 30 after 5 years' statewide collaboration led by the Alaska State Library. UAF's participants were Marvin Falk, who served on the advisory committee; Jeff Pederson, who designed the database and continues to develop the project's World Wide Web site; and Marvin Washington, who filmed rare historical issues.

To make sure that there will not need to be another search for lost newspapers a century from now, we collaborate with the State Library to film all Alaska newspapers as soon as they appear. Marvin Washington keeps up with 20 titles, including the Cordova Times, the Delta Wind, and the Nome Nugget. This year he also found time to film more than two thousand books, periodicals, and archival folders. We are monitoring digital applications in microfilming but do not expect to venture into this territory for several years.

To make the microfiche copies of rare books more accessible, Marvin Washington and Peggy Asbury are working with Bibliographic Access Management to represent them as copy 2's in the online catalog and then place them in the open stacks. Once this project is complete, we hope to repeat the process for the more valuable and fragile books in the open stacks. Preservation librarians sometime refer to these at-risk open-stack items as "medium rare."

The Bibliography of Alaska and Polar Regions gives priority to current publications. This keeps editor Ron Inouye and assistants Robyn Russell and Liam Wescott very busy because it seems that someone starts a new journal or magazine for every government newsletter that is cancelled for lack of funds. They have also been preparing for migration to the library's new online system in 1999. To improve the coverage of older materials in the bibliography, the Alaska State Library awarded an Inter Library Cooperation grant of $1,988 to index the polar articles in National Geographic from 1888 to 1988. Our next target for special funding is to index the entire run of Farthest-North Collegian, 1923 to 1951. It contains many articles of enduring interest by leaders of the time such as Ernest Patty and talented students such as Margaret (Thomas) Murie '24.

Peggy Asbury returned from her M.L.I.S. studies at the University of Texas to a backlog of accessioning almost as long as her time away. She made good progress while trying to keep up with new acquisitions, and she will have additional help from student assistant Kevin McDermott in the coming year. The bright side is that we make most materials available for research at the end of the accessioning process, in contrast to archives that accession rapidly into a separate processing backlog.

The Alaska Film Archives does not yet have a regular budget line, but Dirk Tordoff was able to continue his work with continuing support from the National Bank of Alaska and one-time allocations from the APR and Rasmuson Library budgets. This year he doubled the number of items in the bare-bones inventory and added 107 detailed records to the online catalog. He also helped prepare two successful proposals:

• "Alaska Films before Statehood" - the Fred Machetanz Collection. National Historical Publications and Records Commission, $33,718.
• "Archives of Alaska Mining." University of Alaska Natural Resources Fund, $17,000.

We are grateful to the Alaska State Historical Records Advisory Board for endorsing the Machetanz proposal, and to the UAF and UA administrations for supporting the mining project.

Oral history assistant Robyn Russell added 82 records to the University of Alaska online catalog. She also linked 1,700 tapes with their pre-existing catalog records so that they can be signed out routinely. The increasing use generated by this cataloging may eventually undermine her ability to add even more material to the catalog, but so far she has managed to advance both aspects of the Oral History Program while increasing her role in Archives public service.

Jim Ketz, Jeff Pederson, Rose Speranza, and Jayne Harvie continued to improve the Wenger Anthropological Eskimo Database. The main activity this year was to convert the files from the original proprietary software to the internationally sanctioned Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML). The goal is to make it possible to explore the database with a variety of browsers in the next generation of software development for the World Wide Web. Now we are waiting with many others to see whether the new XML adaptation of SGML will be the most practical route to universal accessibility. Meanwhile, we are heartened by the widespread enthusiasm for the Windows-based version of the database released in May 1997. We are also sustained by Mrs. Beatrice Wenger's high standards and unstinting financial support.

Marvin Falk made good progress on two more volumes in the Rasmuson Library Historical Translation Series, and they should be ready for the press by the end of the calendar year. Credit is also due to Katherine Arndt for copy-editing and Jeff Pederson for file management. Several other works are in some stage of development, and the Veniaminov Conference provided an opportunity to contract with Chuner Taksami for translations of Shnakenburg's "Eskimosy" and Knopfmiller's "Morskoi zveroboinyi promysel Chukotki."

Staff News

These accomplishments are possible because of every APR staff member approaches his or her job with skill and dedication. Here is the 1997-1998 roster, including our student assistants:

There were a number of transitions:

Marvin Falk retired after 22 years at UAF and 17 years as Curator of Rare Books and Maps. He will continue the translation series and develop special projects from time to time. Jeff Pederson shifted to full-time work on the Wenger Project. Tamara Lincoln and Peggy Asbury are assuming curatorial responsibility for Rare Books & Maps.

Mary Larson, Research Associate and Acting Curator of Oral History, left UAF after 9 years to become Senior Oral Historian at the University of Nevada, Reno. Keri Frazier and Karen Brewster are sharing her research associate responsibilities. Dave Krupa left to work full-time on his dissertation. Bill Schneider returned from his Fulbright fellowship in South Africa. All of the research associates deserve special credit for making sure that these changes did not weaken our Project Jukebox partnerships.

Jayne Harvie left the Wenger Project to extend her other UAF position to full-time. John Lehman completed his formal role as consultant but continues as an informal adviser.

Steve Krause left the administrative office to accept a managerial position in a local business. Veronnica Staley Smith stepped up as his interim successor.

Peggy Asbury and Dirk Tordoff were reclassified as assistant archivists for collections management and film, respectively. Susan Grigg was tenured and promoted to full professor.

Marvin Washington completed ten years' service in the Micrographics Lab.

Thanks to Jane Behlke, John and Elizabeth Cook, George Lounsbury, Jane Williams, and the late Jim Cook for their volunteer help to the Archives to this year.