ARCHIVES*RECORDS 2018

A variety of repository tours and open houses will be offered on Tuesday, August 14, and Wednesday, August 15.  For a complete list of events, please visit the Host Committee Blog at https://archives2018dc.wordpress.com/.

Smithsonian Institution Archives | 10:00 am – 11:00 am
Contact: Ellen Alers | alerse@si.edu | 202-633-5902
Capacity: 20. Please make reservations in advance.

Join archivists for a tour of the collections area, conservation lab, and digitization spaces at the Smithsonian Institution Archives. We’ll set out some examples of favorite items from our collections.
At the Smithsonian Institution Archives, we capture, preserve, and make available to the public the history of this extraordinary Institution. The history of the Smithsonian is a vital part of American history, scientific exploration, and international cultural understanding.
 
Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution | 11:00 am – 12:00 pm
Contact: Erin Kinhart | kinharte@si.edu
Capacity 15. Please make reservations in advance.
A photo ID is required to enter the building.

The Archives of American Art offers a “behind-the-scenes” tour of the reading room, storage, digitization and processing spaces. Staff members will offer an introduction to AAA’s reference services, collections processing, and digitization workflows, and share a selection of documents from recent acquisitions.
As a research center within the Smithsonian Institution, AAA is the world’s preeminent and most widely used repository dedicated to collecting, preserving, and providing access to primary sources that document the history of the visual arts in America.
 
Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Image Collections and Fieldworks Archives | 1:00 pm – 2:00 pm
Contact: Bettina Smith | smithb2(at)doaks.org | 202-339-6972
Capacity: 12. Please make reservations in advance. 

Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection supports research and learning internationally in Byzantine, Garden and Landscape, and Pre-Columbian studies. Staff from the Library and Image Collections and Fieldwork Archives (ICFA) will provide attendees with a brief tour of the Research Library and highlights from ICFA collections.

The Research Library is a non-circulating collection of 225,000 volumes that support scholarship in Byzantine studies, Pre-Columbian studies, and Garden and Landscape studies. ICFA’s photograph collections comprise more than 500,000 images of art, architecture, and archaeology in a variety of media. The archival collections contain fieldwork records and scholarly papers, including administrative records, correspondence, fieldwork notebooks, research notes, manuscripts, drawings, tracings, photographs, negatives, and motion picture films.

Folger Shakespeare Library | 2:00 pm – 3:00 pm
Contact: Rachel Dankert | rdankert@folger.edu
Capacity: 25. Please make reservations in advance. 

The Folger is excited to provide SAA conference participants with a behind-the-scenes tour of the building, including the Reading Rooms. Participants will also get to view a curated show of items from the Folger vaults, focused on historic archival practices!

The Folger Shakespeare Library is the premier institution for the study of Shakespeare and his world. The Folger has been providing access to its unparalleled collection to researchers from around the world since opening in 1932. Alongside the library, the Folger comprises award-winning productions by Folger Theatre, nationally recognized K-12 curriculum development and children's programs, standard-bearing editions of Shakespeare's works, and competitive scholarly development programs and fellowships.

Special Collections as a Site of Reconciliation: The Slavery, Memory, and Reconciliation Project at Georgetown University (Presentation) | 2:00 pm – 4:00 pm
Location: Murray Room, Lauinger Library, Georgetown University

In October 2017, the Georgetown University Library issued its report on how it can respond to the University mandate to develop its library resources, special collections, and databases to support the study of slavery, racial justice, and African-American studies. This report examined ways that the Booth Family Center for Special Collections could respond to the questions raised not only by traditional stakeholders, faculty and students, but also by members of the descendant community and general public. The demand of these additional stakeholders will transform the use of Booth Center collections, one of the pre-eminent repositories for the study of Catholicism in the western hemisphere. Panelists will discuss their engagement with these researchers, the Georgetown Slavery Archive and its documentation of the University’s dependence upon slavery, and the envisioned response to the Slavery, Memory, and Reconciliation initiative.

National Library of Medicine | 3:00 pm – 4:30 pm
Contact: John Rees | reesj@mail.nlm.nih.gov | 301-827-4510
Capacity: min 5, max 15. Pre-registration is required.

Join us for a half-hour general tour of NLM followed by a show-and-tell of our incunable, rare book, and archival collections. NLM is the largest medical library in the world, with one of the richest collections of material related to health and disease. Holdings include pre-1914 books; pre-1871 journals, archives, and modern manuscripts; medieval and Islamic manuscripts; a collection of printed books, manuscripts, and visual material in Japanese, Chinese, and Korean; historical prints, photographs, films, videos, and more.
 
American Folklife Center | 3:30 pm – 4:30 pm
Location: Room G-53, Jefferson Building, Library of Congress – Carriage entrance (ground floor) on 1st St. S.E.
Contact: Judith Gray | folklife@loc.gov | 202-707-5510
Capacity: 15. Please make reservations in advance.

On this tour, staff will give an overview of the collections, of the reading room and listening stations, and of our acquisitions, processing, and reference activities. The American Folklife Center Archive, established in the Library of Congress Music Division in 1928, is now one of the largest archives of ethnographic materials from the United States and around the world, encompassing millions of items of ethnographic and historical documentation recorded from the nineteenth century to the present. These collections, which include extensive audiovisual documentation of traditional arts, cultural expressions, and oral histories, offer researchers access to the songs, stories, and other creative expressions of people from diverse communities and over 160 countries.