History

Laura Hibbler, Editor

 

Congratulations to William Forsyth and Yvonne Carignan!
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  • William Forsyth, director of product management for ProQuest, was awarded the Genealogical Publishing Company Award in recognition of professional achievement in historical or genealogical reference, service or research. Please contact Helen Gbala for details about this award.
  • Yvonne Carignan, of George Mason University, was awarded with the RUSA History Section/Gale Cengage Learning History Research and Innovation Award. This award is granted to an MLS degreed librarian from an ALA accredited school to facilitate and further research relating to history and history librarianship. To learn more about the Gale Cengage Learning History Research and Innovation Award, please visit the History Section website: http://www.ala.org/rusa/sections/history/research_award or contact Sara Morris, semorris@ku.edu.

The ALA RUSA History Section hosted a trip to the National Atomic Testing Museum in Las Vegas on Friday, June 27th, during the ALA Annual Conference. Thirty-seven people attended and, thanks to RUSA’s generous support, the attendees received a guided tour and were able to take a chartered bus.

The Historical Materials Committee met during at the Annual Conference to discuss responsibilities for the coming year and procedures for creating the annual Best Historical Materials article. On Sunday, June 29th, the committee co-sponsored a program entitled, “The Nevada Test Site Project: Bringing Primary Resources to Researchers.” Nicholas Wyant, immediate past chair of the committee, served as moderator. The program focused on the creation and curation of the project, which consists of 335 hours of transcripted and digitized material regarding the “nuclear proving ground” in Nevada. Check out the Nevada Test Site Oral History Project: http://digital.library.unlv.edu/ntsohp

The History Librarians Discussion Group held a panel discussion, “The Role/s of Humanities Librarians in Digital Humanities”, on June 28th at the ALA Annual Conference. Panelists Thomas Padilla (Digital Humanities, Linguistics, & Philosophy Librarian, Michigan State University Libraries) and Harriett Green (English & Digital Humanities Librarian, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) each spoke about their experiences working with digital humanities and then answered questions from attendees. The panelists’ presentation slides have been posted online at the History Section’s website: http://www.ala.org/rusa/sections/history/presentations

And stay tuned for the publication of Padilla’s book, co-authored with Trevor Getz:

Getz, Trevor, and Thomas Padilla. Subjecting History: Building a Relationship Between History and its Alternatives. Athens: Ohio University Press, Forthcoming Fall 2015.

The Genealogy pre-conference at the ALA Annual Conference included a panel, “Getting More Than You Pay For,” about the free resources available on Ancestry, Fold3, Newspapers.com, Archives.com, and Ancestry’s various social media outlets. The panelists Kim Harrison and Amy Johnson Crow (Ancestry.com) have made their presentation slides available on slideshare: http://www.slideshare.net/ancestry/free-resources-on-ancestrycom-fold3-newspaperscom-and-archivescom