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Audiocassette tape digitizing instructionsStep by step instructions for digitizing audiocassettes using Audacity as the audio software and a Tascam 202 Mark VII tape deck.
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Alaska's Digital Archives: Creating a record for an online object (i.e. URL)Instructions on how to add an online object (i.e. URL) as an item within the Alaska's Digital Archives site.
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Guide to Sources for the Study of the 1971 Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act: Volume 3 Resources for Teaching ANCSA at 50Teaching about ANCSA upon its 50th anniversary presents numerous challenges, but also several significant opportunities for developing a deeper understanding of the complex issues facing Alaska Natives, neighboring non-Native peoples, and the State of Alaska. The history of the birth of ANCSA, its passage, and its impact over the first forty years is well known and the subject of numerous studies. Since the passage of ANCSA in 1971, the Alaska Native community, the University of Alaska, Alaskool, Alaska Native Corporations, Alaska Native organizations, the Anchorage Museum at Rasmuson Center, the Alaska Humanities Forum, and the Alaska State Department of Early Education have devoted considerable professional energies and expertise developing and offering the tools for examining and teaching about this extraordinary legislation up to 2020. Currently, in 2021, there are well developed syllabi for elementary students (3rd grade), early high school students (9th grade), and for college/university students in lower as well as upper division courses. The purpose of this guide to resources for teaching ANCSA at 50 is to add to and build upon the two principle syllabi that currently exist: (1) the Alaskool online course elementary and high-school students developed by Paul Ongtagook and Claudia Dybdahl; and (2) the 2011 online upper-division university level class developed originally by Professor Gordon Pullar (UAF Alaska Native Studies and Rural Development RD 493/693 — Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act: Pre-1971 to present] and taught subsequently by Professor Dixie Dayo and Professor Diane Benson. There are other teacher guides readily available, such as “A Moment in Time--ANCSA: Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act” (the Education Department of the Anchorage Museum at Rasmuson Center), and a new syllabus for public schools has been developed by Joel Isaac on behalf of the Anchorage School District (not yet published; due in 2022, but included in the addendum to this guide). Because the topic of ANCSA at its half-century anniversary is so complex and the resources so many and varied, it seems the most helpful initial tool for teachers and/or community leaders seeking to lead discussions is to organize a resource aid useful and accessible to teachers and/or community leaders to review the historical narrative and introduce the topics. Because there are many excellent histories and syllabi devoted to understanding and teaching about ANCSA from its inception to the present, the “Guide to the Teaching Resources” seeks to focus on several “enduring critical issues” as identified by scholars, teachers, and Alaska Native leaders to add to the basic architecture for teaching ANCSA at 50. This Resource Guide is envisioned also as an introduction for instructors to the several “enduring critical issues” facing the Alaska Native and non-Native communities in the context of ANCSA legislation after half-a-century of experience. The single most important and accessible collection of materials useful for teaching about ANCSA, its origins, the drama of the passage of the Act, and many of the commentaries about the meaning and impact of ANCSA may be found in: http://www.alaskool.org/java/teachers_tour/tour1.html. NOTE: Navigate to “Revisiting the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA)” – an important resource for many basic documents and discussions about the origins and development of ANCSA.
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Guide to Sources for the Study of the 1971 Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act: Volume 2 BibliographyThe Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (43 USC 1601-1624) -- Public Law 92-203, approved December 18, 1971 (85 Stat. 688) has been the subject of a number of bibliographies compiled since the act was passed in 1971. They include stand-alone publications and ones that are in published books about the act. The bibliography that follows was initiated for commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the passage of the landmark legislation, especially to add sources published since the 40th anniversary and to be helpful for a researcher initiating a study. The first publications generally provided background historical context and summarized the law, although from the start critics of the legislation published works expressing their concerns. After the regional and village corporations organized and land selections started, sections of the act needed clarification, and Congress began to amend the law. Numerous articles appeared in legal journals as issues such as the extinguishment of aboriginal hunting and fishing rights, tax issues, the revenue sharing plans, and tribal sovereignty were debated and clarified. As the twenty-year implementation period neared 1991, writers assessed the law’s successes and failures. Several movement leaders wrote memoirs. Historians began to write books, with context as well as details of implementation of the act and to interpret the impact of the legislation on Alaska Native people, the State of Alaska, and federal Indian policy. In addition to printed works, radio and television programs, oral history projects, films, videoproductions, and recently, podcasts have been produced.
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Guide to Sources for the Study of the 1971 Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act: Volume 1 History and Archival CollectionsDecember 18, 2021is the fiftieth anniversary of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA). The settlement of 44 million acres of land and close to a billion dollars is the largest settlement of Native land claims in American history. The Act created a new reality for Alaska Natives with greater political, social and economic power, and changed the way that the United States government settles Native land claims. The Act produced a corporate structure designed to provide economic incentives for twelve regional corporations to build equity for their shareholders. Since passage, ANCSA has transformed the economic landscape of Alaska with the Native owned regional corporations bringing wealth and providing major stimulus to the state’s economy. However, ANCSA extinguished Aboriginal title to the land and Aboriginal hunting and fishing rights, severely restricting the extent of Native control over the land ceded to them. ANCSA is often viewed as an historic movement that culminated in the 1971 settlement, but it is also a continually evolving significant part of Native life that has been amended over the years to address issues such as who owns shares, how earnings are distributed, and how provisions can be made for encouraging and facilitating Native hire. The Alaska Historical Society wanted to recognize the movement that led to ANCSA and its evolving significance. This “Guide to Resources for the Study of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA)” is the result of a year-long effort to locate primary archival, published and on-line sources useful to anyone interested in learning about ANCSA.
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Editing uploaded records in the Alaska's Digital ArchivesThis tutorial describes how to edit metadata, files, and bands for records uploaded to the Alaska's Digital Archives.
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Alaska's Digital Archives metadata standards guideThis document will lay out the requirements or suggestions for the content of each field that accompanies the items you’ll be adding to the Alaska’s Digital Archives. This should be used in tandem with the Adding Metadata tutorial which will explain the process of filling in the metadata fields.
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Getting started with the ContentDM Project Client part 5: Adding files to your projectThis is the fifth part of a five-step tutorial on setting up the software for participation in the Alaska's Digital Archives project. It describes how to add the files (images, audio, documents, etc.,) to a project in preparation for attaching descriptive metadata to those files. Part 1 is the steps that must be complete prior to installing the software, Part 2 is installing the software, Part 3 is Creating a project, Part 4 is Setting up a project.
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Getting started with the ContentDM Project Client Part 4: setting up your projectThis is the fourth part of a five-step tutorial on setting up the software for participation in the Alaska's Digital Archives project. It describes the steps that must be completed to fill in the default information that will apply to all files added to the project. Part 1 is the steps that must be complete prior to installing the software, Part 2 is installing the software, Part 3 is Creating a project, Part 5 is Adding files to a project.
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Getting started with the ContentDM Project Client part 3: Creating a projectThis is the third part of a five-step tutorial on setting up the software for participation in the Alaska's Digital Archives project. It describes the steps that must be completed to create a project: the function within the ContentDM software that allows you to attach metadata to files. Part 1 is the steps that must be complete prior to installing the software, Part 2 is installing the software, Part 4 is Setting up a project, Part 5 is Adding files to a project.
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Getting started with the ContentDM Project Client Part 2: installing the softwareThis is the second part of a five-step tutorial on setting up the software for participation in the Alaska's Digital Archives project. It describes the steps to download and install the software. Part 1 is the steps that must be complete prior to installing the software, Part 3 is Creating a project, Part 4 is Setting up a project, Part 5 is Adding files to a project.
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Getting started with the ContentDM Project Client Part 1: The things you need to do ahead of timeThis is the first part of a five-step tutorial on setting up the software for participation in the Alaska's Digital Archives project. It describes the steps that must be completed before downloading the software. Part 2 is installing the software, Part 3 is Creating a project, Part 4 is Setting up a project, Part 5 is Adding files to a project.
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Digital Access and Preservation PolicyThe Digital Access and Preservation Policy is to provide guidance and authorization on the preservation of digital materials at the UAA/APU Archives and Special Collections. Digital materials at the UAA/APU Archives and Special Collections are in a variety of formats. The Archives has in its holdings digitized photographs, either for preservation purposes or reference, born digital content, digitized copies of audio, video, and film, as well as photographs taken of materials not usually kept within the collections, i.e. awards and plaques. The Digital Access and Preservation Policy (DAPP) will outline, in further detail, the different types of digital content within our holdings, how each should be treated, and how each should be saved.
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COMMFISH: all about Alaska's commercial fisheries collectionsOne of the more unique holdings in the Alaska Resources Library and Information Services (ARLIS) stands out due to its extensive size and breadth—the CommFish collection. The entire management history related to Alaska's commercial fisheries is documented here, including controversies over fishing rights, subsistence, and much more. These reports, including primary source data reported nowhere else, precede statehood and capture in great detail the extent, scope, successes, failures, policy decisions, and inventories of Alaska's fisheries statewide. When statehood was realized in 1959, the agency responsible for managing commercial fisheries was also established: the Alaska Department of Fish and Game (ADF&G). Fishery managers in the newly created agency recognized early on that much of the data compiled would be of professional interest, while other information clearly had a public right-to-know component. As a result, a diverse number of series to meet each of these information needs was initially established. Over time, however, these series have been subject to the familiar vagaries common to all gray literature, such as title changes, name irregularities, and murky bureaucratic authorship. ARLIS inherited these extensive collections from several ADF&G libraries over a period of years. Most of the items had never been distributed outside of the agency, and ARLIS often owns the only copy. Recently, ARLIS has spent much time and effort to provide original cataloging for these materials in OCLC. ARLIS’ approach to cataloging these complex series may also be of interest to librarians facing similar challenges.
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The Journal of Fred W. FickettWhen I was assigned to transcribe the Fred W. Fickett journal as part of a research project 1 was excited at what the project might bring. Little did 1 know that it would take me on a journey of Alaskan history and the surprising and interesting collection of documents relating to it. The process of transcribing Fickett's journal was both exciting and frustrating. Each page brought new discoveries and new complications. Fickett’s struggles along the way, his descriptions of the horrible things they were forced to eat as their stocks grew thinner and thinner, the difficulty travelling through slushy snow and cold, all were little windows into the past. 1 grew to like Fickett, his descriptions of the horrible food almost had a sense of a badge of honor, a brag about how bad things got. Not all elements of the journal were windows into the past. When the words were obscured or Fickett’s handwriting became illegible I would sit alone in my room and mutter my frustrations and irritations to Fickett and the journal. His misspellings, although indicative of a time when the spellings of words was more fluid, provided me with some amusement along the way. Perhaps the most frustrating portion of the process was the transcribing of his sun observations. They in and of themselves entailed complications with trying to recreate his tables, but they were made worse when he had crossed them out and rewritten new numbers next to the old ones. 1 had some things to say to Fickett about that as well. When it came to write the paper, 1 first began comparing the two primary sources of the journey. Lt. Henry Allen’s report on the 1885 expedition was integral to my research because it provided me with an anchor for what Fickett was describing. By comparing the two I was able to discover facts about the trip that are glossed over in one, but written in detail in another, and it provided me with a fun way to see what each man felt it important to record along the way. One of my most intriguing discoveries was that there seemed to be some suggestion of tension between Fickett and Allen, which was not really enough to confirm solidly, but certainly gave me an impression of some conflict. My research extended outward to the ARL1S and the Consortium library, where I looked for information regarding previous expeditions to see where people had explored prior to Allen and Fickett, and what was said about the trips. There were a number of trips that I found interesting, and that Fickett and Allen had found interesting too. 1 enjoyed finding references to the books 1 was looking at in Fickett and Allen’s journals, and finding references to Fickett and Allen in reports written around the same time. 1 looked also into journals and websites, where I found old Science articles regarding the trip and their discoveries. These articles were interesting insights into what the scientific and lay scientific community found interesting about Alaska. Some of them were written by Allen himself and mirrored what he had put in his report. This is also where I discovered most of the articles that reference the expedition, and Allen’s report in particular. Despite all my research I never found a book or journal that cited Fickett. Although some made mention of the existence of the journal, whether it was read or not remains unclear. My path wrapped full circle, and I found myself again looking into the archives, and discovered that the journal that I was working from and that 1 had transcribed, turned out to be a transcription written by Fickett shortly after he finished his trip from the notes he took along the way. In researching further, I found the original journals he took, and in reading these, 1 discovered that my earlier impressions of tension between Allen and Fickett was, if not confirmed, at least reinforced by additional comments that did not make the transcription 1 had worked from. The archives had more secrets to reveal. I had found an entry regarding a handkerchief that had been used as a flag, and in researching the archives I found the handkerchief. In my head, as I read the journal, the handkerchief I pictured was a white silk handkerchief, so 1 was surprised to see a brightly colored handkerchief, still tied to the stick which had made it into a flag. It was a real connection with history to see this artifact. Although a great deal has happened in Alaska in the past 150 years, so much so that Fickett would barely recognize the places he traveled, I can look at a handkerchief that was carried by the first Euro-Americans to travel to the head of the Copper River. I found this a truly inspiring project. It is the first project where I have felt a part of the research community. Most papers involve research previously done, primarily, but between being the first one to transcribe this journal and writing a comparison between Fickett and Allen's observations, something which I cannot find reference to anywhere else, 1 feel like I have had a small opportunity to contribute meaningfully to the knowledge of Alaskan history. It has been a very exciting experience, and 1 only hope that my efforts will prove to be worthwhile for further research.
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Merging Catalogs in Alaska: Navigating Shifting BoundariesThe Joint Library Catalog, a network of 72 public, academic, special, and K-12 li-braries that serves 65 percent of Alaska’s population, has conducted three catalog mergers in three years. As new libraries join the consortium, they face changes to OPAC design, lending procedures, and cataloging standards. Their patrons gain access to over 1.7 million titles (4.1 million items) located across the state, availa-ble to hold and send, plus reciprocal borrowing privileges.
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The Provisional Government and 1917: The Legitimacy ParadoxThe significance of the Russian revolution has been a hitter ongoing argument for historians and political scientists alike. Couched within that debate is the significance and meaning of I bl 7. For some, the significance of 1917 is based around the rise of the Bolsheviks to power and the centrality of class struggle. For others, it is a critical moment of hard political power wielded by Lenin and the Bolsheviks.1 But, behind that debate, lays the meaning of 1917 and the Provisional Government. In the simplest of terms, there was a crisis of legitimacy. To understand the meaning of 1917 it must be recognized that, while the Russian Provisional Government was perceived as a legitimate government externally, internally it was considered almost wholly illegitimate. The events of 1917, and thus the events of the revolution and civil war that followed, hinged upon the legitimacy and sovereignty of the Provisional Government. Thus the Provisional Government represents a critical factor; the understanding of 1917. One must recognize that the Provisional Government failed to survive, at least in part, because its leaders assumed its legitimacy, while the Russian population increasingly rejected it. The leadership utterly failed to obtain a sovereign and legitimate mandate, either through legislation, by the popular consent of the Russian people, or by investit ure of authority through institutional succession. The purpose of this paper is to illuminate some of the points which caused the Provisional Government to fail. In particular there appear three critical reasons for this failure; the internal politics of the Provisional Government, its relation to the Army, and its relation to the Russian population.
