It’s that time of year again, American Archives Month. Never heard of Archives month? You’re not alone, but this plucky little project has been steadily gaining steam over the last six years. So, what exactly is Archives Month and what are the programs goals? In 2006 the Society of American Archivists (SAA) began their campaign to promote public awareness of what archives do and how they serve their community by creating American Archives Month. The goal of this program is to make archives more visible to surrounding communities and the United States at large, and the SAA achieves this goal by encouraging events and displays at archives across the country. The SAA also provides a variety of public relation resources and ideas on their website to help archives make the most out of their celebrations. Many states have taken up the cause as well throwing their own Archives Month events. In the last few years there has been a push to standardize the celebration date, and now most archives that participate celebrate an entire month of events every October.
In the spirit of American Archives Month, the archival studies graduate students in the School of Library and Information Studies program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison contribute blog posts relating the theme of Wisconsin's Archives Month. This year marks the fifth year UW students have written posts, which is pretty darn spectacular! Wisconsin's Archives Month is headed by the Wisconsin Historical Society (WHS) main branch in Madison. Like SAA, WHS provides ideas and promotional materials to Wisconsin archives to celebrate Archives Month at their repository. WHS also chooses the theme for each year’s celebrations. This year’s theme is “100 Years of the Wisconsin Idea: Forward Through the Past”. So, this year our Archives Month blog posts will feature archival collections from Wisconsin that exemplify the Wisconsin Idea.
The Wisconsin Idea, simply stated, is fostering programs in which public universities engage and contribute to their communities, and constructing legislation that benefits the greatest number of people.
Check in through the month to learn about collections in Wisconsin that demonstrate the Wisconsin Idea in practice!
