Our student chapter completed our American Archives Month celebration with a display for the UW-Madison SLIS display case. The library scheduled the display for three weeks because we recieved so many great compliments about last year's scrapbook display. We continued with the State's theme of the month, "Postcarding Wisconsin," but broadened the display to include vintage postcards and albertype print-outs of postcards from all over the United States.
Virgina Corvid found the albertype print-outs at the Wisconsin Historical Society and secured permission for their use. She also brought all the tools displayed in the case: an awl, a piece of ore, a carpenter's pencil and corner measure, rusty nails, and other implements to help give the display an early Twentieth century ambiance.
The vintage postcards were provided by my father-in-law, an antiques collector. They range from photo postcards to divided back postcards and capture a good deal of the Western Pennsylvanian portion of Appalachia where I grew up. We wanted to recreate an aspect of postcard use during the early 1900's, calling into play railroads, steel mills, construction, and factories, all of which were aspects of industrialization in the U.S. during that time period.
Again this year, we had the pleasure of archiving the display creation. The photographs in this post depict us putting the display together and the final product. In the second photograph, Leah Kolb and Virginia Corvid are deciding how to arrange background colors and text. In the next photo, Virginia is completing final touches to the case before we lock it up. The student chapter members that were part of creating the display are pictured below (from left) Eric Willey, Virginia Corvid, Danielle Taylor, and Elizabeth Fox-Corbett.
The student chapter's activities associated with our celebration of archives month started here, but they haven't yet ended. Danielle submitted an entry to the Midwest Archives Conference winter newsletter sharing our experience with the blog and display. I will also present our blog at this year's Midwest Archives Conference on a panel titled: "Reaching Virtually Everyone -Virtually."
On behalf of everyone who has created posts for the blog and who helped create the display, we want to thank everyone who followed our journeys learning about postcards and taking steps into the past to uncover hidden treasures throughout Wisconsin.
Entry compiled by: Eliizabeth Fox-Corbett
Entry compiled by: Eliizabeth Fox-Corbett
