Thank you to all the enthusiastic and curious nerds who came out on Wednesday, 10/5, for Archives Month Philly‘s second year of collaboration with the fine folks at Nerd Nite Philly! We had three speakers on a range of nerdy archives topics:
David J. Gary, now of the American Philosophical Society, discussed work he did bringing a 3000-item collection of horror and exploitation VHS tapes to Yale. This collection should be accessible by next summer (2017), but will not be digitized due the massive costs of digital film preservation (something familiar to all the archivists in the room!).
Erin Bernard (blurrily pictured above) spoke about her award-winning work with the Philadelphia Public History Truck. This talk for Archives Month focused on how her interactions with communities drive both archival research and exhibit design, and those in turn give back to the communities represented in the archives and exhibits.
Matt Shoemaker, Coordinator of Digital Scholarship Service Development at Temple University, spoke about Dungeons & Dragons: A Documentary, for which he tracked down archival sources and discovered previously unknown cashes of documents. His talk ended with a reminder of the importance of good donor and collector relations, and how wanting to preserve a legacy can be a powerful motivator.
We hope everyone had a great time and look forward to doing this whole thing again next year!
Delaware Valley Archivists Group 