Beacon Street Diary

Event reminder -- Church anniversary workshop this Saturday

Celebrating Your Church Anniversary with Wisdom and Style

Does your congregation have a special anniversary coming up? There's still plenty of time to register for this weekend's event in Lexington. Presenters from across New England (and beyond) will be providing advice and anecdotes from their own celebrations in a full day of workshops, and several members of our staff will be on hand to provide valuable guidelines for records management and preserving your church's history.

A full list of workshops with their speakers and descriptions can be found on our Program & Workshop Schedule.

Saturday, March 17th
9:30 am - 3:00 pm

Hancock Congregational Church, Lexington MA

$50, lunch included
Registration required.

Full circle

What better place for our ABCFM bicentennial display than the Trask Library at Andover Newton? The school is hosting our historical exhibit, telling the story of the American Board's diverse and colorful mission, as part of a program to mark the 200th anniversary of the first missionaries' leave-taking from Salem, Massachusetts. Two centuries ago, students from Andover and Newton seminaries helped start this story, which has grown far beyond American shores to encompass a global Christian community, and we are very pleased to be part of their remembering today.

The conference runs February 5-20 in a number of locations, and our own Peggy Bendroth will be participating in several of the events in her role as a religious historian. Take a look at the schedule and see if anything catches your eye.

Obligatory Baby Picture

Dashiell, 2 days old!

Thanks, everyone for the well-wishes- our family is doing quite well and will be sure to visit the library in the next few months. A child named in honor of 20th century creative thought and raised by an archivist will find himself in the stacks often.

-Jessica

A word from one of our summer interns

As the summer progresses and the weather heats up, I'm sure there will be a little more foot-traffic in the Library. If you happen to stop by, you might see me, Katherine, working away at a table in the Reading Room. I am the newest Simmons student to intern at the Library and am working on a very exciting project. This project, alluded to by Jessica in a previous post, involves the archives' Small Collections.

The "Small Collections" is a series of collections that are, as the title suggests, quite small; more often than not, the collections consist of a single folder. I've been working on identifying potential candidates to be digitized for an online exhibition. The work has been quite exciting, as the collections run the gamut in terms of their geographic location, time period, creator, medium, format, and function.

As this is my third week working on the project, there are still many details to work out; however, I will keep you all up to date on the latest happenings. I don't want to spoil the surprise of the exhibit by revealing what collections will ultimately be included, but, perhaps, in the coming days I'll give you some hints!

-Katherine

Connecticut Event April 16

Church Historians' Workshop

If you are in the Hartford area next Saturday, please consider attending this event. I will be teaching my records management class. Those from similar denominations outside the UCC are very welcome, as my suggestions work for just about any church that is responsible for their own records. Please visit the link above for details and registration info.

-Jessica

Disaster Planning

I attended the New England Archivist conference this last weekend. I'm always hopeful to come away with at least one thing to do after I've returned to work. I think I have such a thing in spades: Work on our disaster plan. We have one, but it could use some work. I bet a lot of organizations, including the churches we hope to serve, could use a brush up if not an entire document. If you need a place to start: check out dPlan. I signed up today, which is the first step. They'll walk you through the process of creating a plan.

There are several organizations out there that can help you get organized. Here's the beginning of a list.

• COSTEP MA
• Alliance For Response
• Northeast Document Conservation Center

I expect to learn a great deal more about this in the next few months and provide a more comprehensive guideline for my teaching opportunities.

-Jessica

 

Pictures from Church Historian Workshop

A belated thank you to everyone who came to the Church Historian Workshop on March 2nd. We had a fantastic turn-out and we have had some generous feedback on the various segments of the day.

We started off as a group for a quick worship service:

We broke out into groups shortly thereafter. Some went to talk about organizing their church library with Claudette:

Others joined me for Records Management:

After lunch, Diana Butler Bass talked to the group:

The organizers were rewarded for their hard work with great enthusiasm from the participants. Thanks everyone. Be sure to mark your calendars for our upcoming events: a brown bag lunch with Linda Palmer; I am traveling to Connecticut for a reprise of my records management class, and much more beyond those two activities. Expect more detailed posts closer to the event dates.

-Jessica

Snow emergency - Library closed Tues. afternoon through Thurs. morning

This winter certainly isn't fooling around. As much as we hate to disappoint any of you planning to use our resources in person, the library will be closed from Tuesday, Feb. 1st at 3 pm until Thursday, Feb. 3rd at 11 am.

All of our online resources will still be available from the comfort of your own home.

Snow emergency - Library closed on 1/12

Since pretty much every city in the area has declared a snow emergency for Wednesday January 12th, we are going to take the cautious route and declare a snow day, too. All of our online resources will be available as always, but phone and email inquiries wil have to wait until Thursday. We hope that you will stay warm and safe.

Summer Vacation

The Staff will be in to answer questions and help researchers, but we're officially taking a break from blogging until next week.

-Jessica