There was a post about some loser UK politician's book selling like 100 copies total, and I just want to say my grandad beat that record
David Staniunas
@boxreceiver.bsky.social
archivist at PresbyHistory, menasky-adjacent, obligated to say positions are mine, not PC(USA)'s
Out of my house early to bicycle to the Presbytery of Philadelphia for clerks' training
One terrifying thing about LLMs is that it lets GLAM people turn their bad ideas about our values into actionable software. Our systems are about to have the same internal incoherence as our SharePoint sites. We will be able to implement the dumbest and most byzantine rules we can dream of.
Very pleased to bring in the personal records of Eugene Farlough, Bay Area Presbyterian minister and founder of Sojourner Truth PC Richmond CA
I think good collecting requires a level of comfort with cold-calling people. It's okay if it doesn't always pay off #ArchivesPractice
Reading a little of the Mellon report on community based archives, and brother,
![“We are really working, trying to prioritize bringing objects to
the community to get the language, to get the history of the
objects, to make sure our record is as complete as possible.
When we get new photos, we take them over to the senior
centerandtry togetnamesandhistories and information for
the people in those photos.”
The museum’s ability to build its archive—including document-
ing community members’ memories while still possible--de-
pends on space and staff it does not yet have. Collections are
arriving faster than they can be housed, a vulnerability that
recently came into sharp relief:
“We need to double or triple our space. We just received
thousands of objects that we’re still working to bring into
our building. We had them stored off site — and that off-site
storage caught fire. We were very fortunate [the damage was
limited]. And of course, we also need two, three more staff people to do this work](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:qcudgamsj37e7ubmfl666eay/bafkreie45lrtly6rdogms33ukiflktf6ifl2hdfw65i7qrrgxto55i22u4)
The General Assembly of the Southern church (the PCUS) "drew its first picketers in several years" in Nashville in 1977, for taking into consideration a paper on human sexuality (Presbyterian Survey, July 1977, p.12) #pcusa
Since 2020, my shop has done free digital imaging for 40 different African American churches in the PC(USA) -- in the 15 years prior we did imaging for two (2) Still a ways to go, especially in GA, AL, MS. More to be done in VA, NC, SC #pcusa
Remember how I put pro-immigration signs outside my church? Well they keep getting stolen, and we ended up on the news. Who keeps stealing ‘Immigrants’ signs from this Oakland church? | KRON4 share.google/DGXzFGVL88q0...
Who keeps stealing ‘Immigrants’ signs from this Oakland church?
OAKLAND, Calif. (KRON) — If you drive by Montclair Presbyterian Church at 5701 Thornhill Drive in Oakland, it’s quickly obvious that a word is missing from the “Makes Our Communit…
share.google
We're #Hiring! Join the Presbyterian Foundation as a Philanthropic Solutions Specialist and help donors, churches, and advisors transform charitable intentions into meaningful impact. Learn more and apply today! https://bit.ly/4iRdVrj
Had a good hour-plus with clerks and recordskeepers in the Presbytery of the Highlands of New Jersey on Saturday #pcusa
Back to school! In #Lebanon, UNRWA welcomes back over 35,000 #Palestine Refugee students to our 59 schools. UNRWA remains the main provider of education for the Palestine Refugee community in Lebanon. #UNRWAworks #FundUNRWA
Found it! It’s Simon Tanner’s landmark 2004 study funded by the Mellon Foundation (Reproduction Charging Models & Rights Policy for Digital Images in American Art Museums). He surveyed 100 museums and found almost none recouped costs once staff time and overhead were factored in.
About fifteen years ago (+/-), the British Museum (I think) did a cost analysis of the permissions process and determined that the staff overhead was much, much higher than revenues. Does anyone else remember this? Can you help me track it down?
Libraries and archives stop turning "diversifying the holdings" or "amplifying marginalized voices" into cataloging somehow
Some Ronald Reagan humor about socialism that feels a little closer to home these days.
Wrote this all up to include some of the group's questions, and really to do some justice to their desire to get stuff online pcusa.org/news-storyte... 📦🗃️
Hands-on Accessioning with First Presbyterian Church, Dallas, Texas
Image
pcusa.org
David Staniunas@boxreceiver.bsky.social · 2w agoEarlier this week I was with the archives team of First Presbyterian Church, Dallas TX, who did a day of rapid appraisal and description -- 30 entries at the box-level for a little better than 24 cubic feet, the first 10 feet all minutes and scrapbooks made by Presbyterian Women -- all in 9 hours
Earlier this week I was with the archives team of First Presbyterian Church, Dallas TX, who did a day of rapid appraisal and description -- 30 entries at the box-level for a little better than 24 cubic feet, the first 10 feet all minutes and scrapbooks made by Presbyterian Women -- all in 9 hours
I am excited to listen to this presentation from 2010 📦🗃️
Minutes are (supposed to be) approved annually, so there's no reason to have individual files for each month 🌈✨
Just did some work on a NCC/NBC broadcast from 1968 with James Baldwin. Spend a little time with Fraudulent Innocence
Just did some work on a NCC/NBC broadcast from 1968 with James Baldwin. Spend a little time with Fraudulent Innocence
Today searching WorldCat that process was click through Cloudflare, search, log in to see results of search, click through Cloudflare, see no hits, start new search, click through Cloudflare again
David Staniunas@boxreceiver.bsky.social · last mo.Our systems got ransacked by AI traffic, and so we bought shields for that, which totally foul up our UX, which makes it easier for a curious user to just ask a chatbot trained on our content to find box-and-folder sources
Once again, allowed to write for the mothership. On the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 pcusa.org/news-storyte...
In the shadow of September 11
On the morning of September 11, 2001, 19 men, operatives of the radical Islamist group al-Qaeda, hijacked four commercial aircraft and piloted two of them into the World Trade Center in lower Manhatta...
pcusa.org
Correspondence belongs to the recipient, and unsolicited packages are legal to throw in the garbage 📦🗃🚚
BuffaloResearch.com@buffaloresearch.com · last mo.An academic started sending us photocopies of his letters to the editor, unsolicited. I sent them back.
It is not actually charitable to ship a bunch of published works to an archives, even if you say "throw away what you will"🌈✨️
Wettened and molded volumes in, some white oxidation from the posts of the binders, retrieved with hammer and screwdriver. Masked up
