The ALA Archives has been busy working on large accessions of records sent to us by American Libraries magazine and the ALA Library.  These new accessions will total up to 40 bankers boxes once all of them have been shipped over, and the archives staff is excited to receive them.

The archives staff is currently working on boxes sent to us from the ALA Library.  These records are a rich collection of photograph vertical files that not only document the history of the ALA, but of the librarian profession itself.  There are of course photos and negatives of various ALA conferences, events, and staff, but there are also photographs of bookmobiles, libraries, exhibits, various library technologies, and even book trucks!

American Libraries has also sent us photographs, sending us their issue photos from 1980-2005 and biographical photos of librarians, ALA members, and celebrities.  And American Libraries has not forgotten the archives love for textual documents, sending us their subject files and the papers of Gordon Flagg, a former editor.  The Biographical Photographs have already been processed and are now available to researchers.

These records did not arrive at the archives on their own, there was substantial help from two interns, Lisa Lorenzo and Gabrielle Barr, from the University of Michigan School of Information.  They did an alternative spring break with the ALA to complete this project.  Gabrielle and Lisa reviewed the records, replaced damaged folders, created inventories, filled out transmittal forms, and boxed up the files for shipment.  Originally assigned to tackle the records from American Libraries, they were able to get through their task with time to spare and were able to end their week with preparing the ALA Library’s photographs to send to the archives.

Now with many of the boxes already at the archives Lydia Tang, the ALA Archives Graduate Assistant, has been hard at work processing the new accessions to make them accessible to researchers.  Keep an eye out for these new record series in the archives!

The ALA Archives would like to thank American Libraries for letting us snag one of their photos for this post.