Lois Petersen Becomes Life - Alaska Library Association

The Alaska Digital Archives and Learn Alaska
I found the sessions on The Alaska
Digital Archives and Learn Alaska
to be of the most immediate and
pertinent use! This year, our Social
Science department is struggling to
invent an Alaska Studies curriculum,
and I am trying to throw a lot
of library funds, time, research, and
energy toward helping to accomplish
that. This session will help me help
the Alaska Studies teacher and thus
our students.
I‘d already introduced said teacher
to the Alaska Digital Archives
(http://vilda.alaska.edu); he and his
students are VERY excited about and
have used its resources several times.
For anyone who isn’t familiar with it,
the Digital Archives is a fascinating
website which “presents a wealth of
historical photographs, albums, oral
histories, moving images, maps, documents,
physical objects, and other
materials from libraries, museums
and archives throughout our state.”
The Archives can be accessed
through SLED (http://sled.alaska.
edu), and are endlessly rewarding as
education and entertainment.
WARNING: exploring the Archives
will be like potato chips – you won’t
be able to stop at just one! Apparently
the high school students found it
as interesting as I did and have used
it frequently since being introduced.
p. 20
by Sherry Henrickson
Ketchikan High School Librarian
The new thing that I learned at this
conference session was about the
Learn Alaska (http://www.learnalaska.org)
component of the Digital
Archives. From the home page of the
Archives, you can click on
BUILD A CLASSROOM TOUR
and you’ll be given a choice of tours
that are already set up - Prospecting,
Fishwheels on the Yukon River, and
Early Fairbanks are choices right now.
I was mostly interested in the (upcoming)
ability for others to build
their own tours by selecting a series
of “slides” from the Archives and
adding their own written information.
I think high school students will
really buy into this virtual method of
researching and reporting.
The requirements for building tours
are:
• The Toolset (Builder and Viewer)
– can be downloaded directly from
the website and are FREE!
• An internet connection
• FLASH
Other things to know are:
• The Toolset must be downloaded
on every computer that will be used
• There is no Spellcheck in the
Builder section; it is recommended
that you use a word processing program,
then cut and paste
The emphasis of the entire session
was on collaboration; the collaboration
between the museum, the public
library, and the school district that
went into making Learn Alaska happen
as well as ways that we as librarians
can encourage and facilitate collaboration
with our teachers. These
include knowing and being available
during teacher prep time, getting a
copy of students assignments, finding,
evaluating and sharing websites
appropriate to assignments; library
newsletters, offering to split classes
with teachers so you each work with
smaller groups of students, teacher
“book talks” – however informal
– on books they will find applicable
to their subject, inviting teachers to
help spend your book budget… not
new ideas, but great ones that bear
repeating!
It was a very informative and useful
session and I encourage everyone to
explore both the Digital Archives and
Learn Alaska!
The Puffin, Spring 2006 v25, #3