Welcome to the seventh installment of the exciting activities your CoSA colleagues have planned for Archives Month 2016.
The Virginia Caucus of the Mid-Atlantic Regional Archives Conference and the Library of Virginia invite you to celebrate Archives Month in Virginia during the month of October. This year’s theme is Art in the Archives. Archives Month is a nationwide commemoration of the value of archives and of the dedicated professionals who care for our shared history and make it accessible to all.
The Library of Virginia kicked off the celebration on October 5 with Ask an Archivist Day. The Library is also offering behind-the-scenes tours of the Archives and Special Collections on October 12, and of the Nathalie P. Voorhees Map Room and Conservation Lab on November 3.
On October 19 Trenton Hizer, senior manuscripts cataloger and digital archivist, will present a talk entitled Three Elections that Remade Virginia. During the 1970s and 1980s, Virginia experienced tremendous political upheaval as three close elections—two for governor and one for U.S. senator—helped transform the commonwealth from a one-party state dominated by a conservative Democratic Party into a political battleground.
A fun, new feature of this year’s celebration is REMIX | Art from the Archives, a contest to inspire literal and figurative out-of-the-box ideas for cultural heritage collections. Archives aren’t just about serious research—they can be about serious (or not so serious) art! Redaction poetry, GIFs, collages, coloring pages, memes, and other digital interventions are all ways to remix.
To enter REMIX | Art from the Archives, craft your submission with materials from the Virginia Archives Month 2016 Flickr album at www.archivesmonthva.tumblr.com.
Reimagine or reinterpret the source material through your personal artistic lens. You can enter up to three submissions through October 14, 2016. Submissions will only be accepted digitally, though you may choose to print and manipulate the source material through a variety of artistic methods. Take a photo of your finished product for the submission.
All entries will be judged on creativity and originality of entry. All eligible entries that meet the criteria outlined in the submission guidelines will be showcased on the REMIX Tumblr and otherwise celebrated on the Web.
#ArchivesMonth