The Committee on Public Awareness (COPA) presents “A Finding Aid To My Soul,” an open-mic storytelling session celebrating the diversity and commonality of the archivist experience. Storytellers will have five minutes to share true stories about their unique, moving, serendipitous, mysterious, special, and often humorous encounters in the archives (no props, please).
Featured Storytellers
- Terry Baxter, Multnomah County Archives – Encountering ghosts in the archives.
- Krista Ferrante, MITRE – Job interviews are tough but interviewing while 9 months pregnant is torture.
- Virginia Hunt, Harvard University Archives – The ten things they don’t teach you in graduate school all learned in one particularly strange donor experience.
- Petrina Jackson, Iowa State Special Collections and University Archives – My encounter with a burnt cross, and how this item had a personal, visceral impact on me.
- Elizabeth Myers, Smith College Special Collections – A tragic love story set amongst the Communist Party and World War II.
A Chance to Tell Your Story:
Five additional storytellers will be selected at the performance. Contact Chris Burns at chris.burns@uvm.edu in advance or sign up at the event for a chance to share your story.
Serve as a Judge:
Three teams of judges will be selected from volunteers in the audience to determine the top storytellers. Prizes will be awarded. Contestants will be judged on sticking to the five-minute time frame, making the archivist central to the story, and having a story with a beginning, middle, and end.
Sit Back and Enjoy the Show:
Come hear the tales of your colleagues in what promises to be an engaging and entertaining event.
Friday August 17, 2018 8:00pm – 10:00pm
Marriott Wardman Park Hotel
Virginia AB
Cash Bar
You won’t want to miss “A Finding Aid To My Soul”!
As a teaser, here are a few stories from The Moth (featuring respectively a library card, thoughts on memory, and a letter from Iggy Pop) to give you a flavor of what this format looks and sounds like and some examples to aspire to.
Marvin Gelfand: Liberty Card
Wendy Suzuki: Saying ‘I Love You’
Ameera Chowdhury: School Night
Will this session be recorded and available later, for those of us who can’t attend ARCHIVES*RECORDS 2018? It sounds awesome!
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We are currently working out the details, but it looks like the event will be audio taped. We should have something to share in the fall.
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Hi Elizabeth,
They can be found in Episode 4 of the new podcast Archives in Context, found here: https://archivesincontext.archivists.org/
Hope you like!
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Hi Elizabeth,
They can be found in Episode 4 of the new podcast Archives in Context, found here: https://archivesincontext.archivists.org/
Hope you like!
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A couple more of the stories from that night can be found here – https://archivesaware.archivists.org/2018/10/31/archival-ghosts-spooky-stories-from-a-finding-aid-to-my-soul/
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