Table of Contents:

Training Opportunities and Conferences

Planning for Beginners Workshop

Preservation Classes from SOLINET, Inc.

AASLH and National Trust to Hold Historic Site Workshops in April

Managing and Preserving Archival Collections

Midwest Archives Conference 2008 Annual Meeting

Programs

Benjamin Harrison Day

Learning Across Time and Place: The Role of Museums in the Informal Educational

          Landscape

Terry Lacy Presents The Artist as Historian: Painting the Wabash and Erie Canal
Wabash-Erie Canal Association Annual Meeting in Delphi
Indiana to Commemorate Abraham Lincoln’s 200th Birthday

Funding Opportunities

Funding Opportunities Announced Monthly By OFBCI

Foundation Grants for Preservation in Libraries, Archives, and Museums Publication

Is there a Doctor in the House

Organizations in the News

Potawatomi Trail of Death Needs Signs

Graduate Museum Internship at the Milwaukee Public Museum

On the Internet

Historians on the Record: Podcasts from the Gilder Lehrman Institute

Gas Light Fixture Photo Archive
Omeka Available for Public Download

Blog the Indiana Lincoln Highway

Electronic Locator Guide to Covered Bridges in Indiana
Archon: A Free, Easy-to-Use Web Tool Kit for Archivists

IRS Exempt Organization Update

Planning for Beginners Workshop
This workshop will be held on Wed., March 19, 2008, from 9 a.m.-3 p.m. at the Eugene and Marilyn Glick Indiana History Center.

The speaker will be Stacy Klingler from the Indiana Historical Society.

Have you been caught off guard when a funder asked for your organizational or strategic plan? Has your staff or board resisted going through a planning process? You don’t need to be big or have paid staff to create a plan that works for you. In fact, planning is even more important for all-volunteer organizations where comings and goings are common. We will de-mystify the mystique around creating strategic and organizational plans and share non-threatening ways for you to introduce planning (and budgeting) to your group.

The cost is $10, $8 IHS members (lunch on your own).

Register by March 12.

For more information or a registration form, please visit http://www.indianahistory.org/lhs/LHS2007Q1Brochure.pdf, e-mail sklingler@indianahistory.org or call (317) 233-3110.

Preservation Classes from SOLINET, Inc.
SOLINET, Inc., the Southeastern Library Network, is pleased to announce that there are still seats available in the following upcoming preservation classes.

Mammoth Materials: How to Preserve Posters, Maps and More
This live on-line class will take place on Tue., March 18, from 2-4 p.m. EST.

The price is $100 for SOLINET members and $140 for non-members.  Early bird discounts and late fees apply.

For information, go to http://tinyurl.com/2tfq2b.

Introduction to Grants for Preservation
This live on-line class will take place on Wed., March 26, from 2-4 p.m. EST.

The price is $100 for SOLINET members and $140 for non-members.  Early bird discounts and late fees apply.

For information, go to http://tinyurl.com/76eeb.

Introduction to Institutional Repositories
This live on-line class will take place on Thu., March 27, from 2-4 p.m. EST.

The price is $100 for SOLINET members and $145 for non-members.  Early bird discounts and late fees apply.

For information, go to http://tinyurl.com/2kwox4.

For more information on these classes or to register contact Vanessa Richardson at (800) 999-8558, vrichardson@solinet.net or visit our website at http://www.solinet.net for full descriptions and online registration.

AASLH and National Trust to Hold Historic Site Workshops in April

Historic House Museums Issues and Operations
This two-day workshop will be held on April 16-17, 2008, at Locust Grove in Louisville, Ky.

The workshop, presented in partnership with the National Trust for Historic Preservation, focuses on this unique segment of museums by providing instruction on the management and interpretation of historic houses.

There is an early bird discount if registered by March 3.

Civic Engagement at Historic Sites
Brand New!!

This workshop will be held on April 21, 2008, at the Oak Park Public Library in Oak Park, Illinois.

The workshop is presented in partnership with the National Trust for Historic Preservation, the Illinois Association of Museums and the Frank Lloyd Wright Preservation Trust.  The event will explore the benefits of community engagement, outline the successful skills and strategies needed for facilitating dialogues and discussions, how to identify appropriate partners and forge collaborations that are mutually beneficial, suggest methods for constructing tours that support civic engagement and provide tools for assessing and planning civic engagement initiatives.

The registration deadline is March 21.
 
For more information or to register for these workshops visit www.aaslh.org/workshop.htm or call (615) 320-3203.

Managing and Preserving Archival Collections
This two-day program is presented by the Conservation Center for Art and Historic Artifacts and will be held in Baltimore, Md., on April 17-18, 2008.

This program will explain how to:

• Institute proper archival procedures
• Manage preservation activities
• Gain intellectual control over collections
• Increase collections accessibility
• Implement long-term preservation initiatives  

Agenda
Day 1
An Introduction to Archival Management: Appraisal, Arrangement, and Description, presented by Beth Bensman, CA, Certified Archivist and private consultant.

Day 2
Archives Preservation: Maintaining and Protecting Collections, presented by Hilary A. Kaplan, Senior Conservator, National Archives and Records Administration.

The program fee is $180 for CCAHA member institutions and $200 for non-members. 

The program is co-sponsored and hosted by The Johns Hopkins Sheridan Libraries.

Download the brochure at http://www.ccaha.org/workshop_cal.php and register now!

For more information, contact the Conservation Center for Art and Historic Artifacts at (215) 545-0613, e-mail pso@ccaha.org or visit www.ccaha.org.

Midwest Archives Conference 2008 Annual Meeting
The conference will be held on April 17-19 at the Brown Hotel in Louisville, Ky.

The registration fee is $50 for advance registration, or $35 for students.  Advance registration must be postmarked or submitted on-line by March 14.

The theme for the conference is Race Toward the Future While Distilling the Past.  The topics of the sessions will include the relevance of archives in the digital world, Archives 2.0, preserving complex digital objects, new methods for engaging users, emerging professionals, change management and even personal life balance.

For more information and to register visit www.midwestarchives.org/2008Spring/.

Please confirm events specifics with sponsoring organization, especially if traveling any distance.    

Benjamin Harrison Day
This event will be held on Tue., March 4, from 10 a.m.-1 p.m.

The Indiana Supreme Court and the Capitol Tour Office will, in conjunction with the Harrison Home, celebrate "Benjamin Harrison Day".  In 2003, Chief Justice Randall T. Shepherd "pardoned" Benjamin Harrison in absentia for abandoning the post of Supreme Court Reporter.  Mr. Harrison "abandoned" his post to fight in the Civil War, but the issue was not resolved until March 4, 2003.  The entire court proceeding was archived and is available to watch at www.in.gov/judiciary/education.  Just follow the link to find the information about Harrison Day.

There will be a first-person enactment of the Harrison court case, Ex-Parte Milligan, done in the Supreme Court that will be webcasted and archived.  This event will take place at 10:00 a.m. and again at 11:30 a.m. on March 4 at the Indiana State House.

The cost for the State House event is free.  For a museum tour, please refer to the daily tour prices.

If you are interested in attending the event at the State House, please contact Sarah at the Indiana Supreme Court at (317) 233-8682 due to limited seating.  If you are interested in a tour of the Harrison Home museum that day, please contact the education staff at (317) 631-2717. 

Visit www.pbhh.org/ for more information.

Learning Across Time and Place: The Role of Museums in the Informal Educational Landscape
This lecture from the Smithsonian Center for Education and Museum Studies will take place on Mon., March 3, from 2-4 p.m. in the Ring Auditorium of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C.

The program will also be web cast live on http://museumstudies.si.edu.

Learning Across Time and Place is the first of two G. Brown Goode lectures looking at the research on learning in formal and informal museum settings.

Less than 15% of a schoolchild's waking time is spent in the classroom.  Yet the national investment in education is almost exclusively limited to that small portion of a child's life.  This program will look at the role learning plays in other settings and times–at home, in museums, in after school programs and on the net–in developing students' interest, readiness and capacity to succeed both in school and as lifelong learners.

The program will feature two speakers:
Professor Phillip Bell is the associate professor of the Learning Sciences at the University of Washington Seattle and co-chair of the National Research Council's Informal Science Learning Committee. Dr. Bell will share recent research from the NSF-funded LIFE Center (Learning in Informal and Formal Environments) that examines how learning develops across time and setting.

Bronwyn Bevan is the Director of the Center for Informal Learning and Schools (CILS), a partnership with the Exploratorium in San Francisco, Kings College London and University of California Santa Cruz.  Ms. Bevan will report on what the NSF-funded CILS is learning about the role that museums can and do play in enhancing and extending learning that happens both in and out of school.

Terry Lacy Presents The Artist as Historian: Painting the Wabash and Erie Canal
This lecture will be presented on Sun., April 6, at 2 p.m. in the Freimann Room at the Allen County Historical Society in Fort Wayne.

How far does "artistic license" go? There have been many illustrations over the years romanticizing epic moments in history. Many of these have been flights of fancy with little connection to real facts. That cannot be said of works created by Terry Lacy, an artist with a conscience.

In creating a mural composed of a series of large scale oil paintings for the Wabash and Erie Canal Interpretative Center in Delphi, Ind., Lacy, who has degrees from Herron School of Art (BFA) and Indiana University (MFA), had to imagine what certain sites may have looked like long after they had been altered by the intrusion of a modern world. Through extensive research and a keen eye for telling details, he created a sense of time and space from a bygone era. The mural circles the entire lobby of the Interpretive Center and most of the paintings measure between six and eleven feet in length.

The murals depict scenes on the Wabash and Erie Canal extending from Toledo, Oh., through Fort Wayne, Wabash, Logansport, Delphi, Lafayette, Attica, Terre Haute and south to Evansville on the Ohio River. This highly visual presentation will demonstrate how historic clues can contribute to a more faithful artistic expression.

The event is part of the George R. Mather Lecture Series and is free to the public.

The Allen County Historical Society is located at 302 E. Berry St. in Fort Wayne.

Wabash-Erie Canal Association Annual Meeting in Delphi
This event will be held on April 15, 2008, at 7 p.m.

Following a short business meeting, the Carroll County Wabash-Erie Canal, Inc. will host Potowotami Indiana advocate Shirley Willard from Rochester, Ind. The topic will center on the 170th anniversary of the infamous Trail of Death, during which over eight hundred Indians were forced from their homeland near Rochester and Plymouth, with forty Indians succumbing to both the elements and physical debilitation.

Donations will be accepted for the funding of commemorative highway signage denoting the Trail of Death along the route of the walk.

The meeting will be held at the Wabash & Erie Conference Center at Canal Park, 1030 N. Washington St. in Delphi.

For more information visit www.wabashanderiecanal.com.

Indiana to Commemorate Abraham Lincoln’s 200th Birthday
The Indiana Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission (IALBC) announces activities to commemorate Lincoln.

Lincoln, who would have been 200 on Feb. 12, 2009, spent 14 of his most formative years – from age 7 to 21 – in Spencer County in southern Indiana before ultimately going on to become the 16th president of the United States.  The honesty, leadership and determination that shaped his legacy were formed during his youth in the Hoosier state.

Mother’s Day Marks Celebration’s Start
Lincoln once said, “All I am, or can be, I owe to my angel mother.” Therefore, it’s fitting that Indiana's celebration of Abraham Lincoln's 200th birthday will kick off on Mother’s Day weekend, May 10 and 11, 2008, in Spencer County.  A special ceremony on Sun., May 11, at Lincoln Boyhood National Memorial in Spencer County will honor Lincoln’s mother, Nancy Hanks Lincoln, who died when he was 9 years old.

The Mother’s Day event will include a dramatic presentation, musical performances and other special tributes.  This special ceremony will highlight the influence the women in Lincoln's life had on the development of his character.

Scouts to Honor Lincoln and Learn About His Life
Also on Mother’s Day weekend, more than 5,000 Boy and Girl Scouts from Indiana, Kentucky and Illinois are expected for a campout at Lincoln Boyhood National Memorial, Lincoln State Park and Buffalo Run in Lincoln City, Ind.  The scouts will learn about Lincoln's time spent in Indiana by taking part in a variety of pioneer activities and demonstrations.

Indiana Historical Society Events
The Indiana Historical Society will host several events in Indianapolis the weekend of Aug. 8-9.

Free events on Aug. 8 include a reenactment of Lincoln’s February 1861 Indianapolis speech and Q&A session with noted Lincoln interpreter Fritz Klein outside the Indiana State House, as well as free family activities at the Eugene and Marilyn Glick Indiana History Center. That evening, Lincoln enthusiasts, educators and scholars can attend a dinner and lecture at the History Center with scholar, author and Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission co-chair Harold Holzer.

On Saturday, Aug. 9, the History Center will host a Lincoln Bicentennial Conference featuring a keynote address by Edna Greene Medford (Howard University) in addition to several concurrent sessions for: libraries and local historical organizations facilitated by Joan Flinspach (CEO, Lincoln Museum in Fort Wayne), schools and educators led by IHS education staff and Martin Tuohy (National Archives and Records Administration – Great Lakes); and history buffs, directed by Holzer and Medford.

Additional Planned Events and Efforts

• Books and lilac trees will mark the anniversary in schools.
• Commemorative license plates have been made available.
• 10 Indiana artists will submit proposals for a public art piece for Lincoln State Park.
• The Studebaker Museum in South Bend has restored its 1865 carriage that President Lincoln rode in on the night he was assassinated.
• Other planned activities include student essay, PowerPoint and stamp design contests; traveling exhibitions, a Library of Congress exhibit and a new jazz composition commemorating Lincoln’s time in Indiana by Dr. David Baker of the Indiana University School of Music.

To learn more about Indiana’s Lincoln sites and statewide bicentennial efforts, please visit www.IndianasLincoln.org.

Funding Opportunities Announced Monthly By OFBCI
The Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives (OFBCI) offers a monthly e-newsletter listing various funding opportunities available.

To view past issues, visit http://www.in.gov/ofbci/2382.htm.

To subscribe to the monthly e-newsletter, send your e-mail address to Janet Simpson at jsimpson@ofbci.in.gov.

Foundation Grants for Preservation in Libraries, Archives, and Museums Publication

This is a collaborative project of the Library of Congress and the Foundation Center. This publication lists 1,725 grants of $5,000 or more awarded by 474 foundations from 2003 through 2007. It covers grants to public, academic, research, school and special libraries and to archives and museums for activities related to conservation and preservation.

The publication includes:

• An introduction that explains the book's coverage, arrangement, entries, and how to research using the volume. The PDF file contains hotlinks to free online grant writing tutorials and introductions to foundations offered by the Foundation Center as well as to some other widely used non-profit guidance on preservation grants found on the conservation online web site.
• A statistical analysis of grant funding in the area of preservation by foundation, recipient location, subject, recipient type (e.g., Library), grant size and foundation generosity nationwide.
• State-by-state descriptions of projects funded in preservation nationwide including the foundation's name, limitations on giving, focus for giving, recipient(s), size of grant and purpose of the grant described. This section is hot linked in the PDF version directly to more detailed descriptions of the foundations.
• Indexes by recipient, geographic area of the recipient and subject. If you do not find what you are looking for in the indices, use the find feature to search the text for your term.
• A list of all foundations that have donated to preservation with their contact information and limitations.

To access this document, follow the link found at http://www.loc.gov/preserv/foundtn-grants.html

Potawatomi Trail of Death Needs Signs
The Potawatomi Trail of Death Association plans to place historic highway signs across Indiana to indicate the trail route. The trail extends from Warren County through Tippecanoe and Carroll and into Cass County.

The association hopes to complete the signs by Sept. 22, which will be the next time the Trail of Death Commemorative Caravan will travel the trail.

Metal signs, which are 24 inches by 30 inches, cost $50 each. Arrow signs cost $7.35 and are attached below the metal sign.

Cass County needs 13 signs and nine arrows. Carroll County needs 15 signs and 11 arrows.

Donations can be made to PTDA c/o Fulton Co. Historical Society, 37 E. County Road 375 N., Rochester, IN 46975. The signs and arrows will be ordered using the historical society’s tax exempt number.

Note from the Editor

If your historical organization, genealogical society or museum has changed its address or phone number in the past six months, please send the updated information to Coordinator, Local History Services, at col@indianahistory.org or 450 W. Ohio St., Indianapolis, IN 46202.