The 2021 theme for the Ohio Archives Month poster was Ohio’s Wonderland: Unboxing The Great Outdoors. For the past year and a half, many have been cooped up indoors and apart from others more than ever before, but the outdoors have always offered an escape! The SOA Advocacy and Outreach Committee invited repositories and institutions across the state to submit their photographs, documents, or other graphical materials that highlight Ohio’s outdoor spaces. (Download the poster as a PDF.)

We received submissions on the theme from 23 institutions, for a total of 65 photographs and documents! The submissions were compiled, and 10 images were selected as winners through online voting by you. We were able to feature 3 of these images on this year’s Archive Month poster.

See our 2021 poster page for the images featured on the poster from the Sandusky Library, University of Akron, and the Ohio History Connection, as well as the other winning submissions, and the full text of the poster. Continue reading →

For Archives Month, Candace Pine, manuscripts librarian, takes us on a 10-minute behind-the-scenes tour of the Walter Havighurst Special Collections and University Archives at Miami University, showcasing two collections in particular: Gene Krebs, former member of the Ohio House of Representatives, and Rick Ludwin, former NBC executive (Primetime, Late Night, and Specials).

See more information about Rick Ludwin and the collection finding aid. Further information about Gene Krebs will be forthcoming on the website soon (collection still being processed).

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Just in time for Archives Month, the Society of Ohio Archivists Advocacy and Outreach Committee are pleased to announce a new Google Map of Ohio archival institutions! The institutions mapped are drawn from those who submitted their information for the 2019 Ohio Archives Passport.

Questions? Contact the Advocacy and Outreach Committee Cochairs Natalie Fritz and Jenifer Baker.

October is American Archives Month and the Advocacy and Outreach Committee would like to take the opportunity to highlight and celebrate archives all throughout Ohio!

Update: We are canceling the behind-the-scenes virtual Zoom tours for this year. With all that is going on in the world, and our late start, we weren’t able to get enough sign-ups. We have high hopes for next year, and plan to make these behind-the-scenes “crawls” a regular part of our Archives Month promotions in future years.

In the meantime, please see the virtual archives tours from our June Annual Meeting. This session, now on SOA’s YouTube, featured Miami University with Rachel Makarowski and Candace Pine; University of Dayton with Amy Rohmiller and Kristina Schulz; and the Henry R. Winkler Center for the History of the Health Professions with Gino Pasi.

Ways to celebrate Archives Month

Hold an Event: If your archive site hasn’t made plans yet to do something to celebrate and acknowledge Archives Month, we encourage you to hold some sort of event (in person or virtual) to let people get to know your archives!

Let us know: If you already have something planned (like an open house, talk, etc.), please share the details so that we can publish a list of Ohio Archives Month activities around the state on the SOA website. You can send event details to Advocacy and Outreach Committee Cochair Natalie Fritz.

Download and display this year’s Archives Month in Ohio poster, Ohio’s Wonderland: Unboxing The Great Outdoors. (Coming soon: a post from A&O on the making of the poster and the great submissions from archives around the state.)

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