Local Treasures-- A Special Collections Workshop

I attended this workshop, sponsored by PORTALS (Portland Area Library Association for Continuing Education), and held in Portland at the Central Branch of the Multnomah County Library yesterday. The program was organized by Roberta Richards, and the discussion was moderated by Bob Kingston, who are both librarians at Portland Community College. Presenters from archives, museums, libraries, and special collections discussed their institutions and treasures. They included

* The Oregon Historical Society Research Library - Shawn Gandy
* The City of Portland Archives and Records Center - Diana Banning
* The Multnomah County Archives - Terry Baxter
* Central Library's John Wilson Special Collections - Jim Carmin
* Oregon Jewish Museum - Anne Prahl
* Oregon State Library - Dave Hegeman
* Lewis and Clark College Special Collection - Robyn Ward

A wonderful resource page for the workshop is available on the Northwest Central webpage and can be found here.

I will be writing a more formal blog post describing some of what I learned on the Oregon State University Archives webpage later. You can find the post here.

I arrived early and immediately went to Children's Library. Two features I especially love are the the Alice in Wonderland sculpture by Florence Thomas, circa 1930.



and Bronze Tree



I still had some time so I went to the Friends' Library Store where I purchased some fabulous presents. Because some readers may be the recipients, I am only going to post photographs of two items I purchased for myself. One was a postcard book


and the other a Christmas ornament.


I loved the program and knew most of the presenters. I worked at the Oregon State Library when I first began library school and input almost 1,000 photographs in Past Perfect under the direction of then Special Collections Librarian, Merrialyce Blanchard. I was delighted to see that the photograph of the musical family on their homepage is the very first one I researched and put in PastPerfect. It was working there that made me want to become an archivist.