Archives Awareness Week : 2 - 8 April 2012

To celebrate Archives Awareness Week, held the first week of April, we're compiling a idiosyncratic and completely biased list of interesting news stories involving archives, historical documents or rare books and the compelling stories they generate.  These can cover a range of topics, including:
Serendipitous discovery!    Unexpected loss!   
Wanton destruction!       Benign neglect!

and
The power of archival material [...]

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Black History Month featured fonds: Lee and Grace Lorch

Lee Lorch is a mathematician, social activist and a retired member of York University's faculty.
From 1942-1943, Lorch worked as a mathematician for the US National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics. He married Grace Lonergan, a school teacher from Boston on 24 December 1943. During World War II, Lorch served in the U.S. Army, working in India [...]

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Love in the Archives: a #loveheritage Valentine's Day twitter wrap-up

Yesterday, the archives participated in a Twitter event hosted by @AskArchivists.  Using Valentine's Day as a lens in which to interpret our holdings, archives across the globe tweeted about their holdings.
For more information about the #loveheritage event, see Ask Archivists' blog here.
For our primary post for Valentine's Day, see our feature on love songs from [...]

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Valentine's Day: sugary sweet pop songs from the 1910s

In recognition of the high-sucrose holiday of St. Valentine's Day, here are a selection of some of the more fluffy pieces of sheet music from the John Arpin Sheet Music Collection.
All Alone: a tenacious telephone technology tune

All Alone, "Harry Von Tizler's Great Telephone Song" features a lonely Marie having difficulty contacting her fella Georgie to [...]

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Black History Month featured fonds: Jean Augustine

Jean Augustine was the first female Member of Parliament of African descent to be elected to Parliament. As MP for Etobicoke-Lakeshore. Augustine sponsored the bill that officially recognized Black History Month on the federal level in the 1990s.  Her archives are a goldmine of material for researchers interested in social reform, community activism, international relations, [...]

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