Unveil the Trail!
November 20, 10 am.

Come join Board Members Rob Hoogs and Tom Ryan, along with Elia Del Molino of the Greenagers, as we unveil the new “Loom Brook Trail” on the museum property. About two miles of new trails were built by the Greenagers during 2021 with a grant from MassTrails.

The new trails connect to the property’s existing 4 miles of trails, creating the opportunity for several new loops of one to two miles. On Saturday, November 20 (rain date Sunday Nov. 21) we will guide you along some of the new and old trails starting from the museum parking lot at 10:00 a.m. The guided walk will cover about two miles and will take about two hours. We’ll stop at a few locations to talk about some of the history and natural features of the property.

Please wear good hiking shoes; wear clothing layers to adjust to conditions; bring water and a snack if you want; and bring trekking poles if you use them.

This walk is free, but attendance is limited so pre-registration HERE is required.

Planning and getting started on your oral history project
…or, picking up a paused project

November/December 2021 Workshop Series:
From planning, to interview, to archive:
An informal series to get you started or re-started

Session 1, November 16, 3:30-4:30 p.m.

Plan your oral history project:  We will walk through the early planning to help you create a doable and sustainable oral history project.  We will talk about your concept (why, for whom), and logistics (how), and consider ethical questions. We will talk about safe backup and storage.

The Archive: Where will your project be safely stored and made available to others?   So often people skip this part, with all good intentions. In the end, it is the part of an oral history project  least likely to be completed. Yet it is necessary if your oral history interviews will be heard in the future, or even in the present.

(Photo:  Margaret Cherin, archivist, helping us to understand the order of things: It is a best practice, she told us, to plan safe storage and archiving right at the beginning of the oral history project.  A first step.  She directed a project at Bard College at Simon’s Rock. Here she is showing a transcript from the collection of Simon’s Rock founder Elizabeth “Betty” Blodgett Hall )

Session 2, November 30, 3:30-4:30 p.m.
The Interview:  We will help you plot out logistics of your first interview, whether virtual or in-person.  We will discuss release forms/deeds of gift and other related project materials.

Session 3, December 14, 3:30-4:30 p.m
Brainstorm, Drop-in:   A drop-in session on zoom. We talk about your projects as they progress, and we will brainstorm your roadblocks and questions together.

All Fall Workshops will be virtual, on Zoom, free of charge.    Registration is required.    To register, write to Judith Monachina:  jmonachina@berkshirecc.edu

Winter chats with professionals
Dates/times to be announced in December

•Oral history as community-based theater•

•Oral history in podcasts•

•Oral history as exhibit•

You are invited to the following CLHO program:

Connecticut Collections Info Session and Q&A

When: Friday, August 20, 2021 11:00 AM, EDT
Where: Zoom

Learn more about Connecticut Collections, an open-source collections management system based on Collective Access software that allows Connecticut collecting institutions to organize, manage, share, and preserve their collections digitally. See whether this collaborative database is a good fit for your organization and find out more about the process of joining the collaborative. CLHO staff will offer an overview of the project, give a peek under the hood, and answer your questions.

If you’re in the market for a collections management system designed with the needs of small and mid-sized history organizations in mind, then Connecticut Collections could be right for you. Connecticut Collections has all the robust features of an industry-standard CMS, including:

• a cloud-based interface that runs in your web browser
• the capability to manage your collections on-site, from home, or wherever you may be
• the ability to make collections items discoverable online through a searchable public portal
• automatic long-term digital preservation of your collection items through the Connecticut Digital Archive

With an affordable, sliding-scale pricing structure, Connecticut Collections is a smart choice compared to similar commercial database offerings. Whether you are thinking about moving from an older database system, interested in going beyond spreadsheets, or simply want to get a better handle on your collections, we invite you to learn more about what Connecticut Collections has to offer.

Learn more about Connecticut Collections

Best regards,
Connecticut League of History Organizations

Berkshire Community College student Aylen Dominguez has been selected as a Melville Fellow by the Berkshire County Historical Society.  She joins two other recipients, Shawna Hennesy from MCLA and Hazel Richards from Williams College.  This fall, the three Melville Fellows will be paid a stipend to work with the Writer-in-Residence at Herman Melville’s Arrowhead to produce original writing.  Public readings will take place in early 2022.  Congratulations to all three!

Housatonic Heritage and Berkshire County Historical Society worked together 10 years ago – in 2011-2012 – to establish the first Writer-in-Residence position at Arrowhead.  The partners at the time (Housatonic Heritage, Pittsfield High School, and Berkshire Historical Society, at Arrowhead) hoped to engage youth with the particular stories of Melville and Arrowhead and encourage students with their own writing. Berkshire Historical Society picked it up from there, and they have had a Writer in Residence since 2012.   And the Melville Fellow program, while different, reaches out to students, too.

Congratulations to the students and to Berkshire Historical Society.

You are invited to the following CLHO program:

Keynotes of Change: Kyera Singleton, Northern Slavery and the Preservation of Memory

When: Wednesday, June 16, 2021 2:00 PM, EDT
Where: Zoom

Will you be attending?

EVENT DETAILS:

Northern Slavery and the Preservation of Memory

Kyera Singleton, Royall House and Slave Quarters

Wednesday, June 16 at 2 p.m.

About the talk: As this country has reckoned with dueling pandemics, Covid-19 and systemic racism, many conversations about racial injustice and social justice have dominated the minds of millions of people. In this talk, Kyera Singleton, who is the Executive Director of the Royall House and Slave Quarters, will discuss how and why former sites of slavery, as places of history, memory, and education, are crucial to reckoning with our current moment and imagining a more just world.

About the Royall House and Slave Quarters: In the eighteenth century, the Royall House and Slave Quarters was home to the largest slaveholding family in Massachusetts and the enslaved Black women, men, and children who made their lavish way of life possible. Today, the Royall House and Slave Quarters is a museum whose architecture, household items, archaeological artifacts, and public programs bear witness to intertwined stories of wealth and bondage and contestations of freedom in Massachusetts.

Kyera Singleton is the Executive Director of the Royall House and Slave Quarters. She is also a Ph.D. Candidate at the University of Michigan–Ann Arbor in the Department of American Culture. For the 2021–2022 academic year, she is an American Democracy Fellow in the Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History at Harvard University. Before joining the Warren Center as an American Democracy Fellow, she held prestigious academic fellowships from the Beinecke Foundation, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Emory University’s James Weldon Johnson Institute for the Study of Race and Difference, and the American Association of University Women (AAUW). From 2018 through 2019, Kyera served as the Humanity in Action Policy Fellow for the ACLU of Georgia, focusing on mass incarceration, reproductive justice, and voting rights. As a public history scholar, Kyera recently served as an advisor on the Boston Art Commission’s Recontextualization Subcommittee for the bronze Emancipation Group Statue. She is also a member of the Board of Public Humanities Fellows at Brown University, which brings together a collection of museum leaders from Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and Connecticut.