NEW: Holy Cross to Host Archivists’ 40th Anniversary With StoryCorps

Monday, March 11, 2013

GoLocalWorcester Lifestyle Team

New England Archivists (NEA) will celebrate the 40th anniversary of the organization with a special three-day meeting on the campus of Holy Cross March 21st-March 23rd. The program will feature a cross-section of subjects including DNA encoding for information storage, digital humanities, and Worcester history as told by its immigrant population in conjunction with the StoryCorps project.

Founded in 1973, New England Archivists is the premier professional organization in the field of archives and special collections in the New England region. The archivists collect, arrange, describe, and provide access to historical documents. The NEA is committed to increasing public awareness of archival work and to informing historians, genealogists, students, and journalists, among others, about archival resources that might be of use to them.

StoryCorps is one of the largest oral history projects of its kind. For the Worcester project the goal is to record the stories of 16 to 20 individuals over a three-day period. Participants will be given copies of the recordings, and duplicate copies will be deposited in the Worcester Historical Museum and the Library of Congress. This project received funding from Mass Humanities.

"Oral Histories are an ideal medium for capturing and preserving the first-person recollection that we crave to inform our understanding of time and place," said Alyssa Pacy, incoming president of New England Archivists.

"Our goal as archivists is to document the diverse communities in which we serve, and partnering with Worcester's vibrant immigrant community ensures all the voices from our community are present and heard. As New England Archivists celebrates its 40th anniversary , we are thrilled to engage the public around the importance of collecting and preserving local history."

Dr. George Church, professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School, proponent of archival storage using DNA, and author of the book Regenesis, will be given the plenary talk. An additional keynote speech will be given by Tom Schienfeldt, digital humanities expert and Director-at-Large of the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media at George Masion University.

For more information on these events and any one of these programs please visit New England Archivists, StoryCorps, or MassHumanities.