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Records/Archives in the News Part 09 01/23/00
Records/Archives in the News r000120a
There are 3 stories in this posting.
Rocky Mountain News 1/20/00
Museum archivists reign over treasures of Alaska history
Ottawa Citizen 1/20/00
Department loses track of $1 billion
Times of India 1/21/00
US N-secrets found in declassified papers
_______________________________________________________________
Rocky Mountain News 1/20/00
Museum archivists reign over treasures of Alaska history
by Debra McKinney
Scripps-McClatchy Western Service
<snip>
ANCHORAGE, Alaska - The old grip-and-grin photographs of Alaska Railroad
honchos are definite yawners. Ditto the images documenting the life and times
of a white-spruce forest. But the portrait of Gladis Curry, the 1910 Nome Dog
Race Queen, all decked out in her reindeer parky, is stunning. And the 1926
shot taken at the Anchorage fire hall of a half-dozen guys in drag is a hoot.
There they sit looking perfectly goofy, hands folded, legs crossed, in
fashionable hats and silk stockings pulled up to their bulbous knees.
With a little digging at the Anchorage Museum of History and Art, you?ll find
gems like these. Tucked away upstairs in the museum?s library, you?ll find
historical photographs of village life, road construction, homesteading,
reindeer herding and the giant bonfire that served as a toast to Alaska?s
rise to statehood.
This doesn?t even scratch the surface of what lies upon the shelves and
within the file cabinets of the museum?s photography archives. Although its
various parts range from the intimate to the aerial, the big picture is the
story of Alaska as told through the eyes of old-time professional
photographers and the proverbial Aunt Minnie, whose relatives find a dusty
cigar box full of homesteading pictures under her bed after she dies.
When museum archivist Diane Brenner took on the job of overseeing this piece
of Alaska?s history, the museum had about 500 books and 10,000 images. Now,
25 years later, it?s grown to 10,000 books and 350,000 images. Photographs of
gold seekers, riverboat travel, missionary schools and whale hunts. Pictures
of glaciers, erosion and the eruption of Mount Chernabura in 1907.
Some of these old photos aren?t much bigger than an overseas postage stamp.
Some are glass plates. Mostly, the collection consists of files upon files of
prints, negatives and slides dating back to the 1880s. And although it may
not be obvious at first glance, all these images have a story to tell.
<snip>
<snip>
The photographs the museum adopts arrive in all kinds of ways. Some come in
leather-bound photo albums reeking of mildew. Some come in banker boxes, shoe
boxes, paper sacks and Ziploc bags. Best-case scenario is when a collection
arrives all organized, labeled and snug in file cabinets. The worst is when
it lands with a thud in a state of entropy.
It?s the job of Brenner and assistant archivist Mina Jacobs to make sense of
it all and decide what to keep. And it takes minds like theirs to recognize
the subtle information each has to offer. Take the three shoe boxes of
passport negatives from the ?30s and ?40s that came from the old Hewitt?s
Drug Store. Sounds like landfill material to the incognizant mind until
Brenner explains how these well-labeled negatives identify and document who
was here back then.
Among other government collections, the museum inherited reams of photos from
the Federal Aviation Administration slated to be tossed. Pictures with no
negatives; negatives with no prints. Boxes overflowing with pictures.
Volunteer Mary Smith spent 10 years methodically matching negatives to
photos, making prints in her home darkroom and straightening it all out. When
she finished, the collection contained 15,000 images.
Brenner has several FAA-collection success stories, but her favorite is the
time an engineer came in hoping to track down the source of arsenic
contamination at a government cleanup site. What he found was a photograph of
a warehouse _ boring beyond words to most anyone else, but it contained his
answer. When he examined it closely, he could see buckets of linoleum paste
lying about that had been used in government housing. He then discovered that
linoleum paste in the 1950s contained arsenic as a pest control agent.
Not every old photograph has so much to offer. But when Brenner gets a call
from someone wanting to make a donation, she?s always willing to take a look.
<snip>
<snip>
?If you come in with a box of photographs from the earthquake _ easy. And
pictures of activities in some town. If you have a bunch of pictures of
mountaintops, we don?t want them _ unless it?s a volcano and it?s erupting. I
don?t want pictures of your wedding. I don?t care about your baby _ unless
your baby is going to grow up to become Elvis Presley. Unless you got married
standing on the front porch of Baranov?s Castle before it burned down.?
Some extraordinary lives are represented in collections that make the cut.
<snip>
<snip>
The Woolcock collection documents Iris Woolcock?s trip to Alaska. Sounds
about as exciting as a hangnail, but this audacious woman, traveling with her
cat, drove up the Alaska Highway pulling an Airstream trailer in 1948, back
when the highway still had mud holes big enough to swallow her up.
Among the largest is the lifelong work of Steve McCutcheon, a professional
photographer and former state legislator who died last year at 87. His
140,000 or so black-and-white negatives, prints and slides fill roughly 14
filing cabinets and document everything from construction of the trans-Alaska
oil pipeline to walrus hunting on St. Lawrence Island, as well as
encyclopedic studies of geology and natural history topics.
One of the more endearing collections is that of Suzanne Bernardi, who taught
school in Wales around 1910. Brenner already was familiar with Bernardi?s
work when a local appraiser, Joe Crusey, walked in with some old photographs
and a great story. During a bicycle trip outside, Crusey stopped at
McDonald?s in Ohio, where he struck up a conversation with a local. The man,
it turns out, had picked up a collection of Alaska photographs at a garage
sale, a collection that includes some of Bernardi?s photographs of village
life. The man dashed home and returned with it, insisting that Crusey take
the collection back to Alaska, where it belonged.
Brenner has another nice memory from this collection. Around three years ago,
a woman from California came into the archives with some old photos,
wondering if anybody knew anything about them. Brenner took a look and said
they reminded her of Suzanne Bernardi?s work.
The woman about keeled over. She was Bernardi?s granddaughter. As a child,
she?d heard her grandmother?s stories of Alaska but never expected anyone to
know of her. She was so excited that she practically leapt into Brenner?s
arms.
Volunteers play a big role in the archives. They sort, label and file.
?What I say to people is if you like little kids and you like to give tours,
be a docent,? Brenner says. ?If you can understand the satisfaction of
walking into a kitchen full of dirty dishes and getting them all washed and
put way, then you can work for me.?
A couple of these women have been volunteering for more than 20 years.
They?ve been working together for so long they?ve become great friends.
And they have different areas of expertise. Opal Myers, former owner of the
Pioneer Club and once a waitress at the original Rice Bowl, is the resident
expert on nightlife, characters and downtown businesses. Louise Bremner?s
territory is the Alaska Railroad, from which she?s retired. And Doris Rhodes,
retired from the federal Bureau of Land Management, knows a lot about the
early days of Turnagain Arm settlement, since she once ran a sawmill down
there. Frances Ray, a retired schoolteacher, and Stephanie Neal, who?s been
volunteering at the museum for 25 years, fill out the team.
One of the best aspects of the job is researching photos that arrive with
nary a scrap of information.
?You get crummy pictures with great information,? Brenner says. ?You get
great pictures with crummy information. The detective work is the fabulous
part.?
<snip>
__________________________________________________________________
Ottawa Citizen 1/20/00
Department loses track of $1 billion
Sloppy records preclude monitoring of federal grants
by Kathryn May
<snip>
Canadian taxpayers will never know whether $1 billion in federal grants and
contributions was spent properly because of sloppy record-keeping in the
giant Human Resources Development Department that doled it out.
A scathing internal audit of the department found the paperwork for grants
and contributions it handled over the past two years was so sloppy that some
files didn?t even have a record of anyone applying for the money.
<snip>
<snip>
The audit examined about $1 billion worth of programs, which is about
one-third of grants and contributions the department gives out for programs
supporting job creation, youth, aboriginal, literacy and disability
initiatives. Some of the 459 projects examined were outright grants but most
were contributions to individuals or organizations.
The audit found most of the files weren?t supervised or monitored, and
two-thirds didn?t even have the analysis or rationale for approving a project
for funding.
Human Resources Minister Jane Stewart said the audit?s findings were
?unacceptable? and pledged to immediately clean up the record-keeping of the
department, which administers the majority of grants and contributions dished
out by the government.
?When I see reports like this that say administration is sloppy, that is not
sound, and you are not doing what you are supposed to do in terms of
regulations, I say that?s not good enough,? said Ms. Stewart.
But that wasn?t enough to quell Reform Human Resources critic Diane Ablonczy,
who argued the report only confirms ?the mounting evidence of gross
misconduct? and political abuse in the running of some of these programs. The
department released the audit yesterday, days after Reform requested it under
Access to Information.
<snip.
<snip>
But Ms. Stewart conceded that such bad records fuel the critics who have long
complained these programs are open to political abuse.
She argued that not having proper documentation doesn?t necessarily mean
projects were approved or funded improperly, but without supporting records
it opens the door to those accusations. Senior bureaucrats suggested that
some holes in the file could mean everything was done properly but simply not
documented.
?What it means is that we don?t have the proper documentation and we haven?t
followed those requirements that Canadians have to count on so they know
their tax dollars have been invested wisely,? said Ms. Stewart.
<snip>
<snip>
The audit found that in some cases bureaucrats running the programs weren?t
even doing the basics, like filing applications, signing agreements or
conducting routine background or credit checks on recipients.
About 15 per cent of the files had no application from the person,
organization or business getting the money and a worrisome 97 per cent showed
no evidence of checking whether recipients already owed money to the
department. There was no financial monitoring of eight out of 10 files and 87
per cent showed no evidence that the file was being being supervised.
<snip>
________________________________________________________________
Times of India 1/21/00
US N-secrets found in declassified papers
Reuters
<snip>
WASHINGTON: Hundreds of declassified US government documents at the National
Archives, available for public perusal, contained nuclear weapons secrets
that mistakenly had been left in, an energy department review made public
Wednesday said.
The energy department, in accordance with a 1998 law, is reviewing already
declassified documents to ensure that nuclear secrets were not inadvertently
left in, and issued its first report to Congress shortly before Christmas, an
official said.
Energy officials said the declassified documents embedded with nuclear
secrets were from US agencies other than the energy department, but declined
to name them. The issue of US nuclear secrets has been a hot-button item for
Congress since accusations erupted publicly last year that China allegedly
obtained information on US nuclear weapons through espionage, a charge that
Beijing denies.
Under President Bill Clinton?s order, US government documents older than 25
years must be reviewed for declassification. Classified information was left
in the documents largely due to human error in which reviewers missed
markings that showed the information was restricted, an energy department
official familiar with the whole report said. ``These things are of concern
because they could be valuable to someone who was trying to develop a nuclear
capability,?? the official said on condition of anonymity. ``...There are
bits and pieces of information that we?ve pulled off the shelves that are
classified and should not have been there,?? the official added.
Of 948,000 pages audited by the energy department, 14,890 pages included
restricted information that should not have been declassified, the report to
Congress said. ``I recognise the gravity of these inadvertent releases,??
energy secretary Bill Richardson said in a letter to Senate armed services
committee chairman John Warner dated November 29.
There was only one case in which there was ``compelling evidence?? that
classified information was used by a researcher, the report said. That
information related to the deployment of nuclear weapons in a foreign country
in the early 1950s, rather than nuclear design or production information.
The Federation of American Scientists, a non-profit group focused on national
security issues, posted an unclassified executive summary of the report on
its web site www.Fas.Org. The summary said it included documents on ``nuclear
tests that provide insight into the level of weapon design technology in the
late 1950s and early 1960s?? and documents revealing US ``nuclear weapon
design information from the test results of a specified nuclear test
programme.??
<snip>
PETER A. KURILECZ CRM, CA
PAKURILECZ@AOL.COM
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