From the Chair:
Diane Wells

Hear ye not the hum Of mighty workings?

When I ran for the position of Vice Chair/Chair Elect in 2001, I defined ARCS as, first and foremost, a forum for its members to network, to share and to learn. I also indicated that to be effective the Section leadership needed to provide a strategy for fostering these activities and for encouraging the creative involvement of the membership. I believe that this is what your ARCS leadership has done in the past and I know that it is what I will continue to strive for in the future.

Hear ye not the hum Of mighty workings?

If not, why not? Over the past several years ARCS has developed a number of avenues for networking, sharing and learning. First among these is our website: http://www.saa-arcs.org/index.html which I hope you are turning to for information and assistance. As SAA moves into its ten-year plan for electronic publishing (Archival Outlook, MAR/APR 2003), including distribution of section newsletters in electronic form only, ARCS is right on target with its posting of The Archival Spirit on our web site. Also available on the web site is our Membership Directory and a new resource page developed by Models and Resource Committee chair, Diana Sanderson. This page is discussed in the Annual Meeting Minutes appearing in this issue. Please take a look at the page and tell us what you think.

Our most recent effort on your behalf is the establishment of the ARCS listserv! This has been in the discussion stage for a long time and is now, thanks to outgoing ARCS chair Dale Patterson, a reality. We hope that ARCS members will take advantage of this new communication tool to share information, ask for help and keep each other informed about important developments in the field religious archives. Please read Dale’s article about the listserv in this issue and give it a try! For a good source of general information on listservs go to: http://atcom.murraystate.edu/kate/full/what_is_listserv.htm

Hear ye not the hum Of mighty workings?

Mighty workings are the order of the day in SAA and ARCS. Please help us help you by participating. Come to the annual meetings if you possibly can – next year, Boston!

Read and contribute to The Archival Spirit. Bookmark and use the web site. Join us on the listserv! Volunteer your talents and share your knowledge. We’re all in this together! Become part of the hummmmmmmmmmmmm!

Great spirits now on earth are sojourning…
And other spirits there are standing apart
Upon the forehead of the age to come;
These, these will give the world another heart,
And other pulses. Hear ye not the hum
Of mighty workings?…
(excerpted from John Keats, Sonnet XIV

More from the Chair:

Many thanks to Dale Patterson who will now serve as past chair/nominating-elections committee chair and to Mark Duffy who passes the torch to Dale but will continue to serve as web coordinator. Thanks also to Bob Shuster outgoing newsletter editor. Welcome to Loretta Greene, our new vice chair/chair elect and to Joan Clemens, our new representative at-large. Continuing thanks to Gwynedd, secretary; Wes Wilson, representative at-large and newsletter editor; and to Diana Sanderson, chair, models and resources committee.

Contact information for officers and members of the Steering Committee is available on the ARCS web site. Please let us know your interests, your concerns and how you’d like to get involved in ARCS!

Archives and Anniversaries: 150 Years and Counting …
Diane Wells

The Diocese of Olympia is now in the midst of a year-long celebration to commemorate the 150th Anniversary of the Episcopal Church in western Washington (1853-2003) — a celebration for which the diocesan archives and the archivist is more than partly responsible. For those of you who have been involved in such celebrations, you know how time consuming, complicated and challenging they can be. I hope you also know what an opportunity they present for your archives and for your institution. In my case, I have found it to be extremely gratifying as well.

I have been involved with the planning of this celebration for more than three years. In 2000, I felt it was my responsibility, as archivist, to bring the fact of our approaching sesquicentennial to the attention of the bishop. The 150th Anniversary seemed a perfect occasion for promoting the Episcopal Church within the larger civic community as well as for raising historical awareness within our own churches. I also hoped that my involvement would make the work of the Archives more visible and help generate increased interest in its collections and services.

Our History, Archives and Records Committee and I worked to develop an over-all plan with a list of suggested events and projects for a yearlong anniversary celebration and took it to the bishop in the spring of 2001.Once the decision had been made to officially recognize the anniversary and proceed with plans for its commemoration, my first challenge was to form an anniversary committee. The formation of a committee with the necessary qualities – historical insight, future, vision, creativity, imagination, technical competence, organizational skills and commitment – is not an easy one. Nevertheless, after many phone calls, and much cajoling on my part, our 150th Anniversary Committee was formed and set to its first task – defining and articulating the purpose of our celebration in a succinct and meaningful way. As impossible as it might seem, our committee actually did this. A purpose statement was crafted and a theme, "Grounded in Faith – Growing in Spirit – Giving Thanks," was, after the inevitable compromise, determined. A logo was also designed.

With the purpose statement, theme and logo in place we then advanced to selecting the projects and designing the events we felt would best convey the spirit of commemoration, vision and celebration that we wanted to depict. In the end we chose to focus on four projects and five diocesan-wide events to begin in January, 2003.

The first four events including an Anniversary Evensong service at our oldest parish; a children's Cathedral Day celebration; an old-fashioned family picnic; and the main Anniversary event, a musical celebration at Seattle's symphony hall, have now taken place. The Anniversary year will conclude with closing ceremonies at the annual diocesan convention in November.

The four projects include a large Anniversary quilt crafted of squares by each of the 102 congregations in the diocese; an outreach project to raise funds and gather food donations for Northwest Harvest, one of the largest hunger relief organizations in the country; a historical slide presentation; and a web site project featuring an updated history of each of our congregations. In addition a video documentary on the history of the diocese is being filmed, a series of historical articles have appeared in the diocesan newspaper, five history/archives workshops were held and several exhibits have been prepared. We have also produced a variety of promotional materials including buttons and bookmarks, brochures and banners, posters and t-shirts.

Though I have been closely involved with the planning and execution of each and every event and project, I have obviously had a lot of help. Early on in the process two anniversary committee co-chairs were selected to help coordinate the overall celebration and members of the committee were asked to coordinate specific events or projects, recruiting sub-committees when necessary. These talented individuals, most of whom are volunteers, have made our 150th Anniversary celebration possible.

One very important element I have not yet alluded to is budget. When we made the initial decision to proceed with the Anniversary celebration, we did so on faith, as not a single dime had yet been allocated for the purpose. After the preparation of preliminary financial requests and a series of meetings with the diocesan budget and finance committee, a start up budget was approved. Subsequently, a Friends of the Bishop group was formed and raised the remaining funds through private donations. I would not necessarily recommend shouldering an undertaking like this without knowing where the funds were coming from, but in our case, it worked!

Though our Anniversary year is not quite yet over, I think I can say that it has been a success. The Archives is back-logged and the archivist is tired, yet the increased visibility I hoped for has been achieved and a renewed interest in history and archives is afoot in the Episcopal Church in western Washington.

To those of you who have coordinated anniversary events in the past, my hat is off to you. To anyone contemplating such a celebration in the future, my only words of advice are: Obtain institutional support; surround yourself with good people; plan, plan and plan some more; and be willing to do whatever it takes to make the event a success.

U.S. Allegations in Church Schools Follow Canadian Pattern
Mark Thiel

In June, six Sioux Indians filed a $25 Million class-action lawsuit against the United States in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, Washington, D.C on behalf of students at Indian boarding schools nationwide. The class-action suit, filed in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims in Washington, D.C., seeks damages on behalf of all students who were allegedly abused in the past century at the schools, many of which were run by churches and religious groups.

Additional lawsuits against the dioceses, clergy, and religious orders are expected. Evidence suggests that this suit was inspired by comparable litigation in Canada during the 1990s.

On the U.S. lawsuit, see The Washington Post, "Abuse Charges Hit Reservation," June 2, 2003 for background information and the website of the Dakota-Lakota-Nakota Human Rights Advocacy Coalition, http://www.dlncoalition.org/dln_issues/cclawsuit.htm, for a copy of the lawsuit.

Terry Thompson summarized the Canadian litigation in the spring 2001 issue of Archival Spirit. More information on the Canadian situation is available on the websites of the Anglican Church of Canada, "Residential Schools, Legacy and Response," http://generalsynod.anglican.ca/ministries/rs/resources/ and the Catholic Educator's Resource Center: History Canada, http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/history/canada/ch0001.html.
















Touro Infirmary Archives
Catherine C. Kahn

Among the treasures in the Touro Infirmary Archives are its earliest admissions books, which provide a written record of every patient admitted to Touro during the second half of the 19th century. Two volumes, 1855-1860 and 1869-1891 (the gap is when the hospital closed during the Civil War and early Reconstruction) contain information invaluable to researchers, whether they are seeking medical history, social history, or simply an ancestor. These books record in sequence each patient's name, place of birth, age, sex, diagnosis and treatment, financial charges, and where they last visited before coming to New Orleans. Up until now, it has been a matter of somewhat painstaking research to locate a specific name or malady, but thankfully all that is changing.

Julia Irwin, Touro Archives first research intern, has spent a significant part of her summer entering all the information from the first volume into an Access database. About the book, Ms. Irwin comments, "Inside the admissions book are the stories of New Orleans' most underrepresented citizens. Through it we can understand their struggles, their options, and their backgrounds; ultimately we see in what ways these features shaped their lives and histories in antebellum New Orleans." Originally from Lexington, Kentucky, Ms. Irwin is a senior at Oberlin College in Ohio, where she is a history major. She is writing an honors thesis on "The History of Tuberculosis in the Progressive Era" and expects to pursue a graduate degree in the history of medicine. Thanks to Ms. Irwin's efforts, all the data from the first volume will soon be available — and easily searchable — at the touch of a computer key.