By Tanya Zanish-Belcher

Inside ZSR

Experiences of a ZSR Mentoring Cohort

In the final blog post for mentoring month, we hear from a mentoring cohort at ZSR. Thanks to Tanya and Amanda for sharing their story! Introduction Amanda requested Tanya as a mentor last year as she prepared her promotion dossier and they decided to extend their mentoring relationship another year to discuss other goals –... more

Special Collections & Archives: An Update for the New Academic Year, 2023-2024

With the start of the new school year, I always like to provide an introduction to Special Collections & Archives operations so that ZSR will be better informed about our Team. Here is the update for 2023-2024! First, we frequently hear: “So, I have a question for Special Collections & Archives, who should I contact... more

Association of Canadian Archivists Annual Meeting

  I recently had the opportunity to travel to Prince Edward Island (PEI) in Canada to attend the Association of Canadian Archivists Annual Meeting. It was a very intense 3-day schedule of programming and I attended sessions on indigenous community archives, oral histories, and linked data. I was most excited to hear two speakers from... more

Tanya @ The Landscape, Race, and Culture: Shaping a World of Color in the American South Conference(Old Salem)

I recently attended the Landscape, Race, and Culture: Shaping a World of Color in the American South, a conference sponsored by Old Salem Museums & Gardens, the Wake Forest Department of History, and the Southern Gardens History Society. There were many interesting presentations, including local Winston-Salem topics focused on the historical development of the African-American... more

So, I have a question for Special Collections & Archives…

With the start of a new school year, we frequently hear: “So, I have a question for Special Collections & Archives, how do I get help?” The first, best place to start is archives@wfu.edu, your go-to for anything e-mail and for referring reference questions, faculty requesting instruction for classes, or donations. Messages sent to this... more

Tanya @SAA

After several years on SAA’s Council and also serving as an elected officer, I finally had the opportunity to attend more SAA sessions and events at the annual meeting in Austin, Texas than in previous years. I attended the SAA Research Forum where I heard presentations on the Virtual Footlocker Project (LSU) preserving memories of... more

Archives Assistant Julia Ough and the Professor David L. Smiley Papers

A year or so ago, a very generous donor provided funding to SCA for the digitizing of the David L. Smiley Papers as he was one of her favorite professors. Recent Wake Forest graduate, Julia Ough, worked on this project over the summer. She scanned 13,055 document pages, and wrote 426 metadata records for each... more

Tanya attends ALABI in Nashville

I recently attended the Association of Librarians and Archivists at Baptist Institutions annual meeting in Nashville, Tennessee. Hosted by the Southern Baptist Historical Library & Archives (at the Southern Baptist Convention offices) the presentations focused on the issue of electronic records. There were representatives from Baylor University, the New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, the Southwestern... more

Tanya at Best Practices Exchange (Columbus, Ohio)

For the first time ever, I attended the Best Practices Exchange, held at the Columbus Metropolitan Library in downtown Columbus. The BPE is considered an ‘un’conference—usually an informal gathering of practitioners who primarily work on “managing, preserving, and providing access to digital information.” My favorite part is that the sessions are very real-world oriented, with... more

Tanya at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln

Several weeks ago, I had the honor of being invited to speak as a Visiting Scholar for the University of Nebraska Libraries in Lincoln, Nebraska. In addition to speaking about academic freedom and the connection with archives, I also participated in a roundtable discussion relating to university yearbooks. We discussed how access to offensive images... more