"Inclusion of your Website in the Library of Congress Web Archives"

Last week I was surprised with this fascinating email from the Library of Congress:

To Whom It May Concern:

The United States Library of Congress has selected your website for inclusion in the Voices: Eastern and Central European Americans Web Archive, which is part of a larger collection of historically and culturally significant websites that have been designated for preservation. The following URL has been selected: https://rusynsofpa.blogspot.com/.

The Library of Congress or its agent will engage in the collection of content from your website at regular intervals over time. In order to properly archive the above URL, we may archive other portions of the website and public content that your page links to on third party sites such as social media platforms. In addition to the aforementioned collection, archived content from your website may be added to other relevant collections in the future. This content will be available to researchers at Library facilities and by special arrangement. It may also become more broadly available through hosting on the Library’s public website, which would be done no sooner than one year after it was collected. For more information on the web archiving process, please read our frequently asked questions.

The Library hopes that you share its vision of preserving digital content and making it available to current and future generations of researchers. As the internet has become an increasingly important and influential part of our lives, we believe the historical record would be incomplete if websites like yours are not preserved and made a part of it. We encourage you to learn more about the Library’s Web Archiving program and explore our collections to see examples of how we archive websites. [...]

Thank you.

Library of Congress Web Archiving Team
webcapture@loc.gov

Well, for starters, I'm honored! I didn't even know such an entity as "Voices: Eastern and Central European Americans Web Archive" existed, which I'll have to dig into and see what else is there.

Also, here's a related LOC blog post from August 23, 2023:
Finding and Sharing Eastern European Voices

Original material is © by the author, Richard D. Custer; all rights reserved.

A Mid-Year Review

Not the mid-year review that strikes dread into many a supervised employee the world over (or is that just me?)… just a long-overdue update on a few items of note from the past few months.

The good:

In late September I will be returning to the Pennsylvania State Archives, as a Scholar in Residence!

After visiting the Archives several times last year I learned of its Scholars in Residence Program and decided to apply. 

The Scholars in Residence Program supports short-term, full-time research and study in collections maintained by the Pennsylvania State Archives.

The Scholars in Residence Program has a four-fold purpose:

• to promote the interpretation of Pennsylvania history;
• to encourage research that draws upon the Pennsylvania State Archives' collections;
• to promote the dissemination of research findings to both the professional community of scholars and the public; and
• to develop collegial relationships between scholars and Archives' staff.

Proposals that address the State Archives’ interest in public policy, as well as those that focus on social history, the history of people underrepresented in the state’s historical record, including but not limited to minorities and women, are encouraged.

The Pennsylvania State Archives Scholars in Residence Program is made possible by the generous financial support of The Pennsylvania Heritage Foundation (PAHeritage.org) and the Pennsylvania Historical Association (PA-History.org).

I applied for the grant in February. My project is titled:

Building Community and Identity in Pennsylvania’s Carpatho-Rusyn Immigrant Communities

and my application, which gave the background to my research and especially the value of naturalization documents and civil incorporation documents of churches, fraternal lodges, clubs, etc., included the following statement of work: