Mike Miller is the Manager of the Austin History Center, a 14-person, $1.2 million division of the Austin Public Library, with responsibility for personnel, planning, and fiscal aspects. He represents the Austin History Center before library, city, and community groups. Miller writes, speaks and consults about Austin history, managing local history collections, and preservation of historical materials.
September 2020
Programming & Outreach
Asian Pacific American Community Archivist Ayshea Khan presented “Uplifting Asian American Voices Amid Covid-19” at the 2020 Society of American Archivists virtual conference.
Collections
The COVID-19 Files project continues to bring in new materials. During August there were 6 donations totaling 8 files. The project was featured in an article in Wired magazine at the end of the month that may generate a surge in new donations.
AHC staff finished processing 1 collection, the Housewife Papers and Recordings Collection. The finding aids are available online at: http://www.lib.utexas.edu/taro/browse/browse_ahc1.html.
AHC received nearly 2 gigabytes of digital records created by the Austin Asian Complete Count Committee (AACCC). Included are marketing materials, event recordings, and meeting minutes from February to July 2020 documenting the work of AACCC in ensuring the census count of Austin's Asian American and Pacific Islander American communities.
Reference
The AHC’s expanded reference and e-document delivery service continues for August and is very popular. We received 120 requests and completed 100 of them this month, delivering 1812 scanned items. Customers are very thankful that we started this service. Comments we have received this month:
I’ll take this opportunity to say thank you to you and the Austin History Center for your help with “Citizens at Last”. Nancy, Michelle, Daniel, Karen and I could not do this film without our archivists, and we’re especially grateful for how you’ve been able to continue to help during the pandemic.
Thank you so very much!!! I'm going through all the documents you sent me now. I'm really so impressed with the Austin History Center. This has been a phenomenal service.
During this time AHC staff helped with research on a Good Day Austin news story about Dorothy Turner’s daughter on Fox 7 News, an upcoming book about Dave Hickey, the Preservation Austin historic homes tour, and for a Texas Observer story about suffrage.