with permission
from the Watertown Daily Times
Monday, June 7, 2004

Access to Mokawk Records Will Improve with Project

By Itai M. Maytal

The history of the Mohawks is hidden in two file cabinets at the Akwesasne Museum and Library. But with the help of the state, that information will soon be accessible at the touch of a button.

The St. Regis Mohawk Tribe's archival division has started working with the Northern New York Library Network to digitize thousands of articles on the community dating back as far as the 1920s. The tribe has been a member of the network for 40 years and has been looking for ways the two could work to preserve and better manage its collection.

"There is a wealth of information available on our culture here and we would like to make it more readily available to anyone," said Carol C. White, director of the Akwesasne Library and Museum.

This collaboration was spurred by the federal Institute of Museum and Library Services, Washington, D.C., which seeks to increase contact between tribal and state archival institutions.

The IMLS awarded a $248,829 federal grant to the Arizona State Museum and the Arizona State Library to develop programs that will help it in this mission. They in turn are advising the Mohawk tribe's archival division as well as tribal archives in Oregon and Arizona on improving their connections to state agencies. The product of their efforts will be modeled before hundreds of tribes at a conference in Arizona in May 2005, said Susan Secakuku, a Hopi Reservation resident who serves as a project coordinator.

John J. Hammond, executive director of the Northern New York Library Network, said the project with the Mohawks will involve both indexing and digitization. The network will help organize the Mohawk articles to state standards. It will then use in-house software to scan the articles to CD-ROM. The process can take more than a year to complete, he said.

"The Akwesasne Museum and Library has an excellent resource of newspaper clippings that are representative of the culture and history of the reservation," Mr. Hammond said. "With our digital lab, we'll be able to help preserve that resource."

Copyright (c) 2004, Watertown Daily Times