Archives and History, Commission on

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The Commission on Archives and History has been challenged this past year in many ways but has been resilient with God’s help in carrying out its ministry. With the building being closed for a considerable period we were dependent on our one day a week Archives Assistant Karen Campolieto to keep us from 4 being overwhelmed by unprocessed closed church records. 5 6 The Archives itself is still a work in progress as we try and catalog and organize the archives of four 7 conferences merged together while still processing closed church records, which are a huge workload 8 when the churches are not aware of what should be sent to the archive and send 30 boxes for example. 9 The Commission has trained volunteers to assist local churches in what should be sent to the archives to 10 regulate the volume of boxes received. 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 According to the Book of Discipline, it is the responsibility of the District Superintendent to bring closed church records to the Archives in Liverpool. This is a critical requirement to be sure the Archives receives them both for Church and local use as well as for legal reasons. This past year volunteers assisted in transporting by truck and processing many boxes of records from one district to prevent their loss during a move. We were notified by a western conference that one of our closed church’s records showed up on eBay and with negotiations, we were able to acquire most of them. These records according to the seller’s agent were left in the church building when it was sold. So, it is apparent we need to keep reminding District Superintendents that this is a requirement to bring closed church records to the Archives and that we can assist them in reviewing the records before the District Superintendent brings them to the archives. We have also started outreach based on the list of churches that are closing.

23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 We have lost our archives assistant due to the retirement of Karen Campolieto and are now struggling without that necessary, though inadequate, position. We really need a trained archivist to establish our archives in a sustainable way. Thanks to Sue Slenker we were able to partner with Syracuse University and the Upper New York Conference in getting a paid student intern Brielle Popolla to work in the archives approximately 10 hours or so a week and remotely when we cannot get in due to COVID restrictions. Sue also recruited and scheduled local volunteers. However, after their orientation, new COVID restrictions have prevented them from coming to the archives. We hope they will be able to start by late March 2022.

Loreen Jorgensen has been volunteering with entering our records into Past Perfect Software and with the addition of our intern Brielle, we have two people familiar with the software and inserting entries. We hope to complete a new box level inventory of the archives and load that information into Past Perfect.

The Conference has provided a web page for the Archives, and we post news about the archives and provide useful information there. One recent feature was about our former Archivist Karen Stalters who was awarded the National Ministry of Memory award for her work in the Troy and Upper New York Conferences. In addition, a workable procedure with the Conference has recently been established to get some financial support from churches that are closing to help preserve their records in the archives.

The Conference Historical Society held one remote program and we hope to have in person events in 2022. Our hosting of the NEJ of Archives & History for 2020 is now going to be virtual on May 10 & 11, 2022 6:30-9:30p.m., with speakers covering the Women’s Rights movement which started in our Conference.

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With God’s help and the support of the Conference, District Superintendents, interns, and eager 2 volunteers ,we hope for a brighter future for our Archives in the coming years. 3 4 Submitted by: Ken Jones, Chairman, Commission on Archives & History