Spooky Archive Tour!

Let's take a break from digitization and touch on some of the other great things about working in a public library archive.

While I stay closely focused on my job as a Digital Archive Specialist when I'm at work, I still get to participate in fun programs with my department. Our most recent unique program was in late October and was themed for Halloween! We call the program the Spooky Stacks tour and this is our second year putting on the program. We tried it out for the first time last October and had overwhelmingly positive feedback, so it is easily becoming a tradition for us.

This patron has been working on house research for a long time

Now let me begin by telling you why this type of program is perfect for our department. The archives I work at are located in one of the oldest and historically significant library buildings in our district. It's a Carnegie Library that was built almost 120 years ago. The architecture is gorgeous with high ceilings, large windows, and marble flooring. It's also said to be haunted, but then aren't most old historic buildings?

Our lovely doll collection: https://cdm15981.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p15981coll57/id/1933/rec/2

This collection of dolls might be one of the reasons our library is said to be haunted. They were donated to us back in the 1970's and used to be on display here. Maybe they spooked too many patrons and staff because they are now stored safely away in the archives (maybe I'll talk about scope in archives at some point because these dolls are certainly not in ours...). We've tried donating them to both local history museums and doll museums (better places than an archive for these!), but no one is interested in them. I wonder why...

Hey, that's me! I'm clearly not very worried about the dolls

Another reason why a program like this is perfect for our departments is because there are areas of the archives that aren't accessible to the public. Areas like the actual archives where we store our manuscript and photo archives, as well as the vault for extra delicate or special items. We regularly give tours of these staff-only areas, but a special tour during spooky season when we can decorate and get in costume (we had both the ghosts of Andrew Carnegie and Nikola Tesla visit us!) makes it extra special for staff and patrons alike!

If you'd like to see more pictures from our event, you can visit our Facebook posts about the program:

https://www.facebook.com/PPLDSpecialCollections/posts/pfbid0SwchkHHr8fxYyA9YJhPVcxcwqz4Dyn43QdLTA7ZPNjaNtBJdZCvTnqn5xW7QxsGwl

https://www.facebook.com/PikesPeakLibraryDistrict/posts/pfbid02G4pPCT3SSU6keTpXpPvmdHZUJCQV7Q6uy2kRVmqw8u1jppgzsQELaKBTSLidqSi8l