Here is a chance to hear and possibly meet and talk with the Herald Leader's Pulitzer Prize winning editorial cartoonist. An interesting aspect of his work is that he does it all digitally. I plan to attend and hope many of you will too.
This event is open to the public. Pulitzer Prize Cartoonist Joel Pett Kicks-off Archives Week at UK
LEXINGTON, Ky. (Oct. 2, 2006) − In celebration of Archives Week in Kentucky, University of Kentucky Libraries Special Collections and Digital Programs will present a lecture by Pulitzer Prize winning editorial cartoonist, Joel Pett, at noon Monday, Oct. 9, in the Great Hall at the M.I. King Building. The lecture will highlight Pett's work and the historical significance of editorial cartoons. A reception and open house celebrating 50 years of archiving Kentucky's newspapers at UK Libraries will follow the presentation. Monday's festivities, which honors KentuckyÂ’s journalistic legacy, will give insight into Pett's career and the influences on his career. Pett was the 2000 Pulitzer Prize winner for editorial cartooning, and was selected as a finalist for the prestigious journalism award in 1989 and 1998. Pett joined the Lexington Herald-Leader after a number of years as a freelancer. He started his career at the Bloomington Herald Telephone in his native Bloomington, Ind. The open house following Pett's lecture at M. I. King will feature exhibits of the many projects Special Collections and Digital Programs is undertaking to save the history of Kentucky as documented in the state's newspapers, including archives developed as part of national preservation projects. In 1956, the UK College of Journalism (now the College of Communications and Information Studies), the Kentucky Press Association and the University Libraries joined forces to centralize the microfilming of Kentucky newspapers at M. I. King Library. After 50 years, the Preservation Reformatting Center (PRC) continues to collect and microfilm more than 170 Kentucky newspapers earning them repeated national recognition for their work archiving the state's newspapers. From 1983 to 1991, UK Libraries participated in the United States Newspaper Project to locate, collect, inventory and preserve historic Kentucky newspapers. More than 500 repositories were visited, 5,000 titles were cataloged, and 1.5 million pages were microfilmed. Today, the PRC continues microfilming as it explores future preservation options including providing digital access to the archives. The UK Libraries is also participating in a two-year project to contribute to the National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP), an effort supported by the Library of Congress and the National Endowment for the Humanities. As one of only six projects selected for this national program's test-phase, the UK team digitized 100,000 pages of Kentucky newspapers from the period 1900 to 1910. The papers archived for this 10-year period were selected by an advisory board of scholars and librarians for their representation of the state's history and diversity during a tumultuous and fascinating time in the state. The work is part of a long-term effort to digitize the nation's historic newspapers from 1836 to 1923. UK's contribution to the NDNP will allow anyone to access issues of the selected newspapers online, to view images of original newspaper pages, and to search a newspaper for items of interest. With funding from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC), Special Collections and Digital Programs is also processing over 97,000 acetate photographic negatives given to UK Libraries by the Lexington Herald-Leader. This work includes separating the images from acidic paper materials, re-housing negatives in protective archival sleeves, and providing access through a searchable database. The project will make mid-20th century photojournalism widely available for research and scholarly use. The resulting database can be searched online at http://kdl.kyvl.org/. In addition to Monday's events for Archives Week, Special Collections and Digital Programs will present an exhibit of antebellum Bluegrass imprints and a printing demonstration at the King Library Press from at 4:30 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 12. The King Library Press event is part of the 2006 Bale Boone Symposium History Hop. Archives Week is part of a national effort that hopes to educate the public and resource providers about archivists' work and the importance of their service. For more information on Archives Week events in Kentucky, visit the state's Web site online at http://archives.week.ky.gov
Lisa R. Carter
Director of Archives
Special Collections and Digital Programs
123 M.I. KingLexington, KY 40506-0039
Phone: (859) 257-9672Fax: (859) 257-6311
E-mail: LisaC@uky.eduwww.uky.edu/Libraries/Special/
