National Volunteer Week: Priscilla Jeffries

April 10 through 16 is National Volunteer Week. The Library & Archives Center has some great and dedicated volunteers. This is the third in a series of posts about the volunteers here.

Meet Ms. Priscilla Jeffries.
Priscilla Jeffries is the most recent addition to the Library & Archives Center's volunteers. Since starting here in March, she has been cataloguing the photograph collection, creating hard-copy worksheets for the files. Now we have two volunteers working on the same project, so hopefully they will meet in the middle!

Priscilla moved to Midland last May to be closer to family after working for over 25 years teaching World Social Studies in Andrews. Her background is diverse and interesting; she enjoys archeology, traveling, meeting new people, writing and teaching. (She's even broaden her volunteer efforts here at the Museum, being a docent for several school groups recently.) Priscilla is also a world traveler who has been to Spain, Egypt, and elsewhere.


She wants to volunteer at the Library & Archives Center "because of my interest in people, the past, sharing information with others ... and learning from [them]. For me, learning is a pleasure."

National Volunteer Week: Karen Shephard

April 10 through 16 is National Volunteer Week. The Library & Archives Center has some great and dedicated volunteers. This is the second in a series of posts about the volunteers here.

Meet Mrs. Karen Shephard.
(Photo to follow. Karen is out of town so I am not able to get a photo of her!)

Karen Shephard is a new addition to the Libray & Archives Center, starting last November after being recruited by Karen Lowder, a dedicated Santa Rita Club member (and future SRC President). Karen S. has been processing the more difficult back-log archival collections and has been doing a fabulous job! She is currently working on a medium-sized collection of records related to the Permian Basin Petroleum Association from Ed Thompson.

Karen grew up in upstate New York but moved around the United States as part of the Air Force. She has a background in accounting, having worked for several oil & gas business in the Permian Basin, including Exxon, ARCO, Duke Energy and Pure Resources. Her husband Rick and she enjoy going to the theater (I often see them at Midland Community Theater). Karen also enjoys reading, crochet, puzzles and music. We've become fast colleagues and friends!

National Volunteer Week: Morris Bassham

April 10 through 16 is National Volunteer Week. The Library & Archives Center has some great and dedicated volunteers. This is the first in a series of posts about the volunteers here.

Meet Mr. Morris Bassham.

Mr. Bassham has been a dedicated volunteer in the Archives Center since October 2008. He has been cataloguing our large photograph collection; he reviews the card catalogue and completes worksheets for each image. (This process creates a hard copy of the catalogue information to include with the object file.) Periodically, I review his work and add it to the growing collection management database.

Personally, Mr. Bassham has an interesting background. Having grown up in Midland, attending Midland High School, Morris became a petroleum engineer with Sinclair Oil & Gas from which he retired when they merged with ARCO. Not only did he attend Texas Tech University, Mr. Bassham also attended art school in Minneapolis and Sul Ross University. He also spent twenty-one months in the military and became active with the Confederate Air Force for twenty-five years, although he is no longer a pilot. His interest in the military does not end there: he is interested in aviation history, from the Wright Brothers to the Enola Gay, as well as the history of the Alamo and the State of Texas.

Morris is also an active volunteer within the community, having devoted time to the research library at the Commemorative Air Force.

Busy, Busy, Busy

The past month has gone by in a blur!

The Museum is preparing for our fundraiser, the 2011 Hall of Fame gala. This year we are honoring I. Jon Brumley, Dr. Sam Gibbs, William Kleine and the team of Mack Chase and John R. Gray. Invitations are out, thanks to some great and dedicated staff members and volunteers! The event is next Thursday night. Do you have your seat reserved?

The last week of March, I went to Austin for the Outcome Based Evaluation of the Train to Share grant program which I have participated in for the past several years. Team members from all over Texas congregated to discuss individual and organizational successes (and not-so-successes) for the grant as well as offer some reflection and insight into the program itself, with suggestions for the future.

That week also saw the installation of the new exhibit in the Davidson Gallery: Extra Virgin Petrus Oil by Mery Codigna Collet, a Venezuelan artist who uses petroleum and its by-products to highlight serious concerns. Her method is fascinating: she paints on pieces of plastic, then layers them facing the canvas. The result, in my opinion, is a high-gloss painting with depth. You must see them in person! Mery had a successful gallery talk and opening last Tuesday.

Tomorrow, the Archives Center will be undergoing some changes too. With the Train to Share grant, we have been able to purchase a networked server dedicated to the Museum's Library & Archives Center. The server will house the various files and digital objects (photographs) as well as the collection management database which all will be accessed from the computers in the Center.

Among those activities, we have been fielding requests for photographs and research materials. We are definitely staying busy! Of course, May is shaping up to be a busy month too....

Oil in Libya

The Petroleum Museum's Library & Archives Center has been a hive of activity recently. We now have four faithful volunteers in the Center, working on various projects. One volunteer, Ms. Hunt, took on the task of processing a small collection found on the backlog shelves.

Turns out, the collection from Robert Stine, long-time patron of the Museum, dealt with the building of the Trans-Alaskan Pipeline in the 1970s AND the ESSO (now EXXON) oil industry in Libya in the 1960s.

Finding materials about the oil industry in Libya? How timely, considering the current events happening. I knew that Libya was an "oil-rich" nation in northern Africa. But I did not know much about its political or economic history.


Above: Some of the materials included in the Robert Stine Collection (2011-002).

After a little digging (thanks to Wikipedia and the New York Times online), I discovered that Libya was a kingdom prior to 1969. All of the ESSO materials in this particular collection pertaining to Libya date prior to 1969. Turns out, the Libyan kingdom was pro-Western and friendly with Western countries such as the U.K. and the U.S. According to one of the publications ESSO in Libya 1963:

"The Libyan Petroleum Law became effective in June 1955 and Esso Libya applied for, and was granted, nine concession areas covering about 100,000 sq.kms. The company then began the painstaking search for oil."

"Esso was the first:
* To discover oil in Libya
* to build a crude oil pipeline to the sea
* to build a marine terminal
* to produce and export oil to foreign markets
* to build a refinery in the country to produce processed oil products for local consumption
* and among the first to agree to the Petroleum Law Amendments of 1961."

On 1 September 1969, a small group of military officers led by then 27-year-old army officer Muammar Gaddafi staged a coup d'état against King Idris, launching the Libyan Revolution. After the coup, Gaddafi closed American and British bases and partially nationalized foreign oil and commercial interests in Libya.

An interesting story ...

Art & Alzheimer's

I am subscribed to numerous professional email lists, from the regular In the Loop email newsletter from the Society of American Archivists (SAA) to the occassional email blasts from the American Association for State and Local History (AASLH). One subscription that I look forward to perusing is the Dispatches from the Future of Museums, a weekly email blast which consolidates news articles and blog posts about museums and the future.

One of this week's highlighted articles is entitled Art and Alzheimer's at the University of Virginia.

My maternal grandfather had that horrible disease and I'm always interested in learning about it and its treatments. It was hard on my grandmother and the rest of the family as my Papa slowly but steadily drifted into the disease.

I have heard of MoMA's program for Alzheimer's patients and I think it's great that other museums, like the University of Virginia Art Museum, are adopting similar programs. According to the article, several of the patients react positively while participating in the program. I just wonder if those positive strives present themselves outside of the museum setting.

What do you think? Do you think art helps Alzheimer's patients? Would you like to see programs like the ones at MoMA and UVa in an art museum near you?

January Wrap-Up & February Preview

I cannot believe the first month of 2011 has come and gone already! Things have been seemingly low-key at the Museum this month.

One major accomplishment for January: I completed my major project of creating an accession register for the archvies & library donations since 1965. It's nice to know what the Museum actually has! Not only did I create an electronic register (thanks to Excel), I also added most gift/donation information to our collection management database Re:Discovery. With time, and practice, every piece in our collections should be searchable in the database! That will allow us to better serve researchers, visitors and just interested people! Next step? Conducting an inventory to match up actual items (objects, books, manuscripts, etc) with the information. Wish me luck!

Now I can also turn my attention to the Train to Share project I've discussed multiple times here. We are finally ready to start uploading the digital objects and their associated metadata! Hopefully the team will be able to upload our 1000 objects!

Lately, I've also been very busy with researchers and other visitors looking for photographs. In fact, one Friday (typically a quiet day for the Archives Center) I had three appointments and a conference call scheduled. I had to schedule another researcher for the next week because I was so busy! It's great that the Library & Archives Center has had such a demand!

February will be a busy month for the Museum. On the 17th, we'll host our third Family Science Night of the [academic] year: Inventions! Come to the Museum between 6:30 and 8:00 p.m. to learn and explore well-known and not-so-well-known inventions. Lemonade and cookies are provided! Then, a couple of days later, the Museum will host Read-A-Rama on Saturday, the 19th. Come explore the wonderful world of reading and literacy!