| Linking the past, to the present, for the future

January 1, 2014 · 6:00 am

Looking back at 2013, ahead to 2014

Video: Provincial Archives Year in Review 2013

Our ten-part series of Facebook posts leading up to New Year’s highlighted some of the accomplishments here at the Provincial Archives after our move into the new state-of-the-art repository. This year, we plan, of course, to continue public outreach, scholarly initiatives, exhibits, and preservation of our treasures. Yet we’d be doing ourselves and our collections a grave professional disservice were we not to steer ourselves toward new state-of-the-art technologies and digitization.

Digitization is actually a familiar concept. Imagine you have an old photograph that you’d like to preserve so you take it to be scanned. The scanner makes a digital copy of the original that is then either printed out as a new paper copy or given back on storage media like a CD or jump drive. Now think of the photographs taken with a digital camera or phone. These are different since they are “born digital,” not originally on film or paper; they too can be either printed out or put on storage media. This same scenario can apply to documents. Scan a birth certificate and send it as an e-mail attachment. The original paper certificate has become a digitized object (perhaps a .pdf file) while the e-mail, created by typing it on a computer, is “born digital.”

To be sure, these examples oversimplify archival digitization. After careful appraisal of collections, archivists arrive at strategic digitization plans that generally comprise multiple projects. Selection of programs and technologies is the next step; before copying the first image, archivists need to make informed decisions about software, storage, and management systems that will preserve the newly-digitized items for years to come. To do this correctly, we’re “doing our homework.” Carole Prietto is working on the Society of American Archivists’ Digital Archives Specialist certificate and Dee Gallo is taking courses in Digital Stewardship. Meanwhile, Nik Henle is working with the ArchivesSpace community, an online information management program. Over the next year, the entire staff will be balancing traditional archival work with implementing the new digital initiative.

How will you, our followers, be affected by digitization? We will be able to create better online exhibits and join other repositories in digital scholarship by producing the best high-resolution images with the latest technology. We’ll also be able to share these images (with permissions) with scholars and, after creating new and more easily searchable finding aids, link images directly to individual catalogue records! We will also use digital scans to create facsimiles for onsite exhibits and protect our most valuable treasures by serving scans as surrogates in our reading room.
So, our two goals for 2014 will be to make collections more accessible and preserve them for the future. And that all boils down to that one single New Year’s resolution: digitization!

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December 25, 2013 · 1:00 pm

A Tribute to Mother Aloysia Lowe, S.C.

Guest post by Sister Louise Grundish, Archivist, Sisters of Charity of Seton Hill, Greensburg, PA

Mother Aloysia Lowe, S.C. (Seton Hill)

Mother, did you dream
As you opened the door
Of a “home for the Sisters,”
That your fifty spiritual daughters
Would one day number Fifty score and more?

Did your vision see the towers
Rising atop the Hill
A Litany of Homes:
Administration, Saint Joseph,
Marian, Lowe, and Ennis;
Sullivan, Reeves, Lynch,
Brownlee, Canevin, Doran,
Maura, Regina, DePaul,
Bayley and Assumption,
Housing generations
Who followed your footsteps
Up the Hill?

Could your faith, your hope,
Follow Elizabeth Seton’s counsel
To “be children of the Church,”
As seven parish schools
Spread out across the land
To Arizona, California,
Then back again to Maryland
Where it all began?

Did your compassion
In Elizabeth and Vincent’s spirit
Point the way to ministry to His poor,
In health and social needs
Until the charity of Christ
Urged your daughters Across the sea
To Korea?

On that hope-filled day,
Did your visition sense the peace
Of the blessed ground
Where you lie
Encircled by your daughters,
While their sisters come
To pray and ponder
Your courage and perseverance?

Do you, today,
With all our sisters gone ahead,
Look down on this Centennial year
With pride, and joy, and thanksgiving,
For all the wonders
God has wrought
Through your daughters?

–Sister M. Thomasine Steel, S.C.

This tribute to Mother Aloysia Lowe was printed in the Community Newsletter the summer of 1970 as the Sisters of Charity of Seton Hill celebrated the 100th year of their foundation. Now as we approach Christmas 2013, we pause to remember this valiant woman whose legacy we cherish. Christmas is the anniversary of her death and each year we pause at evening prayer to pray for this woman who left all that was familiar to travel to the Allegheny mountains and establish a Community for the people of Western Pennsylvania and beyond.

Maria Lowe was born in 1836, entered the Sisters of Charity of Cincinnati in 1852 at the age of 16,was sent to establish a new foundation in Altoona, Pennsylvania then part of the Pittsburgh Diocese in 1870 at the age of 34.

As the Community grew, Mother Aloysia searched for property to provide a home for the sisters.
In August, 1882 at the age of 46 she purchased 193 acres of property in Greensburg, Pa.
Wasting no time, Mother Aloysia took possession of the property, established the Novitiate in Greensburg, opened an Academy and began planning for construction at the top of the Hill given the appropriate name, Seton Hill. Ground was broken and the cornerstone laid in 1887 and in the spring of 1889 at the age of 53 the Motherhouse building was complete. With that work completed Mother Aloysia resigned as superior in August, 1889.

Mother Aloysia had little time to enjoy a somewhat lighter load of responsibility, the years of care and concern for the sisters and their works had taken a toll of the courageous woman. On Christmas Day, 1889 as the Angelus was ringing at noon, with her sisters at her bedside, Mother Aloysia died peacefully. She left very few personal possessions and keepsakes. However, in the Archives of the Sisters of Charity of Seton Hill a small paint box is displayed.