October is always the busiest month for the BDC -- and this one was even busier than usual

Please note: I'm counting Sept. 29th and Sept. 30th as part of October. We were closed until 5 pm on September 29th to relocate the BDC.

We held the Grand-Reopening private function on September 29th, and got back to daily business on September 30th.

The BDC hosted 9 Behind-the-Scenes tours of our new facility, created a display of significant documents we have inside the new room, and I wrote an inordinately large number of Connections entries to highlight Archives Month for which there were 550 pageviews.

In addition, we coordinated 2 free-and-open-to-the-public programs and accepted a County Council proclamation on behalf of the AM Team 2010 for Archaeology Month.

Because a learning staff is a competent staff, we participated in several no and/or very low cost training opportunities in order to help us become even better stewards of the materials entrusted into our care.

99 people got a Behind-the-Scenes tour of our new facility during October.

We had a total of 42 people attend the Archaeology Month programs on Palmetto Bluff and Gullah Genealogy. The session on Gullah Genealogy, presented by archaeologists Carl Steen and Dr. Jodi Barnes, was broadcast live on the County Channel on Oct. 26th.

We also had 96 Research Room customer visits (with only 1 complaint).

I (and the Smithsonian Institution Archives) posted 31 days of blog entries about archives, management of archives, other archives, etc. Just click on the BROWSE BY TOPIC tag "archives" along the left hand column to see all 31 entries. There were 550 page views of Connections during October.

We fielded 15 e-mail or telephone reference inquiries.

Charmaine went to the PALMCOP (Palmetto Archives, Libraries, and Museums Council on Preservation) conference to learn more about preservation techniques for encapsulation, phase boxes, basic book repair, document repair, and care for photographs and negatives.

I went to the combined Society of Georgia Archivists and the South Carolina Archival Association conference at the very end of the month in order to keep my skills current. It is always a good idea to "test" what we do here against what other area archives are doing to share their holdings with the public.

Charmaine participated in 2 free online webinars sponsored by the IMLS dealing with how to use social media to tell our story offered with the public. (You may recall that the BDC was the recipient of a Connecting to Collections Bookshelf grant a few years ago, and I was the grateful recipient of a scholarship from Heritage Preservation to attend the IMLS regional symposium in Buffalo, NY last June.)

So adding it all up, the BDC touched the lives and helped meet the curiosity of 252 people plus however many unique individuals looked at this blog 550 times last month.