Woo-Hoo For Brews!
For #AskAnArchivist day on October 7th, 2020, the SAASC hosted a virtual event with Tiah Edmunson-Morton, the Curator of the Oregon Hops and Brewing Archives (OHBA) at Oregon State University, called Hoppily Ever After: Creating An Archive From Scratch.
Edmunson-Morton is a SJSU School of Information alumna. She became an instruction and outreach archivist at Oregon State University before starting the OHBA. She has been the curator of the archive ever since.
Oregon State University has conducted research on fermentation, barley, and hops since the 1890’s. There was a growing interest in documenting both the history of hop production and the craft brewing movement in Oregon. Edmunson-Morton created a plan and a name then pitched the idea of starting an Archive to her supervisor. Her supervisor loved the idea and the concept went up the administrative channels, obtaining approval along the way. Thus the Oregon Hops and Brewing Archive was born (okay, there was a lot more to it! Watch the event on SAASC’s YouTube channel for the full deets!).
The OHBA mission:
“The Oregon Hops and Brewing Archives (OHBA) is a collecting, documentation, and community archiving project with a mission to collect and provide access to records related to hops production and the craft brewing industries (post-1970) in Oregon. At its core, OHBA’s mission is to provide access to historical materials in both the OSU collections and in outside repositories, industries, or communities. OHBA can act as a portal, engaging with external communities to form partnerships with the heritage and history communities, state agencies, hop farmers, craft brewers, home brewers, and the general community. We want to empower people to see themselves as a part of the archiving process and think collectively about how this project can best serve a variety of people.”
