Some exciting mail has arrived at the office of the Swedish American Historical Society!
Our freshly redesigned newsletter, Glimtar, hit the office desk last week, and is making its way out to our members. A PDF is also available on our website.
As the Office Manager here at SAHS, I am the one who receives our publications and those of our fellow Swedish historical institutions at the office on North Park’s lush campus. We are in excellent company with a Swedish-language title for a Swedish-American publication. Our colleagues at the American Swedish Institute publish Posten, the Swedish Genealogical Society of Minnesota, Tidningen, and the Swedish Newspaper of America, Nordstjernan. It is always a pleasure to see what our fellow organizations are up to, and we hope that Glimtar will provide its readers a similarly tantalizing peek into the tight-knit, yet welcoming world of Swedish America.
In my early days as the new Office Manager, I sat in on the Communications Committee’s meetings as they deliberated on new names and designs. While the Committee had numerous options, it is clear that the final draft best represents the Society’s mission to record and interpret the Swedish presence in America. By providing our audience a peek into what the Society does and what greater Swedish-America is doing, the newsletter offers a better understanding of our community.
This week, the office received its copies of Swedish-American Studies, the new annual journal of the Swedish American Historical Society. It is so exciting to see the hard work of our board members come to fruition. In this age of high publishing prices and diminished physical media, seeing the Society’s commitment to publishing this journal and evolving with the demands of the market is a model unique in academic printing. The Swedish-American Historical Society is proud of its reach beyond the bounds of the ivory tower, and the combination of Glimtar and Swedish-American Studies shows the range of our audience’s interests.
I am particularly excited to read Gregory C. Gaines’ article, which explores Swedish-American journalism during the First World War and Saniya Lee Ghanoui’s critical reflections on America’s treatment of Sweden’s handling of the AIDS Crisis. The field of Swedish-American research has expanded, and Ulf Jonas Björk’s bibliography expresses this breadth.
While the journal and newsletter may appear different, our Society’s mission stays the same. These changes will help us to better sustain our mission, and we look forward to seeing how we grow because of them.
Aubrey Prestwich, Office Manager