HSP's upcoming History in Pennsylvania Awards (HIP Awards) next month will honor several participants in the "Hidden Collections Initiative for Pennsylvania Small Archival Repositories." We're very proud of them, and hope that you'll join us on October 19, 2012, to celebrate their accomplishments!

The HIP Awards recognize achievements at all-volunteer managed as well as small and mid-sized history and heritage organizations in Bucks, Chester, Delaware, Montgomery, and Philadelphia counties. This year, honors will be given out at a luncheon event at the Union League in Philadelphia on October 19, featuring keynote speaker First Lady of Pennsylvania Susan Corbett! It will be a fun event, a celebration of history in Southeastern Pennsylvania, and an opportunity to meet up with old friends and network with other history and heritage professionals. The full list of award-winners features a few names that will be familiar to regular followers of this blog. We are very proud of their achievements!

Awardees who have participated in the HCI-PSAR project include:

The Greater Philadelphia Tourism Marketing Corporation Award for Excellence in Community Partnership Projects

Winner: Bartram's Garden, for "Community Farm and Food Resource Center"

Volunteer of the Year Awards

Winner: Louis Iatarola, Historical Society of Tacony

Winner: Nancy Roan, Goschenhoppen Historians

The HIP Awards are organized by the History Affiliates, a program recently launched by the Historical Society of Pennsylvania to support the hundreds of small- to mid-sized history organizations in Southeastern Pennsylvania. Their project is more far-reaching in scope than HCI-PSAR: we just focus on archives, but the History Affiliates confront capacity-building, volunteerism, marketing, and other challenges through a monthly newsletter, professional development workshops, mentoring of organizations through AASLH’s StEPs Program, and other initiatives. If you're a small history or heritage organization in Philadelphia, Bucks, Chester, Delaware, or Montgomery counties and you're not a member, you should join today.

Register now to support all of this year's HIP Award winners, and to promote the history and heritage community at large by attending the HIP Awards luncheon on October 19, 2012. We hope to see you there!