Ardra Whitney: Week 23 @ Avery Research Center

All Done!


Monday, February 4^th - Wednesday, February 6^th:
 

This week I wrapped up work on the St. Mark’s Episcopal Church Records. On Monday and Tuesday, I finalized folder headings; measured the extent of the entire collection in linear feet—as well as each individual series within the collection; and edited the collection’s finding aid, which I encoded in EAD. I completed processing the collection on Wednesday by enclosing old ledgers and parish registers in protective tissue paper and preparing box labels for the collection’s ten boxes.

Throughout the week I posted photos and pertinent online articles to Avery’s Facebook and Twitter pages—including a flyer for the upcoming panel discussion on February 12th, “Bridge Builders: Faces of Black Professionals in Charleston”—sponsored by the College of Charleston’s African-American Studies Department.

 

Thursday, February 7^th - Friday, February 8^th:

On Thursday morning I began drafting an e-mail to send to Trident Technical College’s Phoebe and Susan Williams. Back in fall of 2012, I had assisted them with digitizing images from C.A. Brown High School’s yearbooks and newspapers for the “Eastside Day” celebration and now I wanted to see if some of the images I helped scan could be included in the Black in the Lowcountry: Digital Photo Archive project. Subsequently, I corresponded with Manager of Archival Services, Aaron Spelbring and Processing Archivist, Georgette Mayo regarding my endeavor and they recommended that I draft an image(s) request form to accompany the e-mail in order to outline the purpose for and conditions under which the images would be reproduced.

On Friday, they reviewed my draft and offered up suggestions for revisions. Additionally, I completed surveying the Friendly Union Society Records and drafted a finding aid for the collection. The society was founded in 1813 to provide relief for widows and orphaned children and a place of burial for its members. I also began evaluating a video oral history interview from the sixteenth Supreme Basileus of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority and former professor of education at Southern University and A&M College, Dr. Julia Purnell.

Ardra Whitney: Week 12 @ Avery Research Center

(Another great tune from my collections processing playlist)

 

Monday, November 19^th:

Reference Librarian, Deborah Wright mentioned developing a Wikipedia page for Avery Research Center and asked me to follow up with Public Historian, Dr. Robert T. Chase about the idea.  Subsequently, I began researching how to set up a Wikipedia account and shared some of my notes with Dr. Chase when I met with him.  After speaking with Processing Archivist, Georgette Mayo and Manager of Archival Services, Aaron Spelbring in weeks prior about how to correspond with donors regarding materials outside the scope of a collection, I drafted letter to the donor of the W. Melvin Brown, Jr. Papers to let them know that the collection has been processed and to inquire as to whether they wanted materials that were weeded out of the collection to be returned to them. In addition, I started preparing box labels for the Hollinger boxes containing the W. Melvin Brown, Jr. Papers, printed a label for the collections’ finding aid folder and uploaded images taken by Education Outreach Coordinator, Shelia Harrell-Roye of the field trip to Drayton Hall.

Tuesday, November 20^th:

I started thinking about a contingency plan for the Story Corps’ National Day of Listening post on Avery’s Facebook page after Ms. Mayo alerted me to the fact that we did not have a release for the foodways interviews we wanted to feature.  I also spoke with Mr. Spelbring and Ms. Wright about a post I prepared the night before for Avery’s News, Events and Activities blog, regarding National Day of Listening.  I had planned to post an edited version of a letter Dr. Chase had sent out via e-mail regarding Story Corps interviews conducted with Avery’s participation; however, Ms. Wright said that I didn’t need to worry about that because Dr. Chase was preparing an article about the Story Corp interviews to include in the upcoming issue of the Avery Messenger.

By the afternoon, I had completed my printing of box labels for the W. Melvin Brown, Jr. Papers and spoken with Ms. Mayo about developing a Wikipedia page for Avery.  She provided me with some informational material to use in the task. I also did my first posting on Avery’s Facebook page about the center joining Lowcountry Africana as a sponsor of Story Corps’ National Day of Listening. 

Wednesday, November 21^st:

I completed encoding the finding aid for the Edwina Harleston Whitlock Papers in EAD using NoteTab and acorresponded with College of Charleston Multimedia Consultant/ Online Video Producer, Michael Heagerty, about video editing software I’ve used on different audiovisual and media related projects.

Thursday, November 22^nd and Friday, November 23^rd:

On Thursday, I started my interview evaluation for veteran civil rights attorney; activist and educator Julius L. Chambers, and continued working on my responses for the IMLS Quarterly Survey. Chambers became the first intern of the new NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund (LDF) in 1963 and subsequently, opened his own practice in Charlotte, North Carolina in June 1964. Together with lawyers of the LDF, Chambers helped shape civil rights law by winning benchmark United States Supreme Court rulings, such as the famous decision of Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education. The decision led to federally mandated busing, which helped integrate public schools across the country.

On Friday morning, I did a second post on Avery’s Facebook page for Story Corps’ National Day of Listening, featuring an interview from Mary Moultrie.  I found her interview on the Lowcountry Digital Library after Ms. Mayo told me that we did not have clearance on the interviews I was planning to use. Moultrie was among the leaders of the 113-day Charleston hospital strike in March of 1969. In her interview, she speaks about the working conditions and employee relationships at the Medical University of South Carolina before and after the strike, and details the racial tensions that led up to it.

Cynthia Lovett: Week 5 @ TheHistoryMakers

From last Friday and throughout most of this week I got the chance to work on the back end of things.  I finally created EAD and EAC-CPF files for several of my finding aids.  The last few weeks I was concentrating on the evaluations and waiting for the approval on my text. Even though I have a technology background, a good part of the process seemed like a mystery until this week.    Although I had been writing the evaluations and entering data into our FileMaker database, this was the first time I got a chance to export the EAD.  

An interview may have several tapes, and for each tape, we assign several Library of Congress Subject Headings and edit 2-3 web clips. Ultimately, two clips are selected to appear on the website. We also create PBCore records for each web clip we make. As for the subject headings, many of them are not already in the system, so if we are using new ones we need to email Dan Johnson, our Digital Archivist, so that he can add them.  All of this very detailed work will make each story fragment accessible to researchers, so they do not have to search the entire tape.

In our archives seminar we discussed digital archives as it relates to digital preservation, digital stewardship, digital curation, and digital asset management. In our african american seminar we discussed the Reconstruction period.

I met with Dan and Julieanna about the kinds of projects I may work on this year.  We discussed the possibility of editing a video for an upcoming public program, learning some of the database programming, as well as developing a social media plan.  Later in the week, Julieanna met with Skyla Hearn and I to begin planning the public program for February 2013 that will provide the opportunity for people to learn more about what archivists do. 

Each of the fellows will be doing presentations in the coming weeks on work they will do at their host repository. My presentation will be on the HistoryMakers, of course.  I will be working on a draft this week in either PowerPoint or Prezi.  The presentation will discuss our participation plan as well as introduce another African American archive to the group.  Each fellow will choose a different archive or collection.  It will be interesting to learn about other African American archival resources across the country.

Chicago State of Mind: Alex Champion's Week 2

As America’s second city Chicago is a smaller version of old New York with its vibrant neighborhoods and tall buildings. As America’s second city Chicago is more compact than Los Angeles; these combinations afford Chicago’s neighborhoods a fiefdom-like status while easily connecting them with mass transit and bicycle paths. My sublet is in Kenwood, immediately north of the invisible line that separates it from Hyde Park, and just two blocks away from President Barack Obama’s private residence. Since the president calls the very Democratic Chicago home and his former aid is the mayor, Obama is quite popular around these parts. Twice in as many weeks he stopped over and each time I missed—arriving immediately after he left or leaving the city before he came. The maintenance man for the condo was cleaning the front door and smiled kindly as he opened it for me; little did he know my bicycling injury the previous week required me to set down my conveyance in order to use the door.  I returned the smile and, modifying a favorite bumper sticker, I commanded him to “look busy,” since “the President’s coming today.” He continued smiling and, with a tinge of pride, gently complained about the security measures.
 

A quarter of the way to work...

This second week in Chicago was the first one where I commuted by bike every day. Kenwood and Hyde Park have no El service and any convenient buses require passing The HistoryMakers’ cross street and transferring to a second bus or walk fifteen minutes to catch a direct bus. The alternative is the Metra commuter line; rather than learn which local trains need to be flagged and which of these go to Soldier Field I simply bike the five and a half miles along the scenic coast. Bicyclists and joggers clog the trails like the car traffic along Lake Shore Drive while ubiquitous parks personnel pick up litter, water the soil with fire hoses, and avoid inattentive bicyclists and joggers who would mow them down.

Unlike Week 1 we had no extended workshop. Our primary tasks were the interview evaluations, the basis of the EAD and EAC finding aids, to Julieanna Richardson’s satisfaction. Unfortunately she was absent for the “A NightWith Warren Washington” ScienceMakers event in Washington, D.C. and gave us our critiques in a single day. We have yet to create a single finding aid but, pending final approval, I have three ready to go. The most recent interview I processed was Bernice King, Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s youngest daughter. Interviewed in February 2008, King extensively described her mother and father’s genealogy and her reaction to her father’s death; it was simultaneously touching and tragic that she created no permanent memories of her father. Having just turned five years old, King had an admittedly poor grasp of death’s permanence. In a telling anecdote from his funeral, they played an excerpt from King’s sermon “The Drum Major Instinct” for the eulogy and young Bernice, tired from a long day, believed her father was alive again. His extended absences and, when Coretta toured to continue his legacy, the celebrity of her mother made a normal childhood impossible. I listened to the complete sermon as I revised her interview evaluation and reexamined the controversy behind the King memorial in Washington, D.C.’s paraphrasing of its closing passages; I agree with May Angelou that omitting the “if” clause makes King sound like an arrogant twit, which is precisely what his sermon decries.

Art

Bev Cook shows us around

Curiously, I seem to be building a reputation within the Chicago community. Before our tour of the Carter G. Woodson branch of the Chicago Public Library, the archivist of the Vivian Harsh Collection, Beverly “Bev” Cook, smiled knowingly at me and proclaimed “I was warned about you…” She repeated this phrase every so often when I joked; after my departing quip, which referenced something she said two hours earlier, again she laughed but this time claimed she was “gonna miss me.” Our history professor Dr. Christopher Reed said something similar; Dr. Reed casually wondered aloud if the McCormick-International Harvester Collection at the Wisconsin Historical Society had papers concerning blacks who participated in the development of the reaper. I told him I knew the PA and, if he dropped my name, he may get extra help. He laughed and claimed I was becoming a Chicago politician by using connections like favors and, as I usually do, I played along with the same deadpan delivery I used to announce the connection. Dr. Reed went on to say I was “like his son”; I sincerely hope that is a good thing.

Dr. Reed plays the role of eminent professor

Both experiences were rewarding in their own ways. I always enjoy frank and practical counsel from practicing archivists and Bev certainly fits that description. After the usual introductions we talked about the Vivian Harsh Collection and its place in Chicago history and toured the facility; Bev emphasized their preservation methods and showed me my first de-acidification chamber. After lunch she gave us an assignment to use the library’s website or catalog to find information about particular to us. My assignment involved locating audio visual materials in a collection of scripts, supporting files, and CDs of a 1948-1950 radio drama of black pioneers. I needed to locate the CDs for three scripts, each with an incremental level of difficulty. The first script was found with a simple “Ctrl F” of the subject’s whole name, the second one required me to use their last name because the CD spelled out the subject’s entire time, and the third subject could not be found with “Ctrl F” because the CD portion the inventory had a typo; instead I used the chronological structure of the finding aid to locate the CD.

My happy face

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Alex Champion~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Ardra Whitney: Week 1 @ The HistoryMakers

Greetings from the Windy City!



For the next 3 months, I will be calling Chicago home as I participate in the 2012 IMLS Summer Immersion Program with The HistoryMakers. The week was filled with several meetings and presentations from HistoryMakers staff, including: Julieanna Richardson, Public Historian and Founder/Executive Director; Dan Johnson, Digital Archivist; Jessica Levy, former Research and Program Coordinator; Y’Houshua Murray, current Program Coordinator; Alison Bruzek, NSF Project Director; and Paul Mackey, Production Manager. Through these various meetings and presentations, fellows received an introduction to The HistoryMakers Digital Archive collection; discussed grant expectations; and learned about the organization’s office and archival procedures. We also got to do some really neat ice breakers to help us become more acquainted with one another.

On Wednesday, June 6^th, fellows had their first African American history lecture with Christopher R. Reed, Professor Emeritus with the Department of History and Philosophy at Roosevelt University. Reed began the lecture by sharing photos and stories about African Americans like journalist and newspaper editor, Ida B. Wells and her husband, newspaper owner, Ferdinand L. Barnett.  He also showed us 19^th century photographs of his great grandparents, who were former slaves. His great grandfather, he said, served in a colored infantry during the Civil War. My favorite part of the lecture was Reed’s discussion of the black presence at the World’s Fair of 1893-- because he mentioned the Fon people from the Dahomey Kingdom in West Africa. I find this group of African people to be particularly fascinating because the Dahomean state maintained an all-female military regiment for nearly 200 years. The women warriors were referred to as Mino, meaning "Our Mothers" in the Fon language.

“The simulated village of the Fon people from Dahomey was among the most widely publicized and frequently visited fair sites. Newspapers and magazines extensively covered the exhibit, photographers included it in souvenir booklets, and many observers flocked there each day. The interest in this exhibit, perhaps more than any other, revealed the disparity in perceptions of Africans by an international audience. Some people saw at the exhibit the rich culture of the Fon people, as well as a reminder of a distant African past that had shaped all humanity--as did Bishop Henry McNeal Turner of the African Methodist Episcopal church, commenting at the concurrent Conference on Africa held in Chicago, publicly expounded his belief that all humanity started black" (p. 184). Other fair goers saw in the Fon village a non-industrial, rural lifestyle that was anathema to their Victorian tastes. The scantily clad, bare breasted women and the robed men with their traditional musical instruments and other accouterments both fascinated and repelled many fair goers.”
 - Excerpt from Reed’s book "All the World Is Here!": The Black Presence at White City

On Thursday, June 7^th and Friday, June 8^th, fellows participated in a 2-day training session on Encoded Archival Description (EAD) and Encoded Archival Context—Corporate Bodies, Persons, and Families (EAC-CPF)  led by Katherine Wisser, Assistant Professor and Co-Director of the Archives/History Dual Degree Program at Simmons College. In addition to her informative and well-presented workshop, Wisser provided great insights into professional networking in the field of archival encoding/description. Case in point, Wisser’s continued interest and participation in the development of EAC-CPF has made her Chair of the EAC Working Group and allowed her to collaborate with information professionals from all around the world.  

At the end of the Summer Immersion Program, I will be responsible for completing 30 interview evaluations and EAD/EAC-CPF finding aid assignments. This week, I completed my first interview evaluation assignment for head waiter, letter carrier, and humble activist, Alvin Little. In watching Little’s interview, I was almost moved to tears by the power and simplicity of his life experiences. He realized early on that nobody would give him anything and that if he wanted something he would have to work for it. In his interview, Little says that in order to be successful in life, one must qualify themselves to achieve their personal and professional goals. Congruently, I look forward to learning from and contributing to my fellowship experience--as much as possible--so that I can qualify myself to do outstanding work as an archivist.

Ardra Whitney
IMLS Fellow
Avery Research Center for African American History and Culture