Week Ten at Avery Research Center

This week I have been busy getting my public program proposal together to submit to Dr. Williams-Lessane. Last week the Avery staff watched a documentary called Woke Up Black, which followed five African-American youth in the Chicago area. The film talks about a variety of issues that impact African-American youth including education, media representation, family life, sexuality, identity, etc. The film will be shown here in Charleston in February to at least three different schools and the director Mary Morten and the person who runs Black Youth Project (BYP), which is also out of Chicago, will talk to these students. However, while I was talking with Dr. Chase, Avery’s Public Historian, we began thought about maybe using the film as a starting point for having a Woke Up Black Charleston edition, where students can either be interviewed by a Avery staff person or they could submit their own interview (visual art, written, etc). The purpose of this would be to understand what it means to be an African-American youth in Charleston. This is not something that is evident in the current collections that we have here at Avery, so it would fulfilling a need and document a community that is not being documented. Nothing is set in stone, but I hope that it all works out.

In the hopes that this will come to fruition I have created sample questions that the students may answer, as well as investigating what types of sites would I use for my interface. I originally thought about doing a Wordpress blog, but then that got complicated about what types of permissions people would have and if people would have access to edit or delete someone’s story. Other platforms I have been investigating are Google Sites, Weebly.com, and Wikispaces. Some of the elements that I am looking at are the upload size, total storage size, possibility of having people upload their own material, but not being able to touch other people’s stuff. This is still a work in progress, so if you have any suggestions please let me know!!

To learn about my other project and about an important loss to the Charleston community, visit my blog.

Aaisha Haykal

IMLS Fellow

Avery Research Center