Week 33 at the Amistad Research Center

I continued to process Series 6, O’Neal’s University Files. The University Files series covers O'Neal's academic career as a college student and his professional career as a guest lecturer at Southern Illinois University (SIU).  After graduating from SIU, in 1962, O’Neal returned to his alma mater as a guest lecturer in the Theater Department (1979).  He also taught playwriting as a visiting professor at Cornell University (1989-1992).  As a college student, O’Neal doubled majored in English and Philosophy and double minored in Psychology and Art. Most of the files in this series include academic term papers, class syllabi, and examination notes from his courses; materials from the Student Christian Federation (1958-1962); and meeting minutes, reports, and correspondence, as an active member and corresponding secretary of the Beta Eta Chapter of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc. (1958).

Felicia 

Week Thirty-Four at the Maryland State Archives

Last week was pretty similar to the week before. I’m continuing to work on case studies. I updated and expanded the biography of William H. Butler, Annapolis’ first black alderman, and sent it off for the input of a local historian before it goes on our website. There’s still a lot that I could not confirm about his early life (there's a surprising number of William H. Butlers in Maryland!) so I’m hoping that she’ll be able to offer some insight into that era of his life. I’ve also been updating case studies for Maryland State Colonization Society emigrants, so hopefully those will be uploaded to our website later this week. Lastly, I’ll be chairing a MARAC session on African American archives in the fall. I’ve been working with the session organizer to revise the session description for the program, which is due today.

Krystal

Week 33 at The Mayme A. Clayton Library & Museum

Last week was busy,busy, busy! The UCLA service students are rapidly helping the collection move along .  I have two students processing a particularly large collection, The Marilyn White Collection. 

To successfully have two students process one collection they first must; confirm that they will come in on different dates, adhere to the same processing standards, and complete the box they started that day.  So far, 10 boxes have been processed in 18 hours, an excellent rate! The processing procedure I developed for this collection is based on the fact that MCLM is a library.  Because MCLM is a library we must know exactly what type and quantity of book is in each collection that is donated.  In order to determine this the procedure is to create an excel sheet only for the books, pamphlets, brochures and other printed matter (excluding correspondence) that details the title, quantity and year of each item.  This excel sheet can then be compared to our current holdings and then a weeding process can then occur. 

An interesting item that I found in the collection yesterday was some of Mayme's water color paintings. She made these drawings in a class that Avery taught, MCLM currently has the paints and the works she created.  A fun little piece of institutional history!

Alyss Zohar
The Mayme A. Clayton Library & Museum
IMLS Fellow, M.L.I.S

Week Thirty-Three at the Maryland State Archives

Last week was pretty low key. I caught up on emails and paperwork that had piled up while I was at the MARAC spring meeting. I continued working on Maryland State Colonization Society case studies, which should be online soon. I also helped deinstall our travelling exhibition, which had been on display at the Banneker-Douglass Museum since November 2011.

Krystal

March/April Avery Research Center Updates

I have a few success stories to share

• Was able to create MARC records for some of my collections that I have done and those that were processed previously, but no record was created for it. Thus, one of the collections that was uploaded into the College of Charleston Library Catalog and WorldCat was William “Bill” Saunders. Saunders is a Civil Rights Activist here in Charleston and in South Carolina. It is quite exciting to see your work in the catalog and know that people can now locate it!

• My Black in the Lowcountry project is taking off the ground, finally. I was able to interview two Black women from the College of Charleston for about an hour about their childhood, education, and perspectives on various issues. It is quite interesting to hear the variety of experiences between these two women. I have another interview scheduled for tomorrow with another Black female and I am planning on scheduling another with a Black male to get their perspective. I think that it will a great avenue for people to hear from the first-hand experience about being a Black youth in the Lowcountry. On Monday, the high school students from St. John’s High School will be in and then over the next couple of weeks, I will be traveling out there to do their interviews. Thus, the next month and half will have me doing A LOT of transcriptions. 

•  Archival Processing
• March
• I spent March processing the personal collection of Ms. Lois Simms, an educator here in Charleston. She had quite an interesting collection that was comprised of her education material, professional material, personal items, including scrapbooks and correspondence. Two of the scrapbooks were falling apart, so I digitized them. Right now they are only for in-house use, but in the future they may be placed in the Lowcountry Digital Library. 
• April
• There are a lot of small collections here, that consist of 1-5 folders, and it does not make sense to make them each a collection by themselves, thus, I am creating a collection called Various Collections and each one will be a subseries. So, far I have about 45 of these subseries, and possibly more to come. Some of the interesting material in the collection includes records relating to African American firemen in Charleston, African American movie theater owners, Slave Bills of Sale, family genealogies, etc.
• The Avery Research Center's web site is up!  This has been a point of contention, which I will not go into here, but it denotes the significance of having a web presence.

Aaisha Haykal
IMLS Fellow
Avery Research Center

Week 31 at The Mayme A. Clayton Library & Museum

The launch of MCLM new online database is tomorrow! I am very excited for this event as I will be giving demo on how to use the database.  The database launch coincides with an event MCLM is hosting entitled Africa Speaks, American Answers: Modern Jazz in Revolutionary Times.  This free event is a celebration of Jazz Appreciation month featuring a discussion with Dr. Robin Kelly, the Gary B. Nash Professor of American history in the UCLA department of history, who will be discussing his book Africa Speaks America Answers: Modern Jazz in Revolutionary Times.

Last week volunteers completed to detailed inventory of the James Jefferies collection. Inventories are an important part of any processing procedure.  I find that a basic inventory allows me to look at the entire collection quickly, and then decide how to move on to processing at a folder level or cataloging at the item level.

Alyss Hardin
The Mayme A. Clayton Library & Museum
IMLS Fellow, MLIS

Updates from the Amistad Research Center (Weeks 23-32)

Greetings from the Big Easy!

It’s been a while since my last post. :(  However, I’ve been very busy processing O’Neal's papers, giving tours and presentations, creating metadata for one of the center’s digital projects, completing virtual reference requests, and exploring the city of New Orleans.

Week 23 was very busy. I completed two online reference requests; attended the second session of the LOC digital preservation webinar; continued to create metadata for digital projects by using Dublin Core metadata standards; and continued to process the fourth series of O’Neal’s papers.   

The fourth series begins with the arrangement of O’Neal’s personal correspondence. The files in this series comprise of O’Neal’s personal correspondence and other related materials, which is the largest series in the collection. Arranged chronologically, the array of material include letters which document O’Neal’s involvement as an active college student at Southern Illinois University; communications about The Free Southern Theater; correspondence regarding raising money for the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) (1963); professional reference communications; personal mail from family members; and personal greeting cards. The bulk of the correspondence ranges from 1960-1969.

For professional development, I attended the Association of Southeast Research Libraries’ Introduction to Digital Preservation Webinar, based on the Library of Congress Digital Outreach and Education (DPOE) modules. This first module, Identifying and Selecting Content, examined considerations when identifying and selecting content for long-term preservation.

Please visit my blog for detailed highlights of my weekly experiences at Amistad.

Until next week! Peace!

Felicia 

 

Weeks 25-31 at the Alabama Department of Archives and History.

Hello and greetings from the Alabama Department of Archives and History!

Sorry for my absence for the two months, but we have just been so busy here at the Archives. In addition to continuing to process the Charles Morgan Papers and digitize the last book of the Peppler Collection, I have also been working on my 2nd exhibit design workshop,which will be held in May, moderated a photo workshop, presented a public program in Tuskegee, visited two other archives, helped accession a family collection, and have been doing research in preparation for an accessioning trip to Baltimore. So, needless to say, it has been quite busy around here.

The Charles Morgan papers going very well. It is a rather large collection, but I have been able to process of fifty boxes and created a new inventory and container and series list for it. There is so much information in this collection about different types of civil rights cases throughout the country, and it spans over 40 years. I know once it is completely processed, it will be very helpful to a number of researchers.

To date, I have digitized approximately 900 photographs ( which equates to roughly 30 pages of 35 millimeter film strips) of the Peppler collection. I am excited this project is almost over because there are so many community pictures that few know about within this collection! I cannot wait for all of the meta data to be completed so the public can start looking at these pictures. This particular collection is excellent to use in public outreach, because there is very little identifying information with it. There are so many people, places and events going on in these pictures, and we do not know the story behind them. This presents an opportunity for the archives to interact with the public on a more intimate level then usual, this presents an opportunity to actively involve the communities in processing a collection, and on March 24, I took advantage of that opportunity.

Within the Peppler collection there are a number of pictures from the Tuskegee area, and I decided to take 40 pictures back to Tuskegee and gather more identifying information about them. With the help of Deborah Gray and the Tuskegee Human and Civil Rights Multicultural Center, This event was open to the public and had a very good turnout. We had two groups attend this program, and many of the participants had first hand knowledge of the protests and other events taking place in the pictures. In addition to gathering some identifying information about the pictures, I also was able to capture a glimpse of life in Tuskegee circa mid to late 1960s, and encourage people to visit the Alabama department of Archives and History. Since the program I have had a number of people call and stop by to help identify the Tuskegee pictures.

In addition to presenting a well attended public program in Tuskegee, I also got to spend the day with Dana Chandler, the university archivist for Tuskegee University. Although he is working with a very small staff and a very small square footage, he is doing wonderful things in preserving the history of this iconic university. In addition to teaching a course (or two) he has also created a museum to one of the former presidents, redesigned the research room, created HTML templates for Tuskegee's EAD finding aids, generated very VERY detailed finding aids for a majority of the collection, and leads tours of the facility for school children ( in addition to allowing me to tag along for a day). His enthusiasm and dedication to this field was inspiring and a reminder of why I love public history.

In late February I went to appraise a possible collection with Ms. Debbie Pendelton. It was a family collection that spanned 100 years, and it was being maintained by Mr. Pete Datcher. Mr. Datcher had been able to obtain the documents that showed where his Great grandfather purchased the family's first 100 acres from his former master. From this 100 acres the family amassed a total of five hundred acres( all adjacent) and became prominent figures in Alabama's planter culture. He had records of the church his family built, the "plantation store" his family ran the records of the people the midwives in his family birthed! This was such a wonderful find, especially the midwife books, I wanted to take it with us that day! Mr. Datcher decided to donate his family's history to the Alabama Department of Archives and History, and on March 2, 2012, we accessioned the collection, and I will start processing this collection later this week ( April 16, 2012). 

In addition to my regular processing duties, I am also in the process of planning another exhibit design workshop, which will be hosted at the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, and preparing for to do an oral history interview in addition to accessioning a collection in Baltimore. Both of these projects will be in May, and I couldn't be more excited! After visiting the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, and its head archivist Mr. Wayne Coleman, I was very impressed with their facility and I knew I would love to be able to work with them before the end of my fellowship. I am thrilled that they have decided to work with me in presenting my next exhibit design workshop, and I will keep everyone updated on the progress of that endeavor!

Well, I think I have gotten everyone up to speed...until next time!

Cheylon Woods
IMLS Fellow and Public History Professional
Alabama Department of Archives and History.

Weeks Thirty-One & Thirty-Two at the Maryland State Archives

Weeks Thirty-One & Thirty-Two at the Maryland State Archives

Last week I attended the MARAC spring meeting in Cape May, New Jersey. It was wonderful to meet archivists from the region. There were also some really interesting sessions on outreach to students. I attended a workshop on teaching archival literacy with primary source materials to college students. As part of the workshop, we began working on standards for archival literacy, building from ACRL’s information literacy standards. I hope this document will be completed and become a resource for archivists. I also attended a great session where Brooklyn Historical Society staff shared their many outreach programs. They do programming with children as young as kindergarteners up to college-age. Unfortunately, some of their funding sources, such as Library of Congress Teaching American History grants, no longer exist but they are hopeful that they will find money to continue with their programs. Another informative program was a session on processing large collections. The presenters shared their strategies for project management as they tackled collections with boxes numbering over 1,000.

At MARAC, I also had the opportunity to meet other members of SNAP (the Students and New Archival Professionals Roundtable of SAA). I recommend joining SNAP as it’s a very welcoming group. Plus, they will be electing new leaders at the annual meeting this summer, which will be a great opportunity for newcomers to assume leadership positions in a professional association. The SNAP listserv hosted by SAA, Facebook page, and Twitter feed are all easy ways to stay in the loop with roundtable activities.

Last week and the week prior, I also continued to work on Maryland State Colonization Society case studies. I also had a chance to skim through some the 1940 U.S. Census records. Occasionally, our project does biographies of 20^th century individuals so these census records will be a rich source of information.

Krystal

April 9th - 13th, 2012 @ Fisk Franklin Library

Hello all, looks like we are in the last ending. Things are busy here as usual. This week, I managed to complete the majority of section III: Collected. This section is simply things Smith collected, including the newspaper clippings, printed materials, reports, writings and miscellaneous items. All that remains for me to process in the collected writings, which I have sorted alphabetically by title. So, that is what I will work on next week as well as starting the biographical note and scope & content sections for the inventory. This experience at Fisk has been the most rewarding!

I have also continued to work on outside projects for various upcoming conferences. June is fast approaching and the Rosenwald Conference ill be here very soon. I currently, putting together a presentation for discussion and materials for a separate poster.

Week 31 at The Mayme A. Clayton Libray & Museum

Last week, I processed a portion of The Marilyn E. White Collection.  Years ago, Marilyn White was a volunteer at MCLM that donated a collection that consists of books, dolls, plaques, pamphlets, stamps, photographs and brochures.  Judging from the items within the collection Ms. White was an Olympic participant and singer.  The portion of the collection I processed consisted mostly of stamps that portray African American leaders.

The pushing of inventories into the database continues. As apart of this process I am given the opportunity to handle collections.  One interesting collection was the Anne N. and William L. Smith Collection. circa 1900-2008. Anne Nichols Smith, a teacher, and her husband William L. Smith, a physician in private practice, were active in Los Angeles community service organizations. The collection primarily consists of books, magazines, and pamphlets by and about African Americans. The collection also contains medical equipment. Some of the medical equipment included in fascinating! Like the clamps and speculum, need I mention the vials of sulfate and syringes. 

Alyss Hardin
The Mayme A. Clayton Library & Museum
M.L.I.S., IMLS Fellow

April 2nd - 5th, 2012 @ Fisk Franklin Library

Another busy, yet productive week. I met my goal for this week. In fact, I exceeded it! I processed all correspondence, organization affiliation papers, as well as the writings. Ultimately, I completed section II: S.L. Smith papers. I also was able to make adjustments to Section I: Julius Rosenwald Fund. So...sections I and II are processed! So far the archival boxes count is over 55. I estimate the entire processed collection will round off to between 70-75 archival boxes. Next week, I will begin to process section III: Collected, which includes a variety of newspaper clippings, reports, printed materials, and writings not authored by Smith (simply collected by Smith). I sorted this last section and look forward to processing it.

In addition, I am still working on presentation materials for the Julius Rosenwald Conference and the Society of the American Archivists. I have posted new pictures.

Black Thought 2.0 Conference at Duke

For those of you who don't know, Duke University is a holding a conference on new media and black studies today and tomorrow (April 6 and 7). The conference will be streamed and tweeted live (#BT2Duke). More information on the conference is here.

Krystal

Week 30 at The Mayme A. Clayton Library & Museum

There were a few events that occurred last week at MCLM.  The Hollywood Chapter of (The National Organization for Women) held a Feminist Art http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif Extravaganza.  The event featured an silent art auction, live musical performances, an enthralling poetry reading and a female break dancer. On Thursday, MCLM also welcomed the World Ventures Travel Group.  The event was for about 25 members of the touring group. 

The head archivist at MCLM, Cara Adams gave two tours last week. A student from John's Hopkins was amongst one of the tour groups.  The student and I previously corresponded via email discussing MCLM's digitization initiatives.  MCLM has some of its items digitized but it is my personal belief that digitization on a mass scale must occur as part of a grant project.  Unfortunately, there are not many grants that support basic digitization, but there are a plethora of funding opportunities that support innovative digitization methods.

I have continued pushing inventories into the database and updating the finding aids. I have a group of volunteers separating the photograph collection into appropriate subject headings. MCLM's photograph collection is quite diverse, the subject categories we are assigning to the photographs are; entertainment, disciplines, politics, Los Angeles ,sports and descendants of Mayme A. Clayton.  After I began working on the photograph project I began to understand the importance of labeling images before donating them to an archive, library or museum.  Beyond providing a name it is necessary to detail what the person in the image did (e.g. career, interests, goals etc.), this is vital provenance information that expedites the cataloging process.

Week Thirty at the Maryland State Archives

Last week, I spoke to an 8th grade social studies class about importance of archives and what we do at the Study of the Legacy of Slavery. They had just completed projects for History Day and so were somewhat familiar with primary sources and archival institutions. Since they were about to start a unit on the Civil War, my presentation served as a nice introduction to some of the themes that they would be learning about. I had a lot of fun speaking to them and was impressed by their dissection of the documents that we examined and their questions about recordkeeping and African American history.

The State of Maryland will soon be transitioning to Google Apps, and I am on the early adopters team at the Archives. I’ll get a couple of weeks head start on using Google Apps, so that I can answer questions from others in my department and help them when it’s time for them to make the transition. It’s quite fascinating to see how much cloud-based applications have become standard in such a short time.

I also continued researching Liberian emigrants from Maryland. I’m very dependent upon the Liberian censuses for information about settlers in the years after they emigrated. It’s quite interesting to look at the differences between Liberian and U.S. census records. It does not appear that maintaining robust vital and census records was a priority for the young colony. This presents quite a challenge when tracing people, particularly women, throughout their lives.

‘Til next week,

Krystal

March 26th - 30th, 2012 at Fisk University Franklin Library

Hello all! What a busy week! I managed to complete the correspondence of the 1940s, sort through the 1950s, and begin processing the correspondence of the 1950s. The correspondence lead up to 1956; Smith passed away September 9, 1956. I found a form for Smith's entry in "Who's Who in American Education," which they formally invited him to submit. The form provided a lot more information about Smith, professionally and personally. The personal information is extremely helpful because his collection was missing that. It also explains how the Rosenwald Fund built over 5,000 schools and 10,000 libraries in the south. I have set goals for the amount of work to complete next week (like always) including completing the 1950s correspondence. That is a major section of the Smith papers (section II of the entire collection).

Also this week, I continued to work on my materials for the National Rosenwald School conference this coming June where I will present on a panel discussion concerning HBCU archives as well as a poster session documenting the S.L. Smith collection at Fisk University. I am also focusing on getting my materials together for SAA in August. Lastly, I am constantly working to improve/enhance my grant writing skills as this is a crucial skills to have for those who desire to be involved in academia and/or archival administration.