Weeks 35-37 at the Alabama Department of Archives and History

Greetings from Montgomery!

Well, my time is coming to an end here at the Alabama Department of Archives and History, and I am spending my last weeks finishing my outstanding projects. Last Thursday (May 17, 2012) I presented my last public program while a part of this fellowship and it went very well. It was a wonderful experience to meet the nice librarians and hear the new things they were trying to implement at their branches.  I have finished the last book of the Peppler Collection (Metadata included) and processing the Datcher collection, which is now online. I have pretty much completed my last projects here, but I know I will find something to work on for one more week. I hope everyone has had a productive and encouraging experience at their respective repositories and I know we are all busy finishing our projects.

That's all I have for now. Until next time,

Cheylon Woods
Alabama Department of Archives and History Fellow.

Week Thirty-Seven at Maryland State Archives

Last week, I completed my final career day presentation at a local middle school. They were an engaged group of students, and one question even led to a discussion of records retention policies! I’ve finished updating the biography of William H. Butler, which is now available online. I’m in the process of completing case studies on the final family of emigrants that I’m researching for the Maryland State Colonization Society. This family, the Walkers, is of particular interest since they became disillusioned by life in the colony and returned to the United States after two years.

Krystal

Weeks 34-36 at The Amistad Research Center

Greetings from New Orleans!

 

The Amistad Research Center hosted a tour of fifty freshmen students from New Orleans Center for Creative Arts (NOCCA). The students toured the new exhibition gallery, talked to the reference archivist about the Center's holdings, and walked upstairs to the processing area to view documents from our ongoing projects.  I showed the students two program booklets from plays that were produced by O'Neal and mentioned various types of correspondence included in his collection.  The students were intrigued and asked about saving emails and what steps are taken to save and to provide access to audio visual materials.

 

I also contributed to Amistad’s e-newsletter by writing an article about O’Neal and I continued to process O’Neal’s papers. The papers are almost complete (Yay!).

Please view my blog for more updates. 

Peace! 

Felicia

May 14th - 18th, 2012 at Fisk Franklin Library

PROJECT COMPLETE!!

Hello all. This week I completed my project, the S.L. (Samuel Leonard) Smith collection!! Very excited for that!! The collection is 59 archival boxes equal to 29.5 linear feet. It has been reported to NUCMC of the Library of Congress. The collection is now ready for researcher's use at the Fisk University Special Collections and Archives, by appointment.

I also finalized the materials for the poster on the S.L. Smith collection, which I will present at the Rosenwald conference in June. I have started to work on the PowerPoint presentation along side Tuskegee University Archivist, Dana Chandler.

Week 36 at The Mayem A. Clayton Library & Museum

Last week the Otis College of Art & Design Layin it Low exhibit was a huge success! The students came to MCLM to view their  works and mingle. The pieces are still on display in the museum, anyone that views the exhibit can walk away with a Layin' it Low magazine and key chain. which are currently on display.  All of the items are to be donated to the collection. 

C. Jerome Woods is local collector whose LGBT collection is on deposit at MCLM.  Last week, he came to the museum to pull some items for a 23 panel exhibition that occurs this summer at the One Institute and Archives. The ONE is the National Gay & Lesbian Archives located in Los Angeles, CA.

I completed my  disaster preparedness workshop that  is funded through the National Endowment for the Humanities and is given by WESTPAS,The Western States Preservation Association. During this workshop I learned how to take basic preservation measures in the case of a flood, fire or earthquake.
 




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

May Avery Research Center Updates (Week 31-36)

Public Program

Since I last posted, I have completed all the interviews that I am doing for the Black in the Lowcountry project. I am so excited. So far I have completed transcribed three of the College of Charleston student interviews and have one left to do for that phase and for the second phase I finished the high school student interviews today. The college students were a little bit easier to get information and stories from, but the high school students did well and I think that the project gave them an opportunity to express themselves.

Archives

I finished describing and arranging the various collections (i.e. small collections that consist of 1-5 folders). This week I will begin to label the folders.

I created MARC records for the Lois Simms collection that I processed previously and sent this one as well as others over the cataloging department so that they can be put into the library’s and WorldCat catalog. In order to continue the workflow of creating MARC records, I created a guide to help Ms. Mayo and the new fellow with creating them, so that they can benefit from my experiences.

Last week was busy as we had three interviews for the Archival Manager position here at Avery, each of the candidates had their pros and cons and I hope that the search committee makes a good hiring decision.  

Activities

This past weekend was the 150^th anniversary of Robert Smalls capturing of the Confederate vessel The Planter. I most of the events of the weekend including the unveiling of a Historic Marker and Historic Plaque in downtown; the marker is located where he and the crew captured the vessel and the plaque is near where he picked up his wife and children. I also had the opportunity to meet some of his descendants who came down from the event. For those of you who are unfamiliar with Smalls as I was before I came to Charleston, more information can be found here:

• http://www.robertsmalls.org/
• http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=s000502
• http://www.teachingushistory.org/lessons/Smalls.html

SN: I found a lot of people from the way of Buffalo and Syracuse at this event, it was interesting to interact with them and people from the New York area, made me feel like home!

Aaisha Haykal

IMLS Fellow

Avery Research Center for African American History and Culture

Week 36 at the Maryland State Archives

Several case studies of Maryland State Colonization Society emigrants are now available on our website. Unfortunately due to copyright issues, digitized images from the collection’s microfilm are not accessible to the public online but will be available to visitors to the Archives. I hope to complete the case studies of a few more families before the end of the fellowship. Last week I did some more research on William H. Butler. I visited the Maryland State Law Library across the street to look up newspaper accounts of Butler’s death in 1892. Since he was such a prominent citizen of Annapolis, Butler’s passing and funeral were reported in the city’s main newspaper, the Evening Capital.

I closed out the week by participating in career day at Arundel Middle School. Most of the students did not know what archives are so it was a wonderful opportunity to tell them about what we do and possible careers in the field. They were very energetic students and asked great questions about archives.

Krystal

Week 35 at The Mayme A. Clayton Library & Museum

Otis College of Arts and Design in Partnership with the Mayme A. Clayton Library & Museum will be presenting the art show Layin' it Low: Car Club Culture. The Otis students created key chains, a magazine, a replica of a car hood featuring a image of Mayme A. Clayton,  a banner, shadow box and panel painting of Mayme. The focus of the show is The Majestics a Compton based car club.  The event, which is tonight from 7PM-9PM will feature the students pieces and The Majestics. The Majestics are bringing 5 cars and will demonstrate the hydraulics and comment on their detailed art. 

The California African American Genealogical Society (CAAGS) is currently visiting MCLM every Friday & Wednesday to organize their book collection.  CAAGS would like to deposit this collection at MCLM but first the items that are for sale must be removed. This collection of books and periodicals is extensive with a plethora of genealogical information.

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

April 30th - May 4th, 2012 @ Fisk Franklin Library

Hello all, I was out last week. This week, I completed the inventory for the S.L. Smith collection! YAY! I am finalizing the scope note and biographical data. Once I am complete with this, I will report the collection complete to NUCMC of the Library of Congress and place it on the shelf. The collection consists of 59 boxes. There is an expressed excitement by many researchers whom are ready to utilize the collection, which is great.

I am also working on the materials for the upcoming conferences...finalizing the posters and presentation for the Rosenwald conference. The time is coming to an end very soon. Working at Fisk has been the best experience and very rewarding.

Weeks 32-34 at the Alabama Department Of Archives and History

Hello and greetings from Montgomery!

I hope all is well with everyone and we enter the last month of our fellowships. The past two weeks have been quite busy for me as I work on my final projects and workshop for the fellowship. I am still digitizing the last book of the Peppler Collection, and I have finished processing the Datcher collection. In the last week I had a wonderful opportunity to travel to Philadelphia to accession a collection from the daughter ( Mrs. Essie Mixon) of an Alabama Midwife. Mrs. Mixon was a wonderful host, and her collection is in excellent condition! It mostly contains artifacts, and will be a wonderful supplement to the midwifery documents in the Datcher Family collection. Mrs. Mixon and the Datcher family lived in neighboring counties in Alabama, but the stories their collections tell about midwives and their importance within rural communities provides a wonderful element to the picture of rural life in Alabama. Well, that is all I have for now. I hope you all have a wonderful day.

Until next week!

Cheylon Woods
Alabama Department of Archives and History

Week 35 at the Maryland State Archives

Last week, I met with Janice Hayes-Williams, a local historian and author (among other things), about William H. Butler, Annapolis’ first black alderman. She has conducted extensive research on Butler and other Annapolis African Americans. She gave me some additional information about Butler that will be helpful as I expand his biography. I’ve also been uploading completed case studies of Maryland State Colonization Society emigrants. Once the case studies are in the buffer, our IT person then links them to the website. This current batch will be available soon. I’ve been learning a lot about workflows as I work on this project!

Krystal

Week 34 at The Mayme A. Clayton Library & Museum

Last week I submitted a grant in an effort to attain funding to preserve the scrapbook collection. The grant was through NEH, MCLM is asking for $6,000 to preserve 53 scrapbooks. The amount of money it takes to process scrapbooks is astonishing! For example, just to purchase enough paper to rehouse the items the cost is about $4,000. As apart of this grant we will be also purchasing temperature monitors.

Installing temperature monitors was a preservation effort that was suggested through the Museum Assessment Program (MAP). This MAP assessment is apart of the American Association of Museums and provides information about how an institution can fully preserve, conserve and provide access to its collection. This document is also very useful for writing grants because it includes demographic and visitation information.

 Last Saturday we were also busy with events and programs. During the afternoon MCLM welcomed children and their parents for The Kids Jazz Appreciation Month Session or Kids JAM. During this event children made instruments and enjoyed a story time. All of the activities were Jazz themed in honor of April, Jazz Appreciation Month. After the Kids JAM Session the University of Chicago Alumni Association came for a tour of MCLM's facilities. The Head Archivist provided a tour and then the 18 members stayed for the monthly movie Around Midnight .

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