Cynthia Lovett: Week 1 @ The HistoryMakers

This week has been packed with new information and new experiences, within a new and fabulous city—Chicago! Even though my head is still spinning, I believe things are slowly sinking in.    • On Sunday we had an orientation with introductions from the staff as well as a lovely lunch meeting: Very good collard greens, mashed potatoes and fish; lemon bars and something delectable with chocolate—which I kept my eye on but didn't touch. We received a thorough overview of the projects and expectations for the TheHistoryMakers Mentoring, Training, and Placement Institute.  
•  Monday and Tuesday were spent with more in-depth training and workshops with Program Managers, Jessica Levy and Y’hoshua Murray, and Digital Archivist, Dan Johnson. We went step by step through how The HistoryMakers processes video oral history interviews using evaluations and finding aids and also discussed our host institution participation plans. We began to process the video oral history of Alvin Ailey dancer, teacher, and Artistic Director, Sylvia Waters as a sample exercise. I was excited to learn about a restaurant/club in Paris called Buttercup's, (“Buttercup’s Chicken Shack,” run by Altevia "Buttercup" Edwards—associated with Jazz artist Bud Powell); a place many black servicemen as well as expatriate artists frequented in the 1960s. After working on our sample, The HistoryMakers Executive Director, Julieanna Richardson and Dan Johnson reviewed our test evaluations: Writing evaluations requires that we balance between narrative flow with an emphasis on factual elements of time, place, people, and institutions. We need to work quickly without sacrificing quality: We need to find the middle line.  
•  On Wednesday we got a chance to dive into African American history with Professor Emeritus of History at Roosevelt University and specialist in Chicago black history, Dr. Christopher Reed.  He discussed the symbiotic relationship between archivists and historians within the context of African American history.  He emphasized the importance of "interior history," or looking from the inside out, where African Americans are not the objects of history, but the subjects of history.

•  Thursday and Friday we had full-day workshops with Katherine M. Wisser, professor at Simmons College, and chair of the EAC Working Group. We were extremely fortunate to have someone who is in love with the subject matter---especially "the angled brackets: "  …<ead> ... <dao>. We learned to work with Oxygen and the structure of XML; we learned about the difference between describing intellectual structure verses the physical structure of files in boxes; we learned how EAC-CPF is similar to the LOC authority file in that it defines corporations, people, and families.  Unlike AACR2, EAC-CPF recognizes families as creators: And.. it is written in a powerful transformative language called XSLT which can spit out documents in numerous formats: pdf, xml, text, spreadsheets, and who knows what else?  
•  Thursday afternoon we also said our goodbyes to Jessica Levy with buttery red velvet cake.  Jessica will be moving on to pursue her PhD and we all wish her luck. Thanks so much Jessica for all of your assistance through the application process and for helping us get settled here in Chicago!  Later that evening we also had a staff dinner at Opart Thai Restaurant, here in the South Loop.  Along side flavorful dishes of coconut and basil we got the chance to get to know one another better.


Cynthia Lovett
IMLS Fellow at The HistoryMakers