Week 2 (June 11-15, 2012) @ the HistoryMakers: Amanda J. Carter

This week at The HistoryMakers was just as busy as last week, but I am adjusting to the schedule and was even able to improve my pace completing evaluations.  I do not like to be bored when I am at work, so this environment is ideal because there is always work to be done, a lecture to attend, a field trip to take, or a new process to learn.   This time we toured the Carter G. Woodson Regional Library as well as the usual African American history lecture and archival training.  

On Monday, I began preparing my participation plan by speaking with Dr. Smith from Franklin Library at Fisk University.  We discussed updates with Fisk University, including the Lyrasis’ HBCU Photographic Preservation Project with which Fisk has become involved in the last year.  We also discussed the Julius Rosenwald collection because I will be processing a portion of it.  Dr. Smith  suggested Meharry Medical College’s archives or Tennessee State University as nearby African American collections that relate to Fisk University.  While TSU is my alma mater and I have a general idea of some of its collections, I may go with Meharry since it was the first African American medical school in the South and I may have no other opportunity to find out what interesting information is held there.  I will be calling Dr. Smith again next week to get more specific information on the collection(s) I will process and to discuss my nine-month schedule and how social media may be able to help promote the archives.  

Tuesday we Fellows had the opportunity to tour the Carter G. Woodson Regional Library led by archivist Beverly Cook.  She was a fabulous tour guide and not only showed us around the library and website, but also gave us a behind-the-scenes tour of the processing and preservation rooms and the temperature-controlled archive.  What fascinated me the most was their deacidifying chamber:

I had never seen one before so I was enthralled.  I have an interest in preservation so I am always curious as to how each special collections handles their own.  I also really appreciate the library’s “Find It” site search that has indexed finding aids as well as books from the Online Public Access Catalog (OPAC).  Many libraries struggle with how to provide accessibility to the finding aids.  Considering the complications of creating MARC21 records for each collection, it is not yet common to find many finding aids in the OPAC.  It appears that the Chicago Public Library has resolved the issue by adding them to the site search even though their finding aids are not in the OPAC.  Well done!

Dr. Reed returned for our African American history lecture on Wednesday.  Having studied nineteenth century history as an undergraduate, I was familiar with much of the information.  However, I am always learning something new and this time it was the fact that there were a small percentage of free African Americans in the Deep South in the early nineteenth century.  I knew about creoles in Louisiana and had heard stories of a man or a family in Natchez, Mississippi, close to where I was raised (and close to Louisiana).  Yet I was glad to find that there was some, albeit small, extension of that freedom outside of that area.  I guess I assumed that the extreme violence during the Civil Rights Era in the Deep South had a much longer history which might have prohibited the freedoms of African Americans in the nineteenth century as much as it had in the twentieth.  I can only imagine how bold and fearless those free families were to have remained in what I can only imagine were at least moderately hostile conditions.

The Fellows met Dr. Cecilia Salvatore on Thursday for our archival lecture on subject headings.  She was very helpful and told us that she would have office hours every weekday at The HistoryMakers.  I find her office hours very helpful because I know how busy Julieanna Richardson and Dan Johnson are so I try not to bombard them with question throughout the day.  It will be great having one more resource that can help and support our learning process.  

Our special collections training was postponed on Friday so we learned how to create finding aids and EAC-CPF records from FileMaker using our evaluations.  I was able to finish three evaluations last week: Norma White, Kenneth Crooks, and Louis Dinwiddie.  I look forward to creating the finding aids once the edits have been approved.  While the first week and a half of this evaluation process was really slow for me as I learned the procedures as accurately as possible, I was able to pick up the pace by the end of this last week.  I am confident that my pace will continue to increase although I hope that it does not prohibit me from continuing to learn about the fascinating lives of these history-makers. Until next week...

Amanda J. Carter
2012-2013 The HistoryMakers IMLS Fellow
Franklin Library, Fisk University