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| 4th of July Fireworks at Navy Pier |
As July begins, week
five ends. It was an interesting week
somewhat offset by the fact that Independence Day fell on Wednesday which split
up the work week. I spent much of the
week preparing my participation plan presentation which will include information
on the following topics:
- · Fisk University
- · Fisk University Special Collections and Archives
- · McKissack and McKissack Architects (in relation to the McKissack collection I will be processing)
- · Fisk University Rosenwald Fund Card File Database
- · HBCU Library Alliance
- · Meharry Medical School Special Collections
After sending my
presentation to Dr. Jessie
Carney Smith and Ms.
Christyne Douglas, I made some revisions and then gave a preliminary
presentation to Julieanna
Richardson. After my preliminary
presentation, I found that while I had adequately revised my presentation,
there was still much information that I needed to add. One of the missing
pieces of information is what I will be doing for a public programming event
that helps promote African American archives.
Since presenting information at a conference does not fill my public
programming requirement, I got nervous.
This whole “it’s up to me” thing is a lot of pressure. Where do I begin? I need a topic, I need an audience, I need a
venue. Fortunately, I had been
brainstorming with another fellow and had come up with an idea that might be a
little far-fetched, but it sounded fun and it involved the architecture built
by the McKissacks. Julieanna approved of
the idea so now I have to get approval from Dr. Smith and Special Collections
Librarian Beth
Howse. Once it is approved, I will
tell you more about it but I am much calmer about having to organize this
public programming now that I have some idea of an event that could be fun and
educational. Working on this presentation
has really helped to encourage and excite me about processing the William
McKissack Papers at Franklin Library, Fisk University. While I am not educated in architecture, I have
admired it since I first stepped foot in New Orleans, so I am thrilled to be
able to process a collection related to the first African American
architectural firm in the United States.
I am doubly thrilled that many of their buildings still stand in
Nashville. You can bet I will be finding
as many as I can! I am also excited to
have the opportunity to work at Fisk University. Not only is it a very prestigious HBCU
(Historically Black College and University), but the library is very involved
in and around the campus so I will be able to participate in events around
campus as well as library and archival conferences. I am looking forward to learning so much from
Dr. Smith and Beth Howse. In the
meantime, I now only need to add an origin story of Fisk and Meharry’s archives
and a more detailed schedule of my participation at Fisk. Needless to say, this appears to be where I
spent the majority of my time this week.
While I thought I
would finally be diving into the file sorting needed for my three “An Evening
With” special collection projects, Colin Powell, Della Reese, and Richard Parsons, I
remained distracted with my
participation plan presentation. I will
have to begin setting aside times to sort these collections next
week. In other news, I finally finished
the Bonita Gooch interview
evaluation and so I was able to move on to Joe Rogers,
whose evaluation I had hoped to finish on Friday. I am sure I will be able to tie up the loose
ends by Monday morning, though, so that I can continue to move forward. We were all asked to momentarily cease our
progress so that we could complete EAD (Encoded Archival Description) and
EAC-CPF (Encoded Archival Context-Corporate bodies, Persons, and Families)
finding aids for all of the evaluations we have completed. Therefore, by Friday
I had a total of nine completed EAD/EAC-CPF finding aids. Yay! It
feels good to be nearly caught up.
We did also have our Tuesday Archival Sciences lecture with Dr. Cecilia Salvatore. We discussed digital preservation which, in
my opinion, can sometimes be an oxymoron.
The key for digital preservation is not so much to be able to preserve
it in its original form since technology frequently forces changes such as upgrades
in software or platforms that can make older versions unusable. The key to digital preservation is to ensure
ACCESS, which is the main purpose for preservation of records. I am a traditionalist in the sense that I
like my records to remain original to a fault, but I am beginning to understand
the danger in hanging on to that ideal when it is detrimental to access. Access is the main purpose of
preservation. Access is the main purpose
of archives in general. What other reason
have we to save all of these records?
However, it is imperative that future researchers understand that these
digital records are not always preserved in the original format so that they
can better understand the context of the material. Digital preservation is essential for
born-digital records and will continue to be a major topic as technology
evolves so quickly.
We had to wait until
Friday to have our African American history lecture with Dr. Christopher Reed. This week we spoke about how Reconstruction and its promises decayed into the Jim Crow era. The chapters that
I read all mention the South quite frequently, of course, so I am often faced
with the history of my home state of Mississippi and I am somewhat haunted by
the knowledge that I had at least a few ancestors there during that time
period. What haunts me more is the
realization that the terrorizing treatment forced upon African Americans (all
over the U.S. but especially) in the South lasted for nearly a century.
I remember growing up in a town with way too many school houses due to
previous generations of segregation. We
even had two city pools, but that segregation went on during my own
lifetime. I never realized why there
were no black people at the city pool I would occasionally go to as a child
until I attended an elementary school next to a city pool I had never seen
before. I do not recall if I asked
someone or if the realization just hit me like a ton of bricks, but I knew at
that point that there were different areas for us even if signs did not designate them. I can report with relief
that the pools were shared by the time I was a teenager but that was nearly
into the 21st century. I am
glad that these ridiculous ideals are slowly fading away but I am sad that it
has taken 100 years. I hope that as we
continue to struggle globally with racism across all cultures, we embrace the
lessons we can learn from our history so that no one has to live through eras
of racial terrorization ever again. Is
that wishful thinking? Maybe, since it
seems we so rarely learn from our history, but I will never give up hope that
it is possible.
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| 4th of July Fireworks at Navy Pier |
Until next week…
Amanda J. Carter
Franklin Library, Fisk University
2012-2013 The HistoryMakers IMLS Fellow
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