Ardra Whitney: Week 7 @ The HistoryMakers

I had a little fun this morning at the Rock ‘n’ Roll Marathon Series. I cheered on runners as they made their way south on Martin Luther King Drive, east on 31st Street, and then north onto Fort Dearborn Drive – through McCormick Place. I took some great photos and even did a little running myself-- for like point sixty seconds. I also got to listen to some classic rock from a cover band performing along the marathon course at Burnham Harbor Drive. (Did I mention that I was a sucker for Journey?) All in all, it was definitely a nice way to start the day.

On Monday, July 16^th, fellows met with Dr. Cecilia Salvatore for her weekly archives seminar. This week’s seminar dealt with methods and approaches for providing references services.  We discussed the assigned readings, as well as theories of information behavior and cultural models information behavior. We also talked about library information studies, archival intelligence, information encountering, communities of practice, and copyright law. The concept "community of practice" was of particular interest to me because it provides a useful approach/perspective for improving the performance of reference services to the public. According to Etienne Wenger, communities of practice enable practitioners to take collective responsibility for managing the knowledge these communities need. Moreover, communities among practitioners create a direct link between learning and performance, because the same people that participate in communities of practice also participate in teams, business units, etc. Hence, by studying the information needs of communities of practice, practitioners or more to the point, information professionals can address the tacit and dynamic aspects of knowledge creation and sharing, i.e., the social structures that enable them to learn with and from each other. They can also focus on the more explicit aspects—such as developing strategically managed information systems that have the power to store and disseminate critical knowledge, and create connections among people across organizational and geographic boundaries (Wenger, 2006).

On Tuesday at Dr. Christopher Reed’s African American history lecture, we discussed African Americans and the 1920s-1940s. He described how the efforts of Marcus Garvey and W.E.B. DuBois help to raise African American interest in Africa. In addition, Dr. Reed talked about the failure of the government to serve the needs Americans during the Great Depression and the many black protests —both organized and ad hoc— which resulted in response. He pointed out that the rise of unionism among blacks during the 1930s and 1940s helped them to begin forming a national middle-class in the post-World War II era. We also learned that the Black Chicago Renaissance evolved as a successor to the Harlem Renaissance and that the creative spirit of both served a dual function: one, reflecting black culture expressively for the purpose of entertainment and two, promoting a better quality of life for all African Americans.

This week I completed processing my first collection for The HistoryMakers’ Special Collections Processing Project: “An Evening with B.B. King”. Next up is “An Evening with Quincy Jones”. The fellows and I have all been asking Mr. Johnson; production assistant, Bradley Morgan, and executive director, Julieanna Richardson; a ton of questions about the various categories and sub-categories for arranging and describing our assigned collections. Their feedback regarding the various documents and records related to the organization’s annual fundraising event “An Evening With…” has been a great help to all of us in terms of accurately processing the materials. Ms. Richardson explained that once the collections are processed, they will be scanned for digital use and access. On Wednesday, July 18^th, fellows listened to a call between Mr. Morgan and Mike Szerlong at Vanguard Archives to learn how to help identify document scanning companies for the digitization of materials from the Special Collections Processing Project. After listening to Mr. Szerlong speak about the document scanning services that Vanguard Archives offers, we discussed how files within the collections should be organized and described in order to facilitate efficient scanning and indexing processes.

Fellows also attended a special archives lecture on Wednesday, led by Jacqueline Goldsby, Professor of English and African American Studies at Yale University. I very much enjoyed her discussion of the Mapping the Stacks (MTS) project, which she organized while working as a professor in the University of Chicago’s Department of English. The project illustrated the importance of not only recognizing the value of archives devoted to African American history and culture, but also the importance of getting the funding required to adequately preserve these collections and make them fully accessible to the public. Funding for MTS was provided by the University of Chicago's Center for the Study of Race, Politics & Culture, Division of the Humanities, Commonwealth Edison, and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.The project brought together faculty and Ph.D students proficient in African American Studies to survey and process primary source materials (i.e., books, films, photographs, newspapers, magazines, manuscript archives, recorded oral histories, and other ephemera) housed in Chicago-area institutions and community-based organizations. These institutions and organizations included: the Chicago Public Library, Carter G. Woodson RegionalLibrary, Vivian G. Harsh Research Collection of Afro-American History and Literature, the DuSable Museum of African American History, the Chicago Defender newspaper, and the South Side Community Art Center. Once collections were identified, surveyed and processed using field-approved archival management methods, MTS staff produced and disseminated finding aids to allow public access to these processed collections via print and the Web.

On Friday, I corresponded with Georgette Mayo, Processing Archivist at Avery Research Center regarding images and edits for the PowerPoint presentation accompanying my upcoming host institution conference call.  I also watched Avery Normal Institute alumna, Lucille Whipper’s oral history interview conducted by The HistoryMakers and asked Mr. Johnson to edit a clip from the interview, so that I could include it in my presentation. My host institution conference call with Ms. Mayo and Aaron Spelbring, Manager of Archival Services at Avery Research Center is scheduled for Tuesday, July 24^th and I am looking forward to it!

Reference: Wenger, Etienne.  “Communities of Practice: A Brief Introduction.” Communities of Practice. http://www.ewenger.com/theory/.


Ardra Whitney
IMLS Fellow
Avery Research Center for African American History and Culture