Cynthia Lovett: Week 4 @ The HistoryMakers

This week I evaluated the interview of Earlean Collins, the first African American woman and the first woman to serve as an Illinois State Senator in 1976.  I also evaluated Dori Wilson's interview. Wilson, originally from Winona Mississippi, migrated with her family to Chicago and became one of the early African American runway models in the 1960s.  She also was the prototype for the first African American mannequin at the Marshall Field's department store in Chicago Illinois.

In Dr. Christopher Reed's African American History seminar, we continued to look at conflicts and contrasts between the north and south and especially during the civil war.  Although there were many abolitionists in the northern states, there was also latent racism.  There were concerns about arming blacks fighting for the north because people were worried about them becoming revolutionary.  Even though in the south, about 10 percent of the population had large plantations, their lifestyle was heavily dependent on slavery.  

Our trip to the University of Chicago Special Collections Research Center  was fantastic opportunity to see some of the how some of the ideas discussed over the last few weeks in our Archives Seminar with Cecilia Salvatore can be put into practice. We had been discussing traditional concepts of archives as well as the some of the more recent changes as characterized by Mark Greene and MPLP (More Product, Less Process).  At the University of Chicago, the Special Collections Research Center's approach to archives underwent a change in the 1990s, where their main focus moved towards making collections available to researchers and students.  This meant that even though they cannot process all collections fully, they would still be made available.  They use what they call a "tiered" approach where first processing occurs at the collection level, then if necessary, at the series level.  Also the level of processing is determined by the collection; there is no one size fits all methodology.  Having a backlog was considered the natural state of things, but they don't allow that to prevent people from accessing their materials.  One of the things they do is create a basic inventory and post that online as soon as possible so that people can know it is available.

The Special Collections Center also had a relatively new exhibit space where they have a new show every quarter.