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.
No comments:
Post a Comment