Last week, I continued processing the National
Baptist Sanitarium and Bathhouse project.
There are many staple-bound receipts so the processing is taking a
little more time than originally anticipated.
My expectation is to complete it by the end of this week. I have eight full boxes for this collection
so far, but there are about three or four more boxes to finish processing before
I can move on to the smaller projects of the McKissack brothers. Overall, this collection is coming along
quite well. Since the College Hill project provides a
general outline for the remaining projects, most of the processing time is
spent cleaning, removing staples, and arranging the papers in order within each
folder.
Challenges:
The most tedious aspect may be the repetitive chronological
filing of the receipts. Each folder
seems to contain a multitude of receipts that need to be arranged
chronologically and then filed with the receipts that I have already arranged. Many times, I find that the dates overlap so
instead of being able to place the newly ordered receipts at the end or
beginning of those already filed I have to merge them with the files. It is a fairly simple but time-consuming
process. However, the result of having
an easily accessible collection for researchers will be well worth the
effort.
Black History Month 2013, At the Crossroads of Freedom and Equality: The
Emancipation Proclamation and the March on WashingtonI finished the powerpoint display I was creating for Fisk University’s Franklin Library. I must admit that I had a lot of fun creating it. Using the theme listed above, I at first thought I may create some kind of timeline of these historic events but it turned into a type of visual research guide because I included a host of digital collections focusing on the African American experience. Here are a few of the collections I mentioned:
·
From Slavery to
Freedom, the African American Pamphlet Collection and The African
American Odyssey at The
Library of Congress American Memory.
After reviewing my display with Ms. Mattie McHollin, my collection
supervisor, upon her suggestion I edited the presentation to include more
images and less text. I had quoted certain
excerpts from the Emancipation Proclamation, “I Have a Dream” speech, and
President Obama’s recent Inaugural Address.
I reduced the amount of text while trying to leave enough of these
moving speeches to inspire the students.
I also added a little background leading up to the Emancipation
Proclamation and the Civil Rights Movements and I removed some of the resources
I had included. The last third of the
display is a calendar of events for celebrations of Black History Month across
Nashville. There are many events, but
the most fascinating may very well be the National Archives’ “Discovering
the Civil War” exhibit which will be hosted here in Nashville at the Tennessee
State Museum. Part of this exhibit is
the brief display of the original (yes, the original) Emancipation Proclamation
over a few days in mid-February. It is
very exciting to have these precious documents come to our city! 
Until next time…
Amanda J.
Carter
Franklin
Library, Fisk University
IMLS
HistoryMakers Fellow 2012-2013
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