Ardra Whitney: Week 26 @ Avery Research Center (NNTR)

I snagged this video from South Carolina Archival Association's Facebook page. Watching it made me wonder if archival repositories should be focusing more on the broad adoption of a single metadata standard for the sake of access, archivcal and intellectual control, best practices, indentifying related archival material, etc.; or if it is better for repositories to maintain their own unique individual and internal systems or schema for catalog, inventory and finding aid creation?

Cynthia Lovett: Week 5 @ TheHistoryMakers

From last Friday and throughout most of this week I got the chance to work on the back end of things.  I finally created EAD and EAC-CPF files for several of my finding aids.  The last few weeks I was concentrating on the evaluations and waiting for the approval on my text. Even though I have a technology background, a good part of the process seemed like a mystery until this week.    Although I had been writing the evaluations and entering data into our FileMaker database, this was the first time I got a chance to export the EAD.  

An interview may have several tapes, and for each tape, we assign several Library of Congress Subject Headings and edit 2-3 web clips. Ultimately, two clips are selected to appear on the website. We also create PBCore records for each web clip we make. As for the subject headings, many of them are not already in the system, so if we are using new ones we need to email Dan Johnson, our Digital Archivist, so that he can add them.  All of this very detailed work will make each story fragment accessible to researchers, so they do not have to search the entire tape.

In our archives seminar we discussed digital archives as it relates to digital preservation, digital stewardship, digital curation, and digital asset management. In our african american seminar we discussed the Reconstruction period.

I met with Dan and Julieanna about the kinds of projects I may work on this year.  We discussed the possibility of editing a video for an upcoming public program, learning some of the database programming, as well as developing a social media plan.  Later in the week, Julieanna met with Skyla Hearn and I to begin planning the public program for February 2013 that will provide the opportunity for people to learn more about what archivists do. 

Each of the fellows will be doing presentations in the coming weeks on work they will do at their host repository. My presentation will be on the HistoryMakers, of course.  I will be working on a draft this week in either PowerPoint or Prezi.  The presentation will discuss our participation plan as well as introduce another African American archive to the group.  Each fellow will choose a different archive or collection.  It will be interesting to learn about other African American archival resources across the country.

Cynthia Lovett: Week 1 @ The HistoryMakers

This week has been packed with new information and new experiences, within a new and fabulous city—Chicago! Even though my head is still spinning, I believe things are slowly sinking in.    • On Sunday we had an orientation with introductions from the staff as well as a lovely lunch meeting: Very good collard greens, mashed potatoes and fish; lemon bars and something delectable with chocolate—which I kept my eye on but didn't touch. We received a thorough overview of the projects and expectations for the TheHistoryMakers Mentoring, Training, and Placement Institute.  
•  Monday and Tuesday were spent with more in-depth training and workshops with Program Managers, Jessica Levy and Y’hoshua Murray, and Digital Archivist, Dan Johnson. We went step by step through how The HistoryMakers processes video oral history interviews using evaluations and finding aids and also discussed our host institution participation plans. We began to process the video oral history of Alvin Ailey dancer, teacher, and Artistic Director, Sylvia Waters as a sample exercise. I was excited to learn about a restaurant/club in Paris called Buttercup's, (“Buttercup’s Chicken Shack,” run by Altevia "Buttercup" Edwards—associated with Jazz artist Bud Powell); a place many black servicemen as well as expatriate artists frequented in the 1960s. After working on our sample, The HistoryMakers Executive Director, Julieanna Richardson and Dan Johnson reviewed our test evaluations: Writing evaluations requires that we balance between narrative flow with an emphasis on factual elements of time, place, people, and institutions. We need to work quickly without sacrificing quality: We need to find the middle line.  
•  On Wednesday we got a chance to dive into African American history with Professor Emeritus of History at Roosevelt University and specialist in Chicago black history, Dr. Christopher Reed.  He discussed the symbiotic relationship between archivists and historians within the context of African American history.  He emphasized the importance of "interior history," or looking from the inside out, where African Americans are not the objects of history, but the subjects of history.

•  Thursday and Friday we had full-day workshops with Katherine M. Wisser, professor at Simmons College, and chair of the EAC Working Group. We were extremely fortunate to have someone who is in love with the subject matter---especially "the angled brackets: "  …<ead> ... <dao>. We learned to work with Oxygen and the structure of XML; we learned about the difference between describing intellectual structure verses the physical structure of files in boxes; we learned how EAC-CPF is similar to the LOC authority file in that it defines corporations, people, and families.  Unlike AACR2, EAC-CPF recognizes families as creators: And.. it is written in a powerful transformative language called XSLT which can spit out documents in numerous formats: pdf, xml, text, spreadsheets, and who knows what else?  
•  Thursday afternoon we also said our goodbyes to Jessica Levy with buttery red velvet cake.  Jessica will be moving on to pursue her PhD and we all wish her luck. Thanks so much Jessica for all of your assistance through the application process and for helping us get settled here in Chicago!  Later that evening we also had a staff dinner at Opart Thai Restaurant, here in the South Loop.  Along side flavorful dishes of coconut and basil we got the chance to get to know one another better.


Cynthia Lovett
IMLS Fellow at The HistoryMakers

Ardra Whitney: Week 1 @ The HistoryMakers

Greetings from the Windy City!



For the next 3 months, I will be calling Chicago home as I participate in the 2012 IMLS Summer Immersion Program with The HistoryMakers. The week was filled with several meetings and presentations from HistoryMakers staff, including: Julieanna Richardson, Public Historian and Founder/Executive Director; Dan Johnson, Digital Archivist; Jessica Levy, former Research and Program Coordinator; Y’Houshua Murray, current Program Coordinator; Alison Bruzek, NSF Project Director; and Paul Mackey, Production Manager. Through these various meetings and presentations, fellows received an introduction to The HistoryMakers Digital Archive collection; discussed grant expectations; and learned about the organization’s office and archival procedures. We also got to do some really neat ice breakers to help us become more acquainted with one another.

On Wednesday, June 6^th, fellows had their first African American history lecture with Christopher R. Reed, Professor Emeritus with the Department of History and Philosophy at Roosevelt University. Reed began the lecture by sharing photos and stories about African Americans like journalist and newspaper editor, Ida B. Wells and her husband, newspaper owner, Ferdinand L. Barnett.  He also showed us 19^th century photographs of his great grandparents, who were former slaves. His great grandfather, he said, served in a colored infantry during the Civil War. My favorite part of the lecture was Reed’s discussion of the black presence at the World’s Fair of 1893-- because he mentioned the Fon people from the Dahomey Kingdom in West Africa. I find this group of African people to be particularly fascinating because the Dahomean state maintained an all-female military regiment for nearly 200 years. The women warriors were referred to as Mino, meaning "Our Mothers" in the Fon language.

“The simulated village of the Fon people from Dahomey was among the most widely publicized and frequently visited fair sites. Newspapers and magazines extensively covered the exhibit, photographers included it in souvenir booklets, and many observers flocked there each day. The interest in this exhibit, perhaps more than any other, revealed the disparity in perceptions of Africans by an international audience. Some people saw at the exhibit the rich culture of the Fon people, as well as a reminder of a distant African past that had shaped all humanity--as did Bishop Henry McNeal Turner of the African Methodist Episcopal church, commenting at the concurrent Conference on Africa held in Chicago, publicly expounded his belief that all humanity started black" (p. 184). Other fair goers saw in the Fon village a non-industrial, rural lifestyle that was anathema to their Victorian tastes. The scantily clad, bare breasted women and the robed men with their traditional musical instruments and other accouterments both fascinated and repelled many fair goers.”
 - Excerpt from Reed’s book "All the World Is Here!": The Black Presence at White City

On Thursday, June 7^th and Friday, June 8^th, fellows participated in a 2-day training session on Encoded Archival Description (EAD) and Encoded Archival Context—Corporate Bodies, Persons, and Families (EAC-CPF)  led by Katherine Wisser, Assistant Professor and Co-Director of the Archives/History Dual Degree Program at Simmons College. In addition to her informative and well-presented workshop, Wisser provided great insights into professional networking in the field of archival encoding/description. Case in point, Wisser’s continued interest and participation in the development of EAC-CPF has made her Chair of the EAC Working Group and allowed her to collaborate with information professionals from all around the world.  

At the end of the Summer Immersion Program, I will be responsible for completing 30 interview evaluations and EAD/EAC-CPF finding aid assignments. This week, I completed my first interview evaluation assignment for head waiter, letter carrier, and humble activist, Alvin Little. In watching Little’s interview, I was almost moved to tears by the power and simplicity of his life experiences. He realized early on that nobody would give him anything and that if he wanted something he would have to work for it. In his interview, Little says that in order to be successful in life, one must qualify themselves to achieve their personal and professional goals. Congruently, I look forward to learning from and contributing to my fellowship experience--as much as possible--so that I can qualify myself to do outstanding work as an archivist.

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