Ardra Whitney: Week 5 @ Avery Research Center

Monday, October 1^st and Tuesday, October 2^nd: I worked with Manager of Archival Services, Aaron Spelbring to prepare a photo album on Avery’s Facebook page, as well as an article for its news, events, and activities blog, about the 3^rd Annual Back To School With The HistoryMakers program. I also met with Reference Librarian, Deborah Wright to begin setting up an account for Avery’s YouTube channel. Apparently, there is another channel with the name: Avery Research Center, so Ms. Wright and I are working to see what we can do about it. On Tuesday, I began processing the Edwina Harleston Whitlock Papers; revieweing a previous inventory that was done on the collection and surveying correspondence from Whitlock's friends and family. Edwina Harleston Whitlock, (also known as "Gussie") was raised by her aunt and uncle: Elise Forrest Harleston and Edwin Augustus Harleston, after her parents passed away. Whitlock eventually conducted extensive research on her Charleston family history, which culminated into a book, The Sweet Hell Inside: A Family History (2001)-- written in collaboration with historian, Edward Ball.

 

Wednesday, October 3^rd:  I was invited on a secret field trip with Curator, Tours & Facilities Manager, Curtis J. Franks and Ms. Mayo to view a collection of African art from a perspective donor; observe donor relations; and take photos of the collection. That morning, I responded to Public Historian, Robert T. Chase’s e-mail about suggesting interviewees for National Public Radio’s Story Corps program. I told him that I thought a few members from the planning committee for Eastside Day would make good candidates.

Thursday, October 4^th: Throughout the week I collaborated with the IMLS Fellows to produce a session proposal for the 2013 Joint Annual Meeting of the Council of State Archivists and the Society of American Archivists. On Thursday, I corresponded with Ms. Mayo about requesting endorsements for our panel discussions from SAA roundtables. In addition, I continued working on developing an individual session proposal for a poster presentation on African American folk magic traditions. In the afternoon, I received help from Ms. Wright with setting up my CofC Blogs account. I also assisted her with a reference request concerning African art. E. Neville Isdell, former CEO and Chairman of The Coca-Cola Company, was in town to present “The 21st Century Corporation: How capitalism needs to evolve in an era of greater social accountability” at the College of Charleston’s School of Business. Isdell received a bachelor’s degree in social sciences from the University of Cape Town, so the researcher was at Avery looking for pieces of African art to showcase during a dinner for the former CEO.

Friday, October 5^th: I posted excitedly about the 22^nd anniversary of Avery’s grand opening on Facebook. Ms. Wright had told me about it earlier in the week, when we were trying to set up an account for Avery's YouTube channel. In the afternoon, I met with Ms. Mayo and Ms. Wright and received feedback from them regarding my W. Melvin Brown, Jr. Papers processing proposal. Ms. Wright also mentioned working together to revamp the banner on Avery’s news, events and activities blog page.

 

I continued editing the evaluation form for Debra Lee’s video oral history interview. It was interesting to hear Lee speak about her studies in Chinese communist ideology at Brown University and her struggle to find her niche at Harvard Law School. However, once she realized that she was more interested in policy and government—rather than law— and was accepted into a joint degree program Harvard’s Kennedy School, that’s when things began to improve for Lee.

 

October is American Archives Month, so next week I would like to meet with Avery’s archivists and reference librarian to figure out how we can participate in the special celebration-- perhaps develop a public program designed to teach people about archives and preservation or a social media campaign highlighting collections from Avery’s archives.

Week 28 at The Mayme A. Clayton Library & Museum

Last week marked the final training session for the new OPAC. There were about ten volunteers who attended the training ranging in age from 21-65.  The document I created to help the volunteers through the cataloging process was well received overall, but I felt there were some improvements that could have been made. The first thing I would change on the document is the font size, a larger type (greater than 12 point) allows the volunteers to easily read the text.  Another feature of the document I would change is using circles to highlight important parts of the screen instead of arrows; arrows have a tendency to get lost in the text. 

Last week, I began creating the finding aid for the Khalid Kwame Collection.  This jazz collection consists of about 10,000 machine readable artifacts (e.g. CDs, Tapes,and Albums), 7,000 pieces of textual documents and a few pieces of AV equipment.  While working on the finding aid I wrote a biography on the Kwame by pulling information about his life from business cards, wills and donor forms.  While writing his biography, I began to understand the importance of keeping and up to date file on all donors so that information about them is readily available.  

Alyss Hardin
IMLS Fellow,  M.L.I.S. 
The Mayme A. Clayton Library & Museum