Week Nine at the Maryland State Archives

It was quite a busy week! Collaborating with another staff member, we completed an updated brochure for the Legacy of Slavery project. In addition to my record stripping of Maryland State Colonization Society records, I attended several events. I attended the opening of the Maryland State Archives exhibit, Flee! Stories of Flight from Maryland in Black and White, at the Banneker-Douglas Museum. At the exhibit reception, I met historian Dr. Ira Berlin. Commissioner Theodore Mack, and Commissioner and anthropologist Dr. Cheryl LaRoche. Later in the week, I attended an OCLC webinar about ArchiveGrid, an archival discovery system. It’s meant to be a one-stop shop for researchers to search for archival collections around the world. To end the week, I attended a forum on social media and the government at the National Archives in D.C. For more details on these events, please visit my blog.

Krystal

Week 9 at Fisk University Franklin Library

This week, I continued to process the S.L. Smith collection. Smith was the Director of the Julius Rosenwald Fund's Southern Office. As you can imagine, there is a lot of items pertaining to the Fund. Consequently, the Smith collection will be divided into two (unequal) sections. The first section is the Julius Rosenwald "related" section and this is what I am currently arranging. I plan to have this section completed by Christmas break. The second section is strictly the Smith section including papers of many organizations he was involved with. I look forward to the entire process. I am still having an amazing time here at Fisk.

Aisha Johnson
IMLS Fellow
Fisk University John Hope and Aurelia E. Franklin Library

Week Eight at Amistad

During week eight, I was a “busy bee.” I finally completed the civil rights organizations series for the John O’Neal papers and composed a series description (yeah); attended a digital projects meeting to discuss metadata guidelines; participated in a collection development meeting; and joined fellow co-workers to a book signing on Tulane’s campus.

I decided to process O’Neal’s community art organizations series as my second adventure! So far, this series encompass files of art and local community organizations in the Southeast and New Orleans, including committee minutes and agendas for Alternate ROOTS (Regional Organization of Theaters South)...click here for more information.

Felicia

Weeki Nine at The Alabama Department of Archives and History

Hello and greetings from Montgomery!

This week was a short week for me, because we had a big geneological workshop and I had to go to back to Jackson for a second round of training. The workshop went over very well, and we had 80 participants. I enjoyed my three day training in Jackson, Mississippi, and got to meet other ATC trainers across the tri-state area. Everyone was so energetic and full of ideas! I am continuing my work inventorying the Charles Morgan collection and scanning the last book of the Peppler/ Southern Courier photo collection. Other than that, everything has been pretty calm around here.

Until next week!
Cheylon Woods
IMLS Fellow
Alabama Department of Archives and History

Week Eight and Nine

The past week and half has been low key, so I am just going to combine them.

I have been putting the finishing touches on my collections that I have done so far here, the Lecque Family Papers, the Humane and Friendly Society, and Prince Hall Chapter No. 41 Order of the Eastern Star. In addition, I created the finding aids for them using Notetab, overall the process has been easy (with a few frustrations).

On Wednesday, November 2^nd, Ms. Mayo and I led a workshop on what are archives, the benefits of them, what supplies are needed, online/virtual exhibits, and on LibraryThing, a personal library catalog for the Ravenel Caw Caw Interpretive Center. An employee there, Erica, who is the cultural interpreter formerly worked here at Avery and asked if we could come out and talk to her colleagues about the benefits of an archive for both the institution and for them. The Ravenel Caw Caw Interpretive Center, is both a nature and history interpretive center. The land that the Center is on “was once part of several rice plantations and home to enslaved Africans who applied their technology and skills in agriculture to carve the series of rice fields out of cypress swamps.” Unfortunately, we did not have time to tour the site, but hopefully before I leave I can go back there and do a tour and/or participate in one of their group activities. The workshop went really well and the staff was receptive to what we had to say and I think that they began to see the value in the need to document, preserve, arrange, and describe what they have their collection (books, papers, and artifacts). 

Read more here

Aaisha Haykal

IMLS Fellow

Avery Research Center for African American History and Culture

Week 8 at The Mayme A. Clayton Library & Museum

Last week at MCLM I met with a graphic designer to develop brochures for two fund raising initiatives the museum is enacting.  In order to develop a collection of images for the brochure, I raided the vault to find items that would be a good sample of MCLM’s collection.  The museum’s collection is diverse so I found myself pulling items ranging from Beloved movie posters to black and white images of Stepin’ Fetchit’ to signed editions of Toni Morrison’s Tar Baby. 

Week 8 at the Alabama Department of Archives and History

Hello and greetings from Montgomery!




This week I started 2 of my scheduled big collections, the Charles Morgan Collection (which consists of 77 cubic foot boxes) and scanning the remaining negatives from the Peppler/Southern Courier collection. At the moment, I am inventorying the Charles Morgan Collection, and this is an interesting experience in itself. In one box...no, in one folder there was so much information on how the southern office of the ACLU was run and some of the cases it worked on...it was awesome and overwhelming at the same time! I am really excited to see what else is in this collection, and I am already taking notes on some interesting documents and cases that are still very pertinent today, especially with the current political climate and stances on human rights. I also started working on my public program and workshop! I have been able to identify two venues for my basic exhibit design workshops, which will be held in January and the spring of 2012, and identified 2 communities from the Peppler collection.



Well, that is all that I have for now. Have a wonderful week and happy learning!

Cheylon Woods