April 9th - 13th, 2012 @ Fisk Franklin Library

Hello all, looks like we are in the last ending. Things are busy here as usual. This week, I managed to complete the majority of section III: Collected. This section is simply things Smith collected, including the newspaper clippings, printed materials, reports, writings and miscellaneous items. All that remains for me to process in the collected writings, which I have sorted alphabetically by title. So, that is what I will work on next week as well as starting the biographical note and scope & content sections for the inventory. This experience at Fisk has been the most rewarding!

I have also continued to work on outside projects for various upcoming conferences. June is fast approaching and the Rosenwald Conference ill be here very soon. I currently, putting together a presentation for discussion and materials for a separate poster.

Week 31 at The Mayme A. Clayton Libray & Museum

Last week, I processed a portion of The Marilyn E. White Collection.  Years ago, Marilyn White was a volunteer at MCLM that donated a collection that consists of books, dolls, plaques, pamphlets, stamps, photographs and brochures.  Judging from the items within the collection Ms. White was an Olympic participant and singer.  The portion of the collection I processed consisted mostly of stamps that portray African American leaders.

The pushing of inventories into the database continues. As apart of this process I am given the opportunity to handle collections.  One interesting collection was the Anne N. and William L. Smith Collection. circa 1900-2008. Anne Nichols Smith, a teacher, and her husband William L. Smith, a physician in private practice, were active in Los Angeles community service organizations. The collection primarily consists of books, magazines, and pamphlets by and about African Americans. The collection also contains medical equipment. Some of the medical equipment included in fascinating! Like the clamps and speculum, need I mention the vials of sulfate and syringes. 

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

April 2nd - 5th, 2012 @ Fisk Franklin Library

Another busy, yet productive week. I met my goal for this week. In fact, I exceeded it! I processed all correspondence, organization affiliation papers, as well as the writings. Ultimately, I completed section II: S.L. Smith papers. I also was able to make adjustments to Section I: Julius Rosenwald Fund. So...sections I and II are processed! So far the archival boxes count is over 55. I estimate the entire processed collection will round off to between 70-75 archival boxes. Next week, I will begin to process section III: Collected, which includes a variety of newspaper clippings, reports, printed materials, and writings not authored by Smith (simply collected by Smith). I sorted this last section and look forward to processing it.

In addition, I am still working on presentation materials for the Julius Rosenwald Conference and the Society of the American Archivists. I have posted new pictures.

Black Thought 2.0 Conference at Duke

For those of you who don't know, Duke University is a holding a conference on new media and black studies today and tomorrow (April 6 and 7). The conference will be streamed and tweeted live (#BT2Duke). More information on the conference is here.

Krystal

Week 30 at The Mayme A. Clayton Library & Museum

There were a few events that occurred last week at MCLM.  The Hollywood Chapter of (The National Organization for Women) held a Feminist Art http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif Extravaganza.  The event featured an silent art auction, live musical performances, an enthralling poetry reading and a female break dancer. On Thursday, MCLM also welcomed the World Ventures Travel Group.  The event was for about 25 members of the touring group. 

The head archivist at MCLM, Cara Adams gave two tours last week. A student from John's Hopkins was amongst one of the tour groups.  The student and I previously corresponded via email discussing MCLM's digitization initiatives.  MCLM has some of its items digitized but it is my personal belief that digitization on a mass scale must occur as part of a grant project.  Unfortunately, there are not many grants that support basic digitization, but there are a plethora of funding opportunities that support innovative digitization methods.

I have continued pushing inventories into the database and updating the finding aids. I have a group of volunteers separating the photograph collection into appropriate subject headings. MCLM's photograph collection is quite diverse, the subject categories we are assigning to the photographs are; entertainment, disciplines, politics, Los Angeles ,sports and descendants of Mayme A. Clayton.  After I began working on the photograph project I began to understand the importance of labeling images before donating them to an archive, library or museum.  Beyond providing a name it is necessary to detail what the person in the image did (e.g. career, interests, goals etc.), this is vital provenance information that expedites the cataloging process.

Week Thirty at the Maryland State Archives

Last week, I spoke to an 8th grade social studies class about importance of archives and what we do at the Study of the Legacy of Slavery. They had just completed projects for History Day and so were somewhat familiar with primary sources and archival institutions. Since they were about to start a unit on the Civil War, my presentation served as a nice introduction to some of the themes that they would be learning about. I had a lot of fun speaking to them and was impressed by their dissection of the documents that we examined and their questions about recordkeeping and African American history.

The State of Maryland will soon be transitioning to Google Apps, and I am on the early adopters team at the Archives. I’ll get a couple of weeks head start on using Google Apps, so that I can answer questions from others in my department and help them when it’s time for them to make the transition. It’s quite fascinating to see how much cloud-based applications have become standard in such a short time.

I also continued researching Liberian emigrants from Maryland. I’m very dependent upon the Liberian censuses for information about settlers in the years after they emigrated. It’s quite interesting to look at the differences between Liberian and U.S. census records. It does not appear that maintaining robust vital and census records was a priority for the young colony. This presents quite a challenge when tracing people, particularly women, throughout their lives.

‘Til next week,

Krystal

March 26th - 30th, 2012 at Fisk University Franklin Library

Hello all! What a busy week! I managed to complete the correspondence of the 1940s, sort through the 1950s, and begin processing the correspondence of the 1950s. The correspondence lead up to 1956; Smith passed away September 9, 1956. I found a form for Smith's entry in "Who's Who in American Education," which they formally invited him to submit. The form provided a lot more information about Smith, professionally and personally. The personal information is extremely helpful because his collection was missing that. It also explains how the Rosenwald Fund built over 5,000 schools and 10,000 libraries in the south. I have set goals for the amount of work to complete next week (like always) including completing the 1950s correspondence. That is a major section of the Smith papers (section II of the entire collection).

Also this week, I continued to work on my materials for the National Rosenwald School conference this coming June where I will present on a panel discussion concerning HBCU archives as well as a poster session documenting the S.L. Smith collection at Fisk University. I am also focusing on getting my materials together for SAA in August. Lastly, I am constantly working to improve/enhance my grant writing skills as this is a crucial skills to have for those who desire to be involved in academia and/or archival administration.