Week 12 at The Mayme A. Clayton Library & Museum

The inventory of all identified photos is complete! MCLM’s collection of processed photos consists of 13,485 photographs that range in date from the mid 1800’s to the early 2000’s. These photographs account for 2,579 folders of different people and places. Successfully completing this task allowed me to utilize my organizational and people management skills.

Every fourth Saturday of the month MCLM hosts a movie event called Black Talkies on Parade featuring a vintage African American film.  This month the movie was The World, The Flesh and The Devil featuring Harry Belafonte.  In preparation for this event I helped put together a one case exhibit.  The items that were pulled for the exhibit pertained to Harry Belafonte and Black Hollywood. 

Week Twelve at the Alabama Department of Archives and History

Hello and greetings from Montgomery! I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday!

Here at the Alabama Department of Archives and History, I am still inventorying the Charles Morgan collection and scanning the remaining negatives from the Peppler collection, in addition to the three programs I am working on. At the moment, the tentative dates for these programs are January, February, March, and April,  so it looks like I will have a very busy Spring! I really don't have anymore to add, except that next week I will be attending a photo preservation workshop at Trenholm College.

Until next week!!!!

Cheylon Woods
IMLS Fellow
Alabama Department of Archives and History

Week Twelve at the Maryland State Archives

Last week I gave my first presentation to a class of undergraduates about the Legacy of Slavery in Maryland project and using the records of the Maryland State Archives. The students, history majors at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, were very engaged and asked interesting questions. The professor appreciated that I showed them (digitized) primary sources, something that even history majors don’t always have a chance to work with frequently. I spent the rest of the week record stripping U.S. census records and Maryland State Colonization Society records for the mdslavery.net database. My work with the Colonization Society focuses on two counties, Kent and Queen Anne’s, of Maryland's Eastern Shore, a heavily agricultural area where slavery maintained a stronghold even while the institution was phasing out in other (less agricultural) areas of the state. I've come across only a few manumissions in Kent County but haven't yet encountered any emigrants from Kent County to Liberia, and I look forward into delving into the reasons why. 

Krystal

Week 11 at the Mayme A. Clayton Library & Museum

Lately I’ve been working on inventorying MCLM’s extensive collection of sheet music.  Inventorying is a step that occurs at MCLM before processing.  This is a necessary step because the museum needs to establish control over each item in the collection. The Society of American Archivists defines inventorying as “A listing of the contents and condition of a collection made before processing.”  The items that are being inventoried are the aforementioned sheet music, photographs, art work, and movie posters. 

This week I also gave a presentation to The California African American Genealogical Society.  My presentation went over preservation practices for paper and photographs. CAAGS was very receptive and I was excited to field their questions. 

Lastly,  be sure to look out for MCLM in Carter Magazine, we are going to be a featured institution!

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

Week Eleven at the Maryland State Archives

Last week was pretty low key. I continued record stripping of the manumission records in the Maryland State Colonization Society and prepared a presentation to give to undergraduate history majors at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. I also attended a meeting of the Maryland Hall of Records Commission, an advisory body to MSA.

While prepping for my presentation, I came across a curious committal notice in our database. A suspected runaway slave, “a Negro man, who calls himself Mary Ann Waters,” was detained, leading the sheriff to advertise a committal notice in newspapers. The committal notice describes a well-dressed person wearing garments of satin, velvet, and fine wool, who had “been hiring out … as a woman for the last three years.” The only other record linked to this person in our database is for a release from jail four months after the committal. This advertisement raises some fascinating, and likely unanswerable, questions in the field of gender studies.

Week Eleven at Alabama Department of Archives and History

Hello and greetings from Montgomery!!!!

This week has been full of meetings and follow up phone calls! There has been so much going on around here as of late, with the planning meetings,  budget meetings and board meetings, but it is always wonderful to see progress in a state archive, especially in light of the current budget situation. As always, I am still diligently working on my three workshops for the year and I am also helping a couple of local organizations plan oral history and ethnography projects, as well as preparing a National Register Nomination, a museum interpretation plan, and inventorying the Charles Morgan Collection.

earlier this week the radio interview I did aired on local radio stations and online. This interview was done by the Alabama Arts Radio group. I was also interviewed by for the Archive's newsletter, which will come out in January.

For more information about my work in Alabama, visit:  http://cheylonkwoods.wordpress.com

Here is the link for the radio interview if you are interested: http://arts.state.al.us/actc/1/listserverindividual/20111113cheylonwoods.htm

Well, that's all for now.

Have a wonderful week and explore your surroundings!!!!

Cheylon Woods
IMLS Fellow
Alabama Department of Archives and History

Week Ten at Amistad

Last week was all about processing and planning of future projects at the Center. I continued to work diligently on processing the John O’Neal papers (now approximately 37 linear feet) and participated in Amistad Research Center’s Staff Planning Day. We discussed our organizational goals for 2012, including innovative and effective utilization of the repository’s resources to make them available for use and how to help engage and empower new and existing researchers. I also look forward to curating an exhibition for the first quarter of 2012 and other digitization projects.

Until next week!

Felicia