Author Archives: cboyce

This article originally appeared online in InfoDocket, in Library Journal:

The Library of Congress will be the new home of the Rosa Parks Collection, Librarian of Congress James H. Billington announced today. The collection will be at the Library on a 10-year loan from the Howard G. Buffett Foundation.

The collection comprises approximately 1,500 items including personal correspondence and photographs, autobiographical notes, letters from presidents, her Presidential Medal of Freedom and Congressional Gold Medal, additional honors and awards, clothing and furniture, and 200 drawings by schoolchildren and hundreds of greeting cards from individuals thanking her for her inspirational role in the civil rights movement.

Items from the collection will be incorporated in spring of 2015 into the new exhibition “The Civil Rights Act of 1964: A Long Struggle for Freedom,” which opens Sept. 10.

In addition, the Library will digitize the documents and visual materials and make them widely available through its website.

“Rosa Parks is an iconic figure in the American civil rights movement, the very definition of the quiet power of an individual to inspire action in others,” Billington said. “This collection joins our unparalleled holdings of African-American materials in a public institution.”

Howard G. Buffett, chairman and CEO of the Howard G. Buffett Foundation, said, “My goal was always to ensure this historic collection would be made available for the public’s benefit so that as many people as possible can learn about Rosa Parks and the sacrifices she made to support the civil rights movement. I believe that partnering with the Library of Congress to display these items in our nation’s capital is the best way to achieve that goal.”

The Rosa Parks Collection joins such important civil rights materials at the Library of Congress as the papers of Thurgood Marshall, A. Philip Randolph, Bayard Rustin, Roy Wilkins and the records of both the NAACP and the National Urban League. The collection becomes part of the larger story of our nation, available alongside the presidential papers of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Abraham Lincoln, and the papers of many others who fought for equality, including Susan B. Anthony and Patsy Mink.

Parks’ refusal to give up her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama, bus to a white passenger on Dec. 1, 1955, led to the Montgomery Bus Boycott, a seminal event in the U.S. civil rights movement.

This article originally appeared in the Delaware Valley Archivists Group:

Through the generous support of a grant from the Library Services and Technology Act, over 800 prints, photographs, and pieces of ephemera documenting the African American experience will be digitized and added to the Library Company’s digital collections catalog ImPAC. A collection of national importance, the graphics depict African American life, community, work, art, and political and social activism from the early American period to the early 20th century.

Views of prominent Philadelphia African American churches like Mother Bethel, political cartoons addressing the effect of slavery on the young nation, and commemorative prints recognizing early civil rights victories following the Civil War are just a few of the visual materials being reproduced. The graphic files with full descriptions will be accessible in ImPAC for research onsite and remotely by the summer of 2014.  The material will augment and complement our nearly 50 existing digital collections, including 18th- and 19th-cenutry ephemera, Philadelphia commercial lithographs, and views by early Philadelphia photographers.

Our African Americana graphics have continually been some of our most requested visual materials by our readers, and we are delighted to provide further access to this tremendous historical resource.

For sneak previews of the graphics to be included, please follow our progress through Twitter, #lcpprints.

This article originally appeared on Washington University in St. Louis Newsroom:

Photographer Mark Regester captured this image of protesters Aug. 17 during the height of unrest in Ferguson. This photograph is now part of Washington University Libraries’ online repository “Documenting Ferguson.”

Washington University Libraries, the library system of Washington University in St. Louis, is collecting and preserving photographs, video and other content for the digital repository “Documenting Ferguson.” Free and accessible to all, the online collection will serve as a lasting source of information regarding the Aug. 9 death of 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., and the ensuing protests and unrest.
Washington University librarians are accepting images, video, audio, artwork and stories related to the memorials, community meetings, rallies and protests occurring in Ferguson and the surrounding areas. Donors must be able to demonstrate clear copyright of materials.

“We want to have a place where anyone can deposit material,” said Rudolph Clay, head of Library Diversity Initiatives and Outreach Services and African & African-American Studies librarian. “There is a lot of content out there, and much of it is available on the Internet. But what happens over time is that a lot of that material disappears, and something you saw today might not be there in a week. We are making a commitment to preserve that material.”

To learn more or to submit material, visit digital.wustl.edu/ferguson.

More and more, the modern library chronicles history as it happens, Clay said. The sheer volume of material available has increased exponentially, as has the ability to share it quickly. But Clay said “Documenting Ferguson” will be more than a clearinghouse. As the repository grows, librarians will provide links to books, scholarly articles and other materials.

“That’s what libraries do best — provide context,” Clay said. “As a library, we can connect users to content, whether it be newspapers or datasets, that deepen understanding and lead to meaningful solutions.”

Another example of a photograph in the archive: Protesters make signs demanding justice in the shooting death of 18-year old Michael Brown.

This article originally appeared in InfoDocket, in Library Journal:

LYRASIS and its partners, the Conservation Center for Art and Historic Artifacts (CCAHA), HBCU Library Alliance, Image Permanence Institute (IPI), and University of Delaware (UD) Art Conservation Department, have selected five Historically Black Colleges & Universities (HBCUs) to participate in the third HBCU Preservation Project. The 28-month project, funded with a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, addresses the preservation needs of special photographic and magnetic media collections and enables increased use of this content for instruction and research.

• The Atlanta University Center – Robert Woodruff Library (GA),
• Fisk University (TN)
• Hampton University (VA)
• Johnson C. Smith University (NC)
• Tuskegee University (AL)

These HBCUs hold extensive and important collections that document the African American experience from Reconstruction through the Civil Rights Era in photographs and magnetic media (e.g., audio cassette tapes, video tapes, and reel-to-reel tape recordings). Access to much of the content in these collections has been limited or non-existent. Each of these institutions will receive grants of up to $50,000 to fund preservation and access efforts for photographic and/or magnetic media special collections. This may include: repair, cleaning, and re-housing of materials; reformatting of selected collection items; and/or consulting to improve environmental conditions for special collections. During the project, library and archives staff will conduct outreach to faculty and other HBCUs, as well as speak at professional conferences in order to promote use and awareness of the contents of their collections. All five HBCUs will also employ student interns to work on project materials to cultivate an interest among undergraduates in careers in librarianship as well as archival conservation and environmental science.

“I am excited to continue this important work by collaborating with these five institutions and build on the momentum from the first two projects,” stated Steve Eberhardt, HBCU Preservation Project Coordinator at LYRASIS. “This project will increase the impact that these formerly inaccessible, yet extremely valuable and unique collections will have on scholarly research and the documenting of U.S. history.””LYRASIS is honored to be a part of this effort in preserving and sharing this invaluable and culturally rich information with the larger community,” stated Kate Nevins, Executive Director of LYRASIS. “This project is yet another example of our commitment to working with libraries to increase access to content by leveraging digitization, technology and expertise of a diverse and collaborative group of information professionals.”

Kanopy celebrates the role and achievements of African Americans in U.S. history through film. Our entire Black History Month collection is now available to watch here.

Little White Lie What defines our identity, our family of origin or the family that raises us? Lacey Schwartz discovers that answering those questions means understanding her parents’ stories as well as her own. Little White Lie is a personal documentary about the legacy of family secrets, denial, and redemption.

American Denial: Truth is Deeper than Black & White In his 1944 study of the ‘Negro Problem’ in America, Gunnar Myrdal posed a simple, disturbing question: How can Americans espouse a belief in liberty, equality and equal opportunity while enabling openly racist Jim Crow practices against black citizens?

The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow Offers a comprehensive look at race relations in America between the Civil War and the Civil Rights Movement. The story of the struggle during Jim Crow is told through the eyes of those who experienced it: W.E.B. Du Bois, Booker T. Washington, Ida B. Wells as well as everyday local heroes like “Pap” Singleton.

P.S. I Can’t Breathe (Black Lives Matter) On December 13th, 2014 a multicultural blanket of people united worldwide demanding justice for Eric Garner, a man killed by a Staten Island police officer. P.S. I Can’t Breathe provides a raw, uncensored glimpse into the Millions March NYC immediately AFTER a grand jury deliberated to not indict that same officer.

T’Ain’t Nobody’s Bizness Excavates the hidden sexualities of Black female entertainers who reigned over the nascent blues recording industry of the 1920s. Unlike the male-dominated jazz scene, early blues provided a space for women to take the lead and model an autonomy that was remarkable for women.

The New Black This documentary makes a compelling case that the fight for LGBT rights in Black communities is an extension of the Black Freedom Struggle. It takes viewers into the pews and onto the streets and provides a seat at the kitchen table as it tells the story of the historic fight to win marriage equality in Maryland.

Bridging the Divide: Tom Bradley – Politics of Race Thirty-five years before Barack Obama was elected President, the question of race and the possibility of bridging racial and ethnic barriers was tested in an overlooked and untold story in American politics: The 1973 election of Tom Bradley, the first African American mayor of a major U.S. city with a massive white majority.

Emancipation Road The story of African Slavery in America started with the first permanent English Colony in the 17th century growing into  and ended with the Civil War. But those two hundred and fifty years of struggle were just the beginning. The beginning of a journey down the long Emancipation Road.

Faubourg Treme: The Untold Story of Black New Orleans Long ago during slavery, Faubourg Treme was home to a large, prosperous, and artistically flourishing community of free black people. Here black and white, free or enslaved people co-habitated, collaborated, and clashed to create much of what defines New Orleans.

The Barber of Birmingham: Foot Soldier of the Civil Rights Movement 85 year-old barber and life-long civil rights activist James Armstrong looks back on the early days of the civil rights movement and links those struggles with a previously unimaginable dream — the election of the first African-American president.

American Experience: Freedom Summer In the hot and deadly summer of 1964, the nation could not turn away from Mississippi. Over ten memorable weeks known as the Freedom Summer, 700+ student volunteers, organizers and local African Americans joined in a historic effort to shatter the foundations of white supremacy in the face of segregation.

The Infamous T Homeless, bullied, and failing out of high school, 18-year-old Jonathon is ready for a big change. After a LGBT Host Home Program matches him up with a queer host family,he is struck by the culture-clash and haunted by a lifetime of homophobia and poverty. Jonathon soon realizes that home is more than four walls.

Anita: Speaking Truth to Power Against a backdrop of sex, politics, and race, Anita reveals the intimate story of a woman who spoke truth to power. Directed by Academy Award®-winning filmmaker Freida Mock, the film is both a celebration of Anita Hill’s legacy and a rare glimpse into her private life with friends and family.

Freedom March Features the San Francisco civil rights protest march of May 26, 1963 in support of the Birmingham, Alabama Campaign against segregation led by Martin Luther King, Jr.  Fifteen thousand people marched in response to a call by S.F. religious and labor organizations, just four months before the Birmingham Church bombing.

Have you gotten hooked on the latest adult coloring trend? Do you need a break from the semester already? Check out these libraries taking part in #ColorOurCollections, who have made available free coloring books. Color in your favorites and share them with other using the above hashtag. Download copies from:

• The New York Public Library (PDF)
• The Bodleian Library (PDF)
• The Smithsonian Libraries – (PDF)
• The Biodiversity Heritage Library
• The Folger Library
• The Huntington
• The New York Academy of Medicine
• The Open Library
• The Digital Public Library of America
• The Dittrick Medical History Center Rare Book Collections, Case Western Reserve University (PDF)
• James Madison University (PDF)
• The Wangensteen Historical Library, University of Minnesota – @umnbiomedlib
• Special Collections and Rare Books, University of Missouri Libraries (PDF)

You can find a list of other participants on Twitter. The image above comes from The Huntington. Happy coloring.

This article orginally appeared on UMD Right Now:

UMD to help transform the future of digital scholarship and research on African American history and culture 

A $1.25 million grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation will fund research, education and training at the intersections of digital humanities and African American studies at the University of Maryland. The grant will help to prepare a diverse community of scholars and students whose work will both broaden the reach of the digital humanities in African American history and cultural studies and enrich humanities research with new methods, archives and tools.

The grant, Synergies among Digital Humanities and African American History and Culture: An integrated research and training model, awarded to theCollege of Arts and Humanities (ARHU) and co-directed by the Arts and Humanities Center for Synergy (Center for Synergy) and theMaryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities (MITH), will support a faculty project director, postdoctoral fellows, graduate students and staff in ARHU and the University Libraries. It also includes money to run workshops, to deliver public programming, to digitize materials from significant archival collections, to support faculty research and to integrate digital work into a number of innovative undergraduate curricular initiatives including UMD’s First-Year Innovation & Research Experience (FIRE)program, a new initiative to expose first-year undergraduates to rich research experiences, mentorship and social activities that are known to impact academic success.

“UMD’s project enhances the role of digital tools in African American studies, as well as the contributions of the field to digital discourse while also making a commitment to widening the reach of the digital humanities both within academic communities and outside the walls of the university,” said Mariët Westermann, vice president of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

The College of Arts and Humanities has made serious investments in digital humanities and African American culture and history, hiring faculty clusters in both digital humanities and African American literature and history, adding to the strong community of digital humanist and African Americanist scholars already spread across the campus’s many colleges.

“This venture could not be more timely or important,” said University of Maryland President Wallace D. Loh. “It builds on our vital strengths in the humanities, increasing access to important source material on race and culture in America, while creating a new generation of technology-savvy researchers.”

The thematic focus of the project, African American labor, migration and artistic expression, incorporates the broad intellectual interests shared by a large group of prominent scholars, students and staff on campus, and represents some of the campus’s greatest strengths. Specific research projects will be undertaken in collaboration with The Center for the History of the New America, which houses the Archive of Immigrant Voices; The David C. Driskell Center for the Study of Visual Art and Culture of African Americans and the African Diaspora with its collection of over 50,000 objects that chronicle the development and understanding of the study of African American visual culture; and the UMD libraries’ recently acquired George Meany Memorial AFL-CIO Archive, a preeminent research collection for the study of American labor history.

At UMD, digital humanities as a recognized field can be traced back to the founding of MITH in 1999, which has grown to international acclaim due to its transformational research at the intersection of technology and humanistic inquiry. The project will apply MITH’s innovative digital humanities incubator model to introduce scholars, students and cultural heritage professionals to new modes of research through a series of workshops, tutorials and detailed consultations. Strong in traditional arts and humanities fields as well, the university is also home to the Center for Synergy, the new humanities center at Maryland, which will provide an interdisciplinary bridge between departments and centers and facilitate the public facing events, curricular initiatives and websites connected with the project.

“This ambitious project enables scholars in the region to leverage the remarkable resources we have on campus,” said Bonnie Thornton Dill, professor ofWomen’s Studies, dean of the College of Arts and Humanities, and principal investigator of the Mellon grant. “To explore the histories of the African American population in the U.S., scholars will work with the rich and diverse data sets and archives found in these interdisciplinary centers.”

These resources together offer a new lens and framework for thinking and teaching about Black life in America, specifically investigating the way in which migration has shaped the history of Black people, as both forced and free laborers, and linking those experiences to visual and material culture.

“Students and faculty researchers might investigate questions about labor activism among Caribbean Americans or explore visual representations of work as they examine the relationship of Black artists and the labor movement,” Ms. Thornton Dill said.

For more information, visit the College of Arts and Humanitieswebsite.

This article originally appeared on InfoDocket, from Library Journal:

On the 150th anniversary of “Juneteenth” (June 19), the oldest known celebration commemorating the end of slavery in the United States, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) and FamilySearch announced the digital release of 4 million Freedmen’s Bureau historical records. In addition, a nationwide effort seeking volunteers to transcribe the handwritten entries has begun.

A collaboration with FamilySearch, the largest genealogy organization in the world, the Afro-American Historical and Genealogical Society and the California African American Museum, the Freedmen’s Bureau Project makes the records of freed slaves available and accessible by taking the raw records, extracting the information and indexing them to make them searchable online. Once indexed, it will be possible to find an ancestor by going to the site, entering a name and discovering a family member.

The Freedmen’s Bureau was organized near the end of the American Civil War to assist newly freed slaves in 15 states and the District of Columbia. From 1865 to 1872, the Bureau opened schools, managed hospitals, rationed food and clothing and even solemnized marriages. In the process, it gathered priceless handwritten personal information, including marriage and family information, military service, banking, school, hospital and property records on potentially 4 million African Americans. The records are the property of the National Archives and Records Administration, where they have been carefully preserved and protected for decades.

The goal is to have the records fully indexed in time for the opening of the National Museum of African American History and Culture in fall 2016. It only takes a little training for anyone with a computer and Internet access to join the project. Technical assistance will be available at FamilySearch centers nationwide.

For more information about the effort or to volunteer visit this page.

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About Gary Price

Gary Price (gprice@mediasourceinc.com) is a librarian, writer, consultant, and frequent conference speaker based in the Washington D.C. metro area. Before launching INFOdocket, Price and Shirl Kennedy were the founders and senior editors at ResourceShelf and DocuTicker for 10 years. From 2006-2009 he was Director of Online Information Services at Ask.com, and is currently a contributing editor at Search Engine Land.