DPLA and Pop Up Archive partner to make audiovisual collections across the U.S. searchable

If you’re interested in participating in this opportunity, make sure to cc: mcalists@uga.edu when you inquire with PopUp Archive at edison@popuparchive.com.

From DPLA’s press release, also available here:

Oakland, Calif. & Boston, MA — Libraries across the United States house tens of millions of audio and video recordings, a rich and vibrant body of cultural history and content for the public, scholars, and researchers — but the recordings are virtually impossible to search. The Digital Public Library of America is partnering with Pop Up Archive to offer discounted services to the DPLA network. DPLA Hubs and their partners will be able to take advantage of this discounted rate to make it possible for anyone to search and pinpoint exact search terms and phrases within audiovisual collections.

DPLA already provides a catalog of over eleven million records from libraries across the U.S., including many audiovisual records. Through new service offerings available exclusively to the DPLA’s 1,600+ partner organizations, Pop Up Archive will automatically transcribe, timestamp, and generate keywords for the audio collections.

“As a country, we’re creating so much more digital media with every day that passes. If 300 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute, for libraries to keep up with the pace of audiovisual content creation, they need practices that can radically scale to meet the pace of creation,” said Anne Wootton, CEO of Pop Up Archive.

“Our goal is to connect the widest audience with the greatest amount of openly available materials in our nation’s cultural heritage institutions, and audiovisual material has been both critical to our growing collection and less searchable than other forms,” said Dan Cohen, DPLA’s Executive Director. “We’re delighted that we can work with Pop Up Archive to provide this valuable additional service to our constantly expanding network of libraries, archives, and museums.”

Since it was founded in 2012, Pop Up Archive has fostered partnerships with dozens of partners at libraries, archives, and public media organizations to index over 1,000,000 minutes of recorded sound, including over 10,000 audio items preserved at the Internet Archive (archive.org). Pop Up Archive was created in response to the need to create access to audiovisual collections through cataloging, search, and public engagement at scale, in spite of a general lack of knowledge and technical capability for handling audiovisual content. Most recently, Pop Up Archive has embarked on a project to bring full-text search and keyword tagging to the American Archive of Public Broadcasting, a collaboration between WGBH and the Library of Congress to identify, preserve, and make accessible as much as possible a digital archive of 40,000 hours of public media dating back to the late 1940s and selected by more than 100 public media stations and organizations with little consistent descriptive data.

The Digital Public Library of America strives to contain the full breadth of human expression, from the written word, to works of art and culture, to records of America’s heritage, to the efforts and data of science. Since launching in April 2013, it has aggregated over 11 million items from over 1,600 institutions. The DPLA hubs model is establishing a national network by building off of state/regional digital libraries and myriad large digital libraries in the US, bringing together digitized and born-digital content from across the country into a single access point for end users, and an open platform for developers. The model supports or establishes local collaborations, professional networks, metadata globalization, and long-term sustainability. It ensures that even the smallest institutions have an on-ramp to participation in DPLA.

Pop Up Archive is funded by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Institute for Museum and Library Services. Pop Up Archive’s partner collections include the American Archive of Public Broadcasting, the Studs Terkel Radio Archive from the WFMT Radio Network, and tens of thousands of hours of audio from across the United States collected by StoryCorps, the New York Public Library, and numerous public media, storytelling, and oral history organizations. Learn more at www.popuparchive.org.

The Digital Public Library of America is generously supported by a number of foundations and government agencies, including the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, an anonymous donor, the Arcadia Fund, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the Whiting Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. To find out more about DPLA, visit http://dp.la/.

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Native American Heritage Month 2015

Land grant from Cherokee land lottery, Clarke County, Georgia, 1832. Cherokee Land Lottery certificate for lot #892, consisting of 40 acres, in the 17th district, section 2 drawn by Solomon Edwards of Jennings District, Clarke County. Cecil Haralson Collection, Smyrna Public Library.
Land grant from Cherokee land lottery, Clarke County, Georgia, 1832. Cherokee Land Lottery certificate for lot #892, consisting of 40 acres, in the 17th district, section 2 drawn by Solomon Edwards of Jennings District, Clarke County. Cecil Haralson Collection, Smyrna Public Library.

On October 30th, President Obama proclaimed November as National Native American Heritage Month.

According to the National Congress of American Indians, Native American Heritage Month “is a time to celebrate rich and diverse cultures, traditions, and histories and to acknowledge the important contributions of Native people. Heritage Month is also an opportune time to educate the general public about tribes, to raise a general awareness about the unique challenges Native people have faced both historically and in the present, and the ways in which tribal citizens have worked to conquer these challenges.”

An example of those challenges took place during the early 1830s, when the Georgia legislature passed laws that nullified existing Cherokee law and government in order to take over Cherokee land and present it to white Georgia farmers through a land grant lottery system.  You can read more about the Georgia land lottery system and the Cherokee Removal in the New Georgia Encyclopedia.

 

In the DLG, the Cecil Haralson Collection from the Smyrna Public Library, and the Cherokee Regional Library System Collection include examples of numerous Cherokee land grants.  The Cherokee Indians Relocation Papers collection from our partners at the Georgia Historical Society provides more information about Cherokee displacement and relocation.

 

Cherokee Indian relocation records, 1815-1837. Cherokee Indians Relocation Papers, Georgia Historical Society.
Cherokee Indian relocation records, 1815-1837.
Cherokee Indians Relocation Papers, Georgia Historical Society.

The Cherokee Indians Relocation Papers collection consists of correspondence, a power of attorney, and statements by The Rising Fawn and The Flute (or Old Turkey), two Cherokee men. The correspondence includes a letter from Joseph McMill to John C. Calhoun, Secretary of War, regarding the removal of native Americans to Arkansas and to the Agency; another letter from McMinn to Calhoun nominating sites to attract merchants and giving a history of the county and its towns; a letter from John Coffee to John H. Eaton, Secretary of War, regarding the boundary line between Georgia and the Cherokee Nation and commenting on a number of people, including Chief McIntosh, as well as discussing outrageous intrusions on Native American territory and their rights on the frontier; a letter from Wilson Lumpkin written from New Echota, withdrawing his name as a candidate for Electors of President and Vice-President and stating that he cannot serve in this position while acting as Commissioner for settling claims under the Cherokee treaty; and a letter from John Ridge to General Nat. Smith, Superintendent of Internal Revenue, written from New Echota. The Rising Fawn’s statement, 1829, is regarding the boundary line between Creeks and Cherokees. The Flute’s statement delineates the line between the Creeks and Cherokees as agreed upon at the “old treaty ground” in the presence of U.S. Commissioners. The collection also includes two volumes. The first volume is a record of claims, 1836-1838, kept by Wilson Lumpkin and John Kennedy, Commissioners appointed by the President under the Cherokee Treaty. It includes 423 claims made by the Cherokee Indians of property taken from them. The second volume contains an inventory and sale of property belonging to Native Americans in Floyd County, Georgia. Also included in this collection is a Power of Attorney from James Monroe, Secretary of State, to George Graham, giving him power to receipt for dividends and interest on all stocks in the name of the President in trust for the Seneca Indians. It is signed by Monroe and bears the War Office seal.

We hope that you find these resources aid your observance of Native American Heritage Month 2015.

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