Tag: African Americans

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Augusta-Richmond County Public Library and Coastal Heritage Society receive Competitive Digitization grants from the DLG

  • The Augusta-Richmond County Public Library and Coastal Heritage Society are recipients of the third set of grants awarded in a program intended to broaden partner participation in the Digital Library of Georgia (DLG). The DLG solicited proposals for historic digitization projects in a statewide call, and applicants submitted proposals for projects with a cost of up to $5,000. The projects will be administered by DLG staff who will perform digitization and descriptive services on textual (not including newspapers), graphic, and audio-visual materials.Preference in the selection process was given to proposals from institutions that had not yet collaborated with the DLG. The Coastal Heritage Society is a new partner for the DLG.

    The recipients and their projects include:

  • Augusta-Richmond County Public Library (Augusta, Ga.)

Digitization and delivery of the Augusta Chinese-American Oral History Project, which includes twenty-six oral history interviews of individuals who either immigrated to Augusta from China, and/or grew up in Augusta during the early to the middle twentieth century. The interviews were gathered in 2011 and 2012 by members of the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association of Augusta (CCBA). Anyone interested in studying immigration, minority cultures, economic history, race relations, or the establishment of Chinese-American organizations in the South will find the interviews informative.

  • Coastal Heritage Society (Savannah, Ga.)

Digitization and delivery of a Civil War period ledger spanning the years 1860 to 1864 that documents work conducted at the Carpentry Shop, within the Savannah Shops complex of the Central Rail Road and Banking Company of Georgia. Sections of the ledger record the tasks of specific workers, including employees, laborers, and African American workers. The Carpentry Shop ledger is a snapshot in time at one of the busiest industrial railroad complexes in the South just prior to and during the American Civil War.

Sheila McAlister, director of the Digital Library of Georgia notes: “Thanks to our review partners from Georgia Humanities, Georgia Public Library Service, Georgia Arts Council, Georgia Historic Records Advisory Council, and DLG partner volunteers, we’ve selected another strong slate of digital projects that reflect the diversity of Georgia. The collections document the Chinese-American community in Augusta and Georgia’s railroads during the Civil War and will be of interest to a wide audience.”

About the Augusta-Richmond County Public Library System

The Augusta-Richmond County Public Library System (ARCPLS) is a public library system serving more than 250,000 county residents. As a member of Public Information Network for Electronic Services (PINES), a program of the Georgia Public Library Service covering 53 library systems in 143 Georgia counties, ARCPLS supports any resident in the PINES network and provides access to over 10 million books. ARCPLS has a collection size of over 316,000 with a circulation of more than 478,000 annually. ARCPLS facilitates programs and classes to educate and entertain all ages at no cost. In addition to being a vital meeting place where the community can gather, explore new worlds, and share ideas and values, ARCPLS is a community hub and a critical anchor for our residents and neighbors. With a committed and diverse staff, ARCPLS continues to bring innovative and adaptive information and technology to its patrons.

About the Coastal Heritage Society (Savannah, Ga.)

The mission of Coastal Heritage Society is to provide educational experiences for the public through the preservation and presentation of the historic resources of coastal Georgia and adjacent regions. Coastal Heritage Society is a 501(c)3 nonprofit corporation founded in 1975 which operates five historic museums for visitors to explore. These include the Georgia State Railroad Museum, the Savannah Children’s Museum, the Savannah History Museum, Old Fort Jackson, and the Pin Point Heritage Museum.

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Preserving and Sharing Spelman Archival Treasures

A faded page of an 1885 catalog. A photograph of young black women wearing academic regalia and nurses uniforms in the late 19th century. Newspaper articles detailing student activism in Atlanta and across the nation in the 1960s and 1970s. These are just a few of the unique items in Spelman College’s Archives. These materials and numerous other archival treasures are now accessible online thanks to the partnership between the Spelman Archives, the Atlanta University Center Robert W. Woodruff Library Archives Research Center, and the Digital Library of Georgia, initiated by the “Our Story”: Digitizing Publications and Photographs of the Historically Black Atlanta University Center Institutions project, administered by the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR)’s Digitizing Hidden Special Collections and Archives awards program.

Founded in 1881 as the Atlanta Baptist Female Seminary, Spelman has a long history focused on educating black women. The Spelman Archives is the official repository for the college’s history, and collects administrative records, departmental and program records, publications, photographs and other material relating to the history and administration of the College. As a component of the Women’s Research and Resource Center, the Archives also houses special collections by and about women of the African Diaspora, with a particular focus in the areas of feminism, activism, and social justice.

Spelman College publications and photographs are two of the most heavily used collections among various researchers, since they provide written and visual documentation of campus life and activities at Spelman. The Archives contain more than 500 volumes of campus publications including yearbooks, student newspapers, annual reports, and course catalogs. A particular highlight is the official college magazine, The Spelman Messenger, which was established in 1885 and is still currently printed. It features articles written by faculty, students, and staff, on various topics–alumnae news, campus visitors, health and wellness, history, and religion–and often includes photographs and local business advertisements. The Spelman Photographic Collection contains over 30,000 images that depict life at Spelman and beyond over the course of the college’s 138-year history. The formats include photographic prints, glass plate negatives, slides, scrapbooks, and panoramas. A number of these images are examples of 19th century photographic processes, such as albumen prints and daguerreotypes. The images are rich and diverse in content: early campus architecture, campus events, student organizations, Spelman alumnae and their families; missionary schools established by alumnae in the Congo; the black community in Atlanta; noted campus guests such as Langston Hughes and Shirley Chisholm.

Prior to the partnership with DLG and AUC Woodruff Library, none of the publications or images had been digitized as part of a large-scale project. The Spelman Archives serves a large constituency of researchers, and the staff wanted to ensure that our users had broad access to these unique collections, regardless of their location. As part of the CLIR grant, several key publications–The Spelman Messenger, the student newspapers the Campus Mirror and The Spelman Spotlight, yearbooks, and the catalogs–are now available for researchers to read, search and download. Additionally, over five hundred Spelman photographs are now available, depicting commencement, presidents, campus architecture, and performances from the Drama and Dance department. The DLG provides exemplary leadership in providing metadata and digitizing the newspapers and images. My particular favorite part of the grant has been the Drama and Dance photographs! Many of these have never been seen, and are exquisite in their composition and detail. It has been very refreshing to have regular meetings with DLG and AUC staff about project goals and staff, and to have a shared vision of open access to these important collections. Now faculty, students, staff, and external community members can utilize these materials for course instruction, genealogical research, or pure intellectual curiosity. The Spelman Archives have amazing research collections documenting the education and lived experiences of black women nationally and internationally, and is a destination for any research with a study and passion for black women’s history. Through partnering with the DLG and AUC Woodruff Library, Spelman’s Archives can facilitate more equitable online access to these vitally rich collections and ensure the long term preservation of the institutional memory and community history of the college.

– Holly A. Smith, College Archivist, Women’s Research & Resource Center at Spelman College

Featured image: Young Girl Looking Out Window at Laura Spelman Hall. Spelman College Photographs Collection, Building and Grounds, Atlanta University Center Robert W. Woodruff Library, http://digitalcommons.auctr.edu/scimgbng/67

This project is supported by a Digitizing Hidden Collections  grant from the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR). The grant program is made possible by funding from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

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