Occidental College and partner community heritage organizations, Eagle Rock Valley Historical Society and Highland Park Heritage Trust, propose an intensive digitization project that will provide the documentary basis for new research on the grassroots social, cultural, and intellectual history of the ethnically diverse, working and middle class neighborhoods of Northeast Los Angeles in the Twentieth Century. The three-year project will make available to scholars, independent researchers, and students a host of community newspapers, photographic archives, and high school publications that will also lay the foundation on which the current and future partners will build additional archives. In tandem with the digitization project, and in coordination with UCLA's Collecting Los Angeles platform, the College's Center for Digital Liberal Arts and emergent Institute for the History of Los Angeles plans to undertake an innovative, interdisciplinary research agenda, including a network analysis of thinkers and activists in the region.
The most critical decision any owner had was the routing of the circus for the season; a good route meant a successful season financially. Route books document the season for 19th and 20th century circuses, recording not only dates, locations, and general attendance but behind the scenes of the show and listing the people who created the magical world of the circus. Our goal is to improve access to these sources for scholars who now have to examine the route books on-site. We will accomplish our goal by digitizing the 346 unique route books (out of 400 known in existence) owned by Illinois State University; The Ringling; and Circus World Museum, enabling discovery by applying the circus controlled vocabulary to metadata, and aggregating the images into a single digital collection. Illinois State University and The Ringling will digitize their respective collections on-site, whereas Illinois State will digitize Circus World Museum's route books.
A previously unknown collection of more than 13,000 black and white architectural photographs were discovered in a dilapidated house owned by the Indiana Limestone Company in Bedford, Ind. These images of residences, churches, universities, museums, businesses, and public and municipal buildings, many of which were designed by prominent architects, document the use of Indiana limestone throughout the United States from the late 1800s to mid-1900s. The Indiana Geological Survey, an institute of Indiana University, proposes a two-year project to preserve and make this hidden collection publicly available. Remarkably holistic in scope, these photographs and their accompanying metadata can be studied across major humanities disciplines such as American history, architectural history, history of technology, urban studies, history of photography, historic preservation, labor history, and the history of geology. The Indiana Limestone Photograph Collection (ILPC) will be cataloged, digitized, archived, and made accessible through Indiana University Libraries Image Collection Online (ICO) website.
UMass Lowell and its partner organizations - Light of Cambodian Children, Lowell Telecommunications Corporation, Lao Family Mutual Assistance Association, Khmer Cultural Planning Committee of Lynn, Cambodian Mutual Assistance Association, Lowell Historical Society, Angkor Dance Troupe, and others - propose a three-year plan to create a Southeast Asian Digital Archive (SEADA) of materials from the greater Lowell, MA, region. Materials numbering approximately 24,800 items include personal and institutional papers, photographs, audio and audiovisual recordings, books, ephemera, posters, serials, and other items. These literally hidden collections document the experiences of the large refugee and immigrant populations who have lived in the Lowell region since the late 1970s, but much of this material is in danger of being damaged, lost, or discarded. This project implements a number of innovative, efficient digitization and processing technologies and will produce an invaluable, unique resource to scholars across a range of disciplines, particularly history and cultural studies.
The American Foundation for the Blind (AFB) seeks funding over 18 months to digitize the Helen Keller Archival Collection's press clippings and scrapbooks as part of a broader initiative partially funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities to digitize and disseminate Keller's entire archival collection. We also request funding for an assistant to create related metadata. The archive, containing over 80,000 items, includes correspondence, speeches, press clippings, scrapbooks, photographs, artifacts and architectural drawings. These materials span over 80 years, bridging the 19th and 20th centuries. Although the digitization project is about an extraordinary American figure, it is about much more; namely, the world in which Keller participated and the people and broader social developments she influenced and continues to influence today. Funding will provide access to untapped material that can enrich our understanding of the social, political and cultural fabric of her time and ours.
Founded as the second city of colonial Georgia in 1736, the city of Augusta and the immediate environs has witnessed several cultural changes. The Wilkinson and Fitz-Symms Photo Negative Collections at the Augusta Museum of History illustrate the mid-20th century culture, economy, and race relations of a changing South. The Accessing Augusta project aims to digitize and make public their photography by partnering with The Center for the Study of Georgia History. Over a three year period, the project staff will scan and upload approximately 72,000 negatives from the collections along with their accompanying metadata. To increase public accessibility and awareness we will publish this content on our website, the South Carolina Digital Library, the Digital Library of Georgia, and the Center for the Study of Georgia History. As this project progresses, the Museum will engage with teachers, scholars, and social media to expand the collections exposure and impact nationwide.
The American Geographical Society Library (AGSL) at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (UWM) seeks funding to digitize 49,000 35 mm Kodachrome and 2,000 2x2" Ektachrome slides of the Harrison Forman Collection which will take two years to complete. Work includes scanning individual slides, creation of metadata and uploading images to our digital collections site. It will be completed by the UWM Libraries Digital Collection and Initiatives Department staff. Harrison Forman was a prominent photojournalist who focused his camera on major world events from the late 1920s to the mid-1970s, creating a significant culturally focused photographic collection. Forman's images reflect his desire to capture aspects of the human experience and condition with a focus on his interest in underrepresented subjects of the non-western world. The depth and breadth of the cultural, geographic and historical subjects of Forman's work make it a valuable cross-disciplinary resource for researchers and educators.
Foundations will digitize materials in 10 collections held by 5 collaborating institutions (Partners) named below. The digital assets to be created in this Project will illuminate significant dance developments in this country during the 20th century. In addition to digitizing the materials, Partners will increase discoverability of and access to the materials by updating online finding aids and catalog records to link to the digital assets, embedding descriptive, technical and administrative metadata in the digital assets, displaying the assets on their own websites, contributing the assets to aggregating websites and online digital libraries. Dance Heritage Coalition will be the lead partner assuring adherence to technical and scholarly standards: aggregating the digital assets through its online secure media network; adding information about and links to the assets within its online finding aids database: and announcing these newly-available resources at conferences, through listservs, in publications, and on websites.
The Haverford College Libraries request support of $59,328 to catalog and describe 166 linear feet of diaries, journals, commonplace books, other manuscript volumes and collections.
As a social group, the Quakers had expansive influence in important civil rights issues and beyond. As such, the topics covered by these materials include: slavery and anti-slavery: war and pacifism; gardening and agriculture; mental health issues; Native Americans; science; literature; mysticism; relief and reconstruction; prison reform; travel; colonialism and nationhood; and the American experience over time.
The funds from CLIR will expose significant scholarly resources that will directly impact teaching, research and the discovery of new knowledge.
This three-year project will catalog a collection of 24,698 photographic negatives documenting the Mexican-descent community of Los Angeles between 1967 and 1977. These long inaccessible negatives were recovered in 2013, and represent an unprecedented decade-long photographic project involving eighteen photographers associated with La Raza. The bilingual publication-a tabloid newspaper from 1967-1970 and a magazine from 1970-1977-developed in the context of community-based journalism that sought broad documentation of events, achievements, and issues reflecting readers' lives. Since La Raza could only print a small portion of photographs, this collection constitutes a rare and broad visual record of the community during this period.
Appalshop seeks to create public and scholarly access to the historic paper and mixed media archives of the crusading publishers Tom and Pat Gish and The Mountain Eagle newspaper. This regional weekly in rural Appalachia is a nationally recognized model of journalistic courage, commitment to community and investigative reporting, and holding power to account in strained economic circumstances. The collaborative project will assess at-risk materials, create a catalog record and series-level finding aid in EAD format, and develop an outreach plan for access. The accessible collection will be useful across scholarly disciplines, reaching a wide user base via OCLC, Archive Grid, and sites such as Kentucky Digital Library.
This project results in the cataloging of approximately 64,800 45-RPM recordings of popular music over 3 years. Cataloging will be available on the open web via Bowling Green State University's online catalog and will be performed by student assistants trained and supervised by our existing Music Catalog and Metadata Librarian. The result will be greater discovery for a significant portion of recordings that exist in few library collections and that are rarely, if ever, cataloged. The emphasis will be on major-label recordings that are not already documented in existing library catalogs or published discographies.
Processing the records of the Wellesley Centers for Women is a one-year project to catalog and create robust finding aids for an approximately 50 linear feet collection documenting the history and activities of one of the largest gender-focused research-and-action organizations in the world. There are also a number of born-digital files for the more current records, some of which are restricted by law, and electronic repositories currently used by Wellesley will be incorporated to manage those digital files.
Storefront for Art & Architecture (Storefront) respectfully requests 18 months of CLIR support to process, describe, and make public its archive of programming records. These records document Storefront's diverse and influential program of over 280 exhibitions and affiliated performances, lectures, publications and events dating from its founding in 1982. Featuring the work of 1,500+ architects, artists and designers, this material includes a collection of original artwork and over 107 lf of programming documents, photographic prints and negatives, audiovisual media, newsletters and publications that together constitute a unique, underrepresented repository of national significance.
The American Archive of Public Broadcasting will develop a national catalog of National Educational Television (NET) titles. NET (1952-1972) comprises the earliest public television content, about 8-10,000 titles, including some incisive social documentaries. WGBH, WNET, Indiana University and the Library of Congress (hold the largest collections of NET materials. Programs are scattered, descriptions are limited and in obscure sources, and there is no publicly accessible list of titles. A national catalog with descriptive data gathered during this project will give scholars access to the NET collection. With CLIR funds, WGBH will develop the catalog and contract with LOC to process its NET materials for inclusion.
The collaborating libraries will create rich metadata for discovery, access, citation, and long-term preservation of maternal, infant, child, and youth health (MCH) research data. Work will focus on 1) historical paper and electronic research data for longitudinal studies, 1930-2010 (CLM), and 2) contemporary electronic research data for Canadian cohort and clinical trials from the Maternal, Infant, Child, Youth Research Network (UAL). This project will bring temporal depth in laying the groundwork for value-added long-term access to and preservation of the collections, while protecting the privacy of historical and current research participants and communities of study.
WHYY seeks support to create free access to its 38+-year collection of the Peabody Award-winning national radio program FRESH AIR WITH TERRY GROSS. Produced and owned totally by WHYY, this award-winning, weekday magazine of contemporary arts and culture is in its 38th year of production and the 27th year of national distribution. 8,000 of these rich oral histories of best in class literary, visual and performing artists dating from 1976 till today have been digitized and archived by WHYY but are hidden from the public. Drexel University in Philadelphia will serve as a sub-contracted partner on this project bringing extensive experience in the standardization, cataloguing and "open access" of archives and hidden collections to the project
This two-year project will result in 645 cubic feet of fully processed Appalachian records comprising seven hidden collections of War on Poverty-era, social justice organizational records. These community-driven groups worked to improve public health, housing, education, and economic development from the 1960s to the present by taking action in Appalachia. These records include those of the Appalachian Leadership and Community Outreach, Inc., a collaborative program for college students, and the Congress on Religion in Appalachia, an ecumenical response to the War on Poverty. Accessibility to these collections will contribute to new scholarship and public understanding about the social and economic development of Appalachia.
The Adirondack Museum (AM) proposes to catalog 15,000 rare images documenting the history of human interaction with the Adirondack environment, providing online access to scholars throughout the world. Making the images visible is a high priority given growing interest in our collective need to sustain economically viable communities while simultaneously preserving large areas of natural, undeveloped landscape. This project will be the first time the AM will proactively select images for targeted cataloging based on their relevance to researchers in a variety of academic disciplines including environmental history; forest history; geography; the history of outdoor recreation and tourism; art and architectural history; and gender studies.
For two decades, Trace Foundation's Latse Library has been one of the only institutions in the world comprehensively acquiring audio-visual materials from Tibetan and Himalayan regions. The collection of nearly 7,000 items is the largest of its kind and represents the vast array of Tibetan music and performing arts, in both audio and video formats that have emerged since the Cultural Revolution (1967-76), a time of great socio-economic change. Over 28 months, this project will provide access to these otherwise hidden resources for the benefit of scholars, researchers, students, and widespread Tibetan communities, and serve as a model for other institutions that seek to catalog similar multilanguage A/V materials.
Go For Broke National Education Center proposes a collaborative two-year project to create an online repository of oral histories, photos and documents of the Japanese American (JA) men who served in segregated units during WWII. The collection will include1,300 oral histories and 1,500 photos and documents with powerful search capabilities that connect the user from a search result to the corresponding moment in an oral history and relevant still images. This collaborative collection from GFB and JA veteran organizations in Chicago, Seattle and Hawaii will be the largest collection of primary source materials about the men whose life stories deepen our understanding of the rights, responsibilities and challenges of American citizenship.
The project will catalog some 20,000 rare Italian imprints from the 16th through 19th centuries in the historically significant Cavagna Collection, using our innovative and highly successful "Quick & Clean Rare Book Cataloging" model originally funded by the Mellon Foundation (2006-2009). In this model, a lead rare book cataloger serves as Project Manager to train apprentice catalogers drawn from local GSLIS students and recent MLS graduates, with an eye toward both speed and accuracy, and with costs averaging less than $25 per volume. Using this model, we plan to make this rich collection accessible to scholars in multiple fields, including but not limited to Italian history, literature, art, theatre, law, economics, and religion.
Johns Hopkins University and Maryland Institute College of Art will partner to oversee the arrangement, description and preservation of the archives of the Globe Collection and Press. The collection includes business records, posters, letterpress cuts, and other material documenting the history of one of the most important showcard poster companies in the United States.
The Computer History Museum (CHM) seeks funding to process and make publicly available 26 of its most significant yet hidden collections documenting the Information Age and its ongoing impact on society. The CHM Archives Processing Project (CHM APP) is a two year project that will employ a processing team of one Project Archivist and one Assistant Archivist, plus volunteers. The Museum will utilize More Product Less Process (MPLP) techniques to make the collections available as quickly and efficiently as possible. By the project's completion, 26 finding aids will be posted to the Museum's online catalog and to the Online Archive of California (OAC), and will be publicized via relevant professional newsletters and social media outlets.
Our project will create metadata to record significant unique characteristics of titles in the circulating collections of the U.Va. Library, focusing on 19th century titles. Many titles in our 19th century circulating collections have evidentiary or artifactual value due to characteristics such as marginalia, inserts, unique bindings, etc. Although these books are in the catalog, the unique, distinguishing features of the books are undocumented and therefore undiscoverable, hidden in plain sight in our stacks. We will provide enhanced metadata for these titles, and create a protocol for the discovery and sorting process which we will share so that institutions can cooperate on preservation, retention and weeding projects.