Hidden Collections Registry - Dev

Items

• Genoa Indian School Digital Reconciliation Project

  The History Department, the Center for Digital Research in the Humanities (CDRH), and University Archives & Special Collections at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL) propose to collaborate with the Genoa U.S. Indian School Foundation and National Archives branches in Kansas City and Denver to digitize, describe, and make accessible materials related to the Genoa U.S. Indian Industrial School, one of the largest U.S. Indian boarding schools, which was in operation from 1884 to 1934. We will process approximately 10500 pages (or 3368 items) of student case files, admittance forms, correspondence, censuses, administrative and health reports, photographs, artwork, ephemera, artifacts, and a student newspaper held by the National Archives and by the Genoa U.S. Indian School Foundation. Our project will make these hidden records accessible to the families of Indian people who attended the school, researchers who study the Indian boarding schools, and the general public.

• Caribbean Folklore Recordings, 1950s-1960s, Digitization Project: the University of Pennsylvania Folklore Department Collections.

  The University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology (Penn Museum) proposes to digitize folkloric sound recordings created by some of the best-known American folklorists, who worked at the University of Pennsylvania’s Folklore Department in the years 1962-2006. These field recordings document songs and stories common to people in the early and mid-20th century. For the purposes of this application we are proposing the transfer of the recordings clustered in the Caribbean: Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, Grenada, St. Vincent’s, and Nevis. The recordings are a singular record of folklore and culture in our hemisphere, and are very well documented with text and photographic records. This will make it possible to eventually digitally unite (across media) a body of research of great value to current and future students of folklore, Africana scholars, and many other researchers and music enthusiasts, as well as to people from the places documented.

• Lawrence Lipton’s L.A. in the Time of the Beats: Sounds of the 1950s and 1960s Counterculture

  Lawrence Lipton’s L.A. in the Time of the Beats will reveal many previously unheard interviews and musical performances from the Beat generation and later countercultural movements. For this pilot project, we will digitize 300 hours of original 7" reel-to-reel audio recordings of writer Lawrence Lipton’s 1950s and 1960s interviews with monumental artists like James Baldwin, John Cage, and Langston Hughes; live readings by numerous Beat poets from the "Venice West" scene; and live jazz and poetry experiments with musicians like Dave Brubeck and Buddy Collette. Many of these recordings were made for Lipton’s landmark study of the Beats, The Holy Barbarians (1959), and his study of sexual mores, The Erotic Revolution (1965). We will digitize and catalog 300 hours of these recordings for free online public access via the USC Digital Library and Digital Public Library of America. We will preserve the archival BWF files in the USC Digital Repository.

• Documenting the Evangelical Movement in the United States: Digitizing Baptist State Convention of North Carolina Open-Reel Audiotapes, 1957-1980

  Special Collections & Archives, Wake Forest University, and repository of the North Carolina Historical Baptist Collection will reformat and digitize approximately 1,500 at-risk and rare open-reel audio recordings belonging to the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina. The open-reel tapes document the American evangelical movement and contain presentations by prominent Southern Baptist pastors and church representatives at a number of evangelical conferences and annual meetings of the Convention. The speakers and programs on the tapes document the denomination’s activities and subjects of discussion, 1957-1980, ranging from Baptist theology to broad cultural and societal issues. This project will result in the long-term preservation digital storage for these tapes, and broad access through the Wake Forest University North Carolina Baptist History Portal currently being developed. Once completed, there will be an active outreach program, focused on demonstrating how historians, researchers, and religious scholars can use these records in their research and teaching.

• Sounds of mid-20thc Irish-America: preserving historic music field recordings for research access

  Boston College hosts internationally-known archival collections supporting the study of lrish traditional music; two of these, the James W. Smith Irish Music Collection and Joe Lamont Irish Music Collection, include open-reel tapes of unpublished music representing a classic case of high-value research content inaccessible without digitization and preservation. The 1950s/60s music performances feature some of New York and Boston's most prominent Irish musicians at the time, and the informal nature and setting of the recordings - noncommercial "jam sessions" in public and private spaces - capture uniquely the time and spirit of this evolving musical genre. The recordings are presently inaccessible and at risk of loss, requiring professional attention. This project will treat and transfer 150 tapes; release descriptive metadata online; and publicize the importance of preservation and its value to musicologists, performers of Irish and folk music, and scholars of Irish-American history, cultural anthropology, and folkways of immigrant communities.

• Preserving the First-Person Oral History Recordings of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival

  The Oregon Shakespeare Festival (OSF) produces 800 repertory performances of 11 plays for 400,000 ticketholders annually. OSF’s Archives is one of the country’s only organization-based theatrical archives and is a full-fledged research center with a wide audiovisual collection readily available for education, research and public programming. Under a Recordings at Risk grant, OSF proposes a 12-month project to digitize 388 recordings of first-person oral histories, interviews, meetings and lectures documenting the history of OSF from its founding in 1935 to present. Facilitating, recording and collecting personal testimony has created a broad yet cohesive collection of oral histories and interviews by founders, artists and innovators, which are documented in an extensive but rapidly deteriorating audiovisual collection. OSF’s Archives’ recordings hold essential insights into the history of theatre in America, America’s appetite for theatre, Shakespeare in performance and the impact the Shakespearean festival tradition has nationally and in individual American communities.

• Standard Hour Broadcast Recordings

  This 10-month project will digitize 608 lacquer discs and 76 tapes of the Standard Hour program (1938-1955), the first radio series in the US devoted to symphonic music. The program was broadcast from 1926 to 1955, winning the George Peabody Medal for exceptional contributions to music in America in 1942. These live concerts of the San Francisco, Seattle, and Portland Symphonies, Los Angeles Philharmonic, and Hollywood Bowl were broadcast throughout the Western US. The collection is a significant primary source for how the orchestras of the period actually played in concert and how cultural programming was received by the general American public. The Standard Hour featured important performers including conductors Pierre Monteux, Leopold Stokowski, and Antal Dorati; violinist Yehudi Menuhin; cellist Gregor Piatigorsky; pianist Robert Casadesus; and singer Jussi Björling. The broadcasts are documented on deteriorating lacquer discs and reel tapes that were produced in very limited quantities.

• Preservation of the H.K. Yuen Social Movement Audio Archive

  The UC Berkeley Ethnic Studies Library (ESL) will reformat and preserve selected at-risk, rare audio recordings (262 tapes; estimated 655 hours; dating ca. 1964-1980) from the H.K. Yuen Social Movement Archive. The entire collection consists of approximately 30,000 hours of audio recordings on reel-to-reel and cassette tapes documenting social activism in the San Francisco Bay Area including events at the UC Berkeley campus, the birthplace of the Free Speech Movement. Recordings to be digitized document a broad range of social movements including the Free Speech Movement, the United Farm Workers, the Black Panther Party, the American Indian Movement, the Women’s Movement, and more. These recordings, which are currently inaccessible to researchers, are valuable to scholars from a broad array of disciplines and will be added to the Internet Archive where they will be accessible to researchers from around the world.

• The Marian Anderson Archive: The Artist on the World Stage

  The Marian Anderson Papers ranks among the most important archival collections in the Kislak Center for Special Collections. Although the archive is consulted regularly, patrons must travel to Philadelphia to view the physical contents of the vast majority of documents in the archive. A very small percentage of this rich resource has been digitized. Recognized as one of the 20th century’s greatest musical performers, Anderson, an African American, was born in Philadelphia (1897-1993), where she is revered and memorialized. We propose to digitize five series. This includes her private sound recordings; audio interviews (and transcripts); recital programs; diaries; and scrapbooks. Once digitized, these materials will enable researchers to explore the geographical extent of her musical career; study her repertoire; gain a deeper understanding of the blind prejudice she endured; and, despite her trials marvel at her courage, reception and fame as she emerged as the Artist on the world stage.

• Sculptures in the Air: An Accessible Online Video Repository of the American Sign Language (ASL) Poetry and Literature Collections at the RIT/NTID Deaf Studies Archive (RIT/NTID DSA) in Rochester, NY

  Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) Libraries will digitize 61 videotapes held in the RIT/NTID DSA that document the ASL literature movement in Rochester from 1970-1999. These videotapes will represent the largest collection of rare U.S. ASL Literature to be made publicly accessible. Preservation digital copies will be made and stored, and access digital copies provided for use by scholars and the general public.This collection will be universally accessible: it will be captioned, voiced, transcribed and/or signed. The once “hidden” work of this pioneering and under-represented group will be made public for the first time, broadening access to the cultural heritage of this diverse group little known outside of the Deaf community and enriching interdisciplinary studies in linguistics, poetry, performing arts, and cinema. Finally, this project can shape a new understanding of the libraries’ role in modeling best practices for accessible sharing of online videos.

• Eastern Bloc Borderlands: Digitizing Russian Military Topographic Maps of Eastern Europe, 1883-1947

  Funding for Eastern Bloc Borderlands: Digitizing Russian Military Topographic Maps of Eastern Europe, 1883-1947 will support the digitization, cataloging, and georeferencing of 4,000+ largely Soviet-era maps that were originally captured by the Germans during World War II, then Americans, and ultimately deposited in the Library of Congress (LC). The Indiana University Libraries (IUL) holds duplicates of this map series based on a cataloging exchange arrangement between IUL and LC. The Russian Military Topographic Map Collection covers areas of Eastern Europe that were greatly impacted by World War II, and were of strategic importance to Russia/Soviet Union. Areas featured, such as Crimea, are critical in international relations today. These maps also provide a glimpse of pre-war Eastern Europe, with villages and settlements that in some cases no longer exist. Increasing patron demand from IU and scholars abroad and preservation concerns provided the impetus for this year-long digitization project.

• Seas of Knowledge: Digitization and Retrospective Analysis of the Historical Logbooks of the United States Navy

  Nearly everything we know about the world ocean prior to the satellite era can be linked to a single document type: the ship’s logbook. Other primary documents, including muster rolls, field note books, photographs and artwork, often depend on this link for context and interpretation. This project will digitize the logbooks and muster rolls of U.S. naval vessels (1861-1879), and selected related assets between 1801 and 1940. Beyond imaging, we recover geospatial reference, weather and ocean data, and other historical information through Old Weather, our citizen-science program. These data will be suitable for computationally intensive retrospective analysis (reanalysis) systems and for enhancing the discoverability and application of information from the logbooks. Images and data will be integrated into existing national and international data infrastructure. Large-scale manuscript-to-digital data conversion has great potential to foster new scientific and historical understanding and provides enhanced access to our shared maritime and cultural heritage.

• Archiving Antigua: A Digital Record of Pre- and Post-Emancipation Antigua, 1760-1948

  The Moravian Archives, Bethlehem (MAB) proposes a 24-month project to digitize approximately 13,248 pages of manuscript records of the Moravian Church in Antigua, 1760-1948. The membership catalogs, along with the “speaking” or “remark” books, that comprise this collection offer an extraordinary resource for the study of both the region, its pivotal role in the trans-Atlantic slave trade, and a detailed portrait of the struggles of a post-emancipation society. It provides a previously nearly-inaccessible record of the names and lives of thousands of African-Caribbean individuals, many with descendants living today in the Caribbean and mainland United States. Already sought in high demand by scholars and by Caribbean descendants, these invaluable materials will be digitized at the Conservation Center for Art and Historic Artifacts (CCAHA), with descriptive metadata added at the MAB, and then made freely accessible to researchers across the world via the Digital Library of the Caribbean (dLOC).

• Manuscripts of the Muslim World

  This three-year project will provide digital access to 576 Islamic manuscripts and 827 paintings heretofore largely invisible to scholars. Together these holdings represent in great breadth the Middle East’s flourishing intellectual and cultural heritage from 1000 to 1900, covering mathematics, astrology, history, law, literature, and the Qur’an and Hadith. The bulk are Arabic and Persian illuminated manuscripts, along with examples of Coptic, Indo-Persian, Samaritan, Syriac, and Turkish calligraphy, and paintings on disbound leaves and cuttings. Columbia University will digitize 345 manuscripts. University of Pennsylvania will digitize 84 of its codices, along with 94 manuscripts from the Free Library and smaller collections from Bryn Mawr and Haverford colleges. The Free Library will digitize 827 paintings. A cataloger will be hired by the University of Pennsylvania to enhance metadata for all partners. All digital images and records will be available as a unified collection at OPenn and added to other online repositories.

• “The Animal Turn”: Digitizing Animal Protection and Human-Animal Studies Collections

  The NCSU Libraries and the ASPCA (American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals) as its collaborating institution, propose a three-year project to digitize an estimated 239,000 pages of mixed archival materials from the Libraries’ nationally significant animal rights and animal welfare collections, and an estimated 150,000 pages from the ASPCA’s records documenting its history as a leader in national animal protection since its founding in 1866. These materials document diverse and multi-disciplinary components of animal advocacy discourse in the growing field of human-animal studies. This enormous shift in scholarly interest is widely referred to as the “animal turn.” Major activities to be carried out include the digitization and description of an estimated 389,000 archival pages for online access and discoverability; outreach and promotion; the development of a digitization workflow plugin for ArchivesSpace; and contributions to the International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) support of scholarly annotations.

• Digitizing the Records of Philadelphia’s Historic Congregations: Providing Documentation for the Political, Social and Cultural Developments in Philadelphia

  Settled by William Penn in 1681 as a center for religious freedom, Philadelphia provided refuge for newcomers of many faiths. In the 18th century, Philadelphia served as the epicenter for political thought and action, as delegates to the Continental Congress and Constitutional Conventions met, debated, and worshiped together here. The religious organizations built by early Americans offer windows into colonial life through baptismal, circumcision, marriage, burial, and pew rental records: along with meeting minutes and correspondence, these documents act as transcripts of a time before census records and city directories existed. Unfortunately, as few congregations have active archival programs, access to these documents is limited. A CLIR grant would enable us -- Philadelphia’s historic congregations -- to create a digital database of shared records for a worldwide audience.

• Immigrant Roots and Urban Growth in the New England Cultural Hearth: Digitizing, Georeferencing, and Opening Access to Metropolitan Boston Atlases, 1861 to 1938.

  This project will provide enhanced access to 83 large-scale urban atlases of Boston and its metropolitan area from 1861-1938, through digitizing, georeferencing, and publishing on the web. Prepared primarily for the real estate industry, they are a critical resource for studying national patterns in urban change and immigration, because this urban area was the initial home for many immigrants, and a launchpad for further migration across the country. The Leventhal Map Center has the most comprehensive collection of these highly detailed and accurate atlases, which depict features such as building footprints and property owner names. They are a valued resource for researching urban growth and change, U.S. industrialization, transportation development, immigrant neighborhoods, architectural and urban planning, environmental hazards, genealogy, and urban ethnic history. The project will make the invaluable information hidden in these atlases freely accessible to all.

• In Her Own Right: The Many Faces of Women's Activism, 1820-1920

  This project builds on an NEH-funded planning grant to survey member collections relating to the efforts of women to assert their rights in the century prior to the ratification of the 19th Amendment, and to develop a prototype interface to expose these collections on a collaborative website. It is led by Temple University Libraries' Special Collections Research Center, the Drexel University College of Medicine Legacy Center, and Swarthmore College and involves seven additional content contributors, listed below. Project participants will digitize and create metadata for their own materials. A project website will harvest OAI-PMH-compliant metadata that will also be DPLA-ready. Participants have paid particular attention to uncovering records by and about women of color, working women, and other marginalized or underrepresented populations.

• Digitizing Hidden North Slope and Iñupiaq Audio Recordings: A Joint Partnership between Iḷisaġvik College and the Iñupiat History, Language, and Culture Department

  Iḷisaġvik College’s Tuzzy Consortium Library and the North Slope Borough’s Iñupiat History, Language, and Culture (IHLC) Department have partnered on this project in order to digitize, transcribe, and translate over 1,600 hours of recordings from the 20th century. The majority of the recordings are in Iñupiaq, which is classified as a threatened language by EGIDS (Expanded Graded Intergenerational Disruption Scale). The source materials we will digitize through this project are a mixture of audiocassette tapes, VHS tapes, and Umatic tapes. The materials are all from the arctic North Slope area of Alaska, which is the northernmost region in Alaska. With the conclusion of our project, the digitized recordings will be readily accessible to researchers, and be critical for any scholar researching Iñupiaq history and language and/or the history of the North Slope, including undergraduate and graduate students in the University of Alaska’s Alaska Native Studies program.

• Public Radio as a Tool for Cultural Engagement in New York in the 60s and early 70s: Digitizing the Broadcasts of WRVR-FM Public Radio

  The Riverside Church in the City of New York (TRC), Library of Congress (LOC), and WGBH Educational Foundation (WGBH) will digitize 3502 ¼-inch open-reel recordings from WRVR-FM’s 1961-1971 broadcasts for addition, with metadata, to the American Archive of Public Broadcasting (AAPB). The nominated collection reflects WRVR’s culturally significant non-commercial programming, including interviews, speeches, and musical interpretations on matters like civil rights, war, and fine arts, from laypersons to famed scholars, including Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and Pete Seeger. The project will preserve recordings outside their current time-sensitive medium, making 4060 hours of audio available. It will enhance study in many disciplines, including theology/religion, political science, and communications, especially related to American Christianity, homiletics, progressive responses to the Civil Rights movement, contemporary issues of race and sexuality, cultural impact of the 1960s, and public radio as a tool for cultural engagement and social media precursor.

• Bringing Back the Soaps: The Louis J. Boeri and Minín Bujones Boeri Collection of Cuban American Radionovelas at Tulane’s Latin American Library

  Tulane’s Latin American Library proposes a two-year project to digitize 36 of the 135 radio soap operas from the Louis J. Boeri and Minín Bujones Boeri Collection of Cuban American Radionovelas. The audio recording masters are contained on 8,934 reel to reel tapes that were produced by Miami-based America’s Productions, Inc. between 1963 and 1970. These programs were transmitted to over 200 radio stations in Latin America and Spain, to U.S. Spanish-language stations, and to the U.S. government. With scripts penned by acclaimed Cuban and Mexican writers, the broadcasts included soap operas, comedies, advice programs, biblical dramas, mysteries, spy stories, and variety shows. The digitized radionovelas will be freely available worldwide as a collection within the Tulane University Digital Library and will afford a unique resource for the study of the political, cultural, and commercial ties between the United States and Cuba via public broadcasting during the pivotal Cold War.

• Preserving the History of World War II’s Elite Ski Troopers, the 10th Mountain Division

  The 10th Mountain Division Resource Center oral history collection at the Denver Public Library (DPL) consists of 246 audio and audiovisual recordings of interviews with World War II veterans who served with the 10th Mountain Division. These recordings are all at risk of degradation or loss due to their age and the scarcity of equipment necessary to access them. Because many of the veterans interviewed have since passed away, these recordings are irreplaceable. These are unique among first hand accounts of World War II as “the 10th” transformed winter mountain warfare and returned home to create the ski industry. Currently the only means to utilize these resources is to visit DPL in person or to purchase a copy. DPL proposes to digitize these interviews, not only to ensure their long-term preservation, but to be able to offer them for free public use online to anyone, anywhere.

• Reel to Reel Tape Recordings of the Creative Associates Recitals at the University at Buffalo, 1964-1980

  Project to reformat 173 reel to reel tapes containing circa 627 musical works presented on recitals by the University at Buffalo's Creative Associates, 1964-1980. The Associates were members of the Center of the Creative and Performing Arts, established by Lukas Foss and Allen Sapp in 1964. These recitals were the concerts the Associates programmed themselves as supplements to the Center-scheduled concerts. As such they represent the musical interests of the Associates ranging from early music to contemporaneous music. Many performances of contemporary works were either performed by their respective composers or under their direction. Close to 20 premieres are included. The roster of performers and composers is exceptional. It represents a high number of luminaries of contemporary music of the period, including Crumb, Berio, Wuorinen, Carter, Copland, Bussotti, Scelsi, Feldman, Cage, as well as lesser-known figures whose representation here may be even more unique.

• Preserving the Programming Archives of the National Federation of Community Broadcasters. National Public Broadcasting Archives at the University of Maryland.

  The National Public Broadcasting Archives (NPBA) will reformat at-risk, rare audio recordings (600 open-reel tapes, estimated 300 hours, dating 1965-1984) from the National Federation of Community Broadcasters (NFCB) Collection. The NFCB is a national grass-roots, non-profit organization which has served non-commercial community-based radio stations since 1975. Their mission includes assisting and advocating for the successful operation and funding of local stations, facilitating the production of innovative programming from diverse sources, and promoting the participation of minorities and women at all levels of public broadcasting. The audio recordings in this project include ethnographies of music cultures throughout the world, programs on social and cultural issues in the U.S. and speeches from feminist and African-American activists. These digitized recordings, made available via UMD Libraries’ Digital Collections repository, will be invaluable to international researchers from a wide range of disciplines including ethnomusicology, anthropology, media studies, sociology, political science, African-American history, and women’s studies.

• Apache Prisoner of War Audio Collection Digitization and Processing Project

  We plan to digitize Fort Sill Chiricahua/Warm Springs Apache sound collections. This community is descended from the Apache prisoners of war seized with Geronimo in 1886. Collections highlight the music and oral history of Chihene, or Warm Springs Apache youth living in Sierra Madre camps during 1882s so-called “Loco Outbreak,” including ancestors of the Haozous, Gooday, and Kawaykla families. Their recordings constitute the cultural heritage of Geronimo’s child soldiers. Fort Sill Apache recordings help scholars understand the consequences of the Loco Outbreak on Warm Springs Apache youth; their consolidation as prisoners of war alongside Nednai captors; as well as their re-assertion of Warm Springs consciousness when released from imprisonment in 1913. Including War and Mountain Spirit Dance songs dating from 19th-century southwestern warfare (1881-1886) and social dance songs and Christian hymnody dating from Apache prisoner of war exile and imprisonment (1886-1914), this is a collection of great historical significance.