By Courtney Chartier, Project Archivist, Voter Education Project Collection
On March 29-30 the Council on Library and Information Resources held a Hidden Collections Program Symposium in Washington, DC. Representatives from all of the institutions involved in the “Working for Freedom” project attended.
Left to right: RWWL Archivist Courtney Chartier, AARL Archivist Cheryl Oestreicher, MARBL Archivist Sarah Quigley and Amistad Archivist Amber Moore
The agenda and presentations for the symposium were driven by the projects and interests of all of the Hidden Collections program participants. The only unifying theme was “Innovation”, which included technology, outreach, processing methods and management. MARBL Archivist Sarah Quigley gave a presentation titled “Managing the Southern Christian Leadership Conference Records Project: Team Processing, Work Plans and Action Plans”. AARL Archivist Cheryl Oestreicher led a breakout session on “Implementing MPLP Practices, while RWWL Archivist Courtney Chartier facilitated a group on “Appraising and Processing Organizational Records Collections”.
In addition to presentations, each project was asked to create a conference style poster for display. Staff from the four “Working for Freedom” institutions collaborated on a single poster.
Above: “Working for Freedom” conference poster. Click the image to view a larger version.
This symposium was for first and second round grant recipients. To learn more about CLIR and the Cataloging Hidden Special Collections and Archives program, please visit http://www.clir.org/hiddencollections/index.html
To learn more about applying for the third or fourth rounds of the CLIR Hidden Collections program, please visit http://www.clir.org/hiddencollections/applicants.html
“Working for Freedom: Documenting Civil Rights Organizations” is a collaborative project between Emory University, the Auburn Avenue Research Library on African American Culture and History, the Amistad Research Center at Tulane University, and the Robert W. Woodruff Library of Atlanta University Center to uncover and make available previously hidden collections documenting the Civil Rights Movement in Atlanta and New Orleans. The project is administered by the Council on Library and Information Resources with funds from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.