Digital Tools for Archives: Movies and Music and Comics...Oh My!

Nicole Carmolingo, AARL intern, was at a recent Society of Georgia Archivists workshop called "Technology for Advocacy and Outreach: A Bootcamp for Archivists Going Digital." The seminar was held Saturday, May 14, on campus at the University of West Georgia. In one day, participants created both a web comic and a video relating to part of their institutional collections. Nicole chose to focus her creations on Henry Rutherford Butler.

Henry Rutherford Butler lived from 1862-1931, attended medical school and became one of the first African American physicians to open a practice in Atlanta. Butler and his wife were highly active in both Atlanta and national African American organizations, both as members and founders. The Selena Sloan Butler papers, held by the AARL, contain valuable material about Butler, his wife and their son, as well as life in Atlanta in this era.

As you can see, Nicole used Comic Life and Moviemaker, two open source media programs, to create the content above and below. We hope you enjoy learning a little more about Butler's life. You can click here to link to the AARL finding aid for the Selena Sloan Butler Collection. We would love to hear from you about whether you would like to see more video and comic strip content from us.

Posted by Jessica Epstein, AARL Archives Intern

Archives and Publics: Dynamic Women = Relevant & Engaged Work

For visitors just finding the blog or regulars who may have forgotten, the Archives and Publics series is about connections between archives and various publics – scholars, interns, genealogists, students, documentary filmmakers, authors, artists, and others. The series highlights the ways in which different groups access and use archives with a focus on AARL's constituents.  Today, we have two features about faculty and graduate students from the University of Georgia and the University of West Georgia -- all dynamic women doing relevant and engaged work related to African American culture and history.  Another connection is that they've all conducted research in AARL's Archives Division.

In the past, we've included posts (here and here) from graduate students in the Public History program in the History Department at the University of West Georgia. Today, our first feature is UWG’s Dusty Marie Dye, who over a year ago visited AARL regarding a public history project about African American burial sites in Atlanta’s Oakland Cemetery.  In February of this year, her contributions to the project came to fruition when the Historic Oakland Foundation launched “African American Voices,” a cell phone walking tour and outdoor exhibition that interprets the cemetery's African American history; see the image above. You can read more about it here, and in the Spring 2011 issue of the Oakland Herald. See also UWG's Center for Public History's project on African American shape note singing, which Dye served on as a graduate research assistant.  

Next is an update on UGA's Dr. Barbara McCaskill, Christina L. Davis, and JoyEllen Freeman's research project about the life and work of Joseph Richardson Jones.  For months we've chronicled their work here, here, here and here.  Below is an e-mail from McCaskill about a recent visit to Jacksonville, Florida, where Jones was born.  It's amazing to see how their research evolves, where some details about Jones's life remain elusive, while others surface through meticulous and thorough investigation.

A short two days later, McCaskill shared articles featuring separate (and fantastic) research projects conducted by Davis and Freeman.  To read about Davis's collabortive work with Dr. Ron Butchart on Reconstruction-era teachers, follow this link.  For information about Freeman's research about nineteenth century African American pianist Thomas Bethune or "Blind Tom," visit here. 

Research databases, articles and encyclopedia entries, community programs, oral histories, audio walking tours -- these diverse projects reach a variety of publics in meaningful ways.  They also demonstrate how archives live outside of little (sometimes large) gray boxes.

We look forward to sharing more from our colleagues and constituents.

Posted by Wesley Chenault, Library Research Associate

Research 2.0

This post launches another series, Research 2.0, which will address traditional and emerging ideas and practices related to research in the digital age.  

One of the greatest frustrations I encountered as a genealogical researcher twenty years ago concerned access to vital statistics and other records. Travel outside of my locale was not only difficult, but not an option. Later, as a graduate student, most of my research involved reviewing records on microfilm and requesting books through interlibrary loan. Now technological advances allow researchers to access resources online, sometimes from the comfort of home. Times have changed.

During the summer of 2010, I participated in an Advanced Archives Practicum hosted by the Auburn Avenue Research Library for the University of West Georgia. In addition to assisting with processing the James Bryant Smith Collection, I conducted research for entries on Drs. Eliza A. Grier and Henry Rutherford Butler that will be submitted to the New Georgia Encyclopedia. Whether you are tracing your family’s history or conducting research, the availability of online digital collections and databases opens doorways to information that once seemed difficult to find and was time consuming to research.

The life of Dr. Eliza A. Grier provides one example. Grier was the first African American woman to receive a license to practice medicine in Georgia in 1897, following her graduation from Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania (now Drexel University College of Medicine) that year. News of her licensure traveled as far west as Utah and as far north as New York. Grier’s career as a doctor of obstetric and gynecological medicine ended abruptly, however, when she fell ill in 1901 and later died in 1902. All of this information I found with ease in online databases of historic newspapers and through digital collections. (Pictured left is a graduation program from Fisk University, where Grier graduated in 1891. She later attend the Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania. Courtesy of AARL.)


Another example is that of Dr. Henry Rutherford Butler, Sr, who practiced general and pediatric medicine in Atlanta in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. One of the first African Americans to receive a medical license in Georgia, Butler and a former classmate, Dr. Thomas Heathe Slater, owned and operated the Butler and Slater Drug Store, the first pharmacy in Atlanta that catered to African Americans. Additionally, Butler served as a Grand Master of the Prince Hall Affiliation of Masons for the State of Georgia. Again, this brief biographical sketch was obtained from information found in online databases and collections and in a relatively short amount of time.  (Pictured right is a Father's Day card given to Butler from his son, Henry Rutherford Butler, Jr, in 1927. Courtesy of AARL.)

For researchers, times have truly changed – and for the better.

Posted by Sarah Middlemast, University of West Georgia

Archives and Publics: Handling History

Archives preserve collections of documents, records, and manuscripts that hold some level of historical interest. This can include documents of national importance, such as the Declaration of Independence, down to a local company’s financial records. However, one of the most interesting types of collections that can be found in an archives is that of the common person. As an archivist-in-training, I have the opportunity to access these pieces of history as well as to learn how to handle them and preserve them properly. According to fellow intern Sarah Warren, that is why she chose the archival field of history as her career path. “I realized that I have the chance to maintain documents, letters, and photographs,” she notes. “To have direct contact with personal stories as a full-time job seemed too good to be true.” By training how to be archivists and public historians, we can organize these documents created by everyday people and give them a value and voice that they may not have otherwise. (Right: photographs, Archives Division, AARL.)

Archival study can serve as a branch of public history because, as archivists, we are trained to preserve historical documents for public access. We learn preservation and processing techniques and put them to practical use in the public forum so that researchers can use these historical items for years to come. Archives serve a similar purpose as a museum: they maintain documents of the past for the benefit of the present and future. Shannon Danielle Smith, another University of West Georgia intern, considers the idea of “putting history into practice in the public field, rather than inside a classroom” the best part of being a historian.

The University of West Georgia’s Public History Program gives both undergraduate and graduate students the opportunity to take classes and learn how best to present historical information to the public. We are trained not only to teach, but also to interpret and exhibit. Graduate students have the opportunity to earn a Museum Studies Certificate, which offers classes in conjunction with the Atlanta History Center and trains in all aspects of museum careers: exhibits, collections, administration, and education. The archival branch of the public history program offers courses in basic theory and management as well as an advanced practicum, which offers hands-on experience in the Archives Division at the Auburn Avenue Research Library. Through classes, internships, and research assistantships, we have the chance to work directly within our field so that we are prepared to pursue a career in promoting history to the public in museum and archival settings.

Through graduate internships, I have had access to rare books and artifacts that I never thought I would have access to. An education in archival and historical preservation involves handling history in a way that not only enriches our studies but also our passion for history. Archives offer direct contact with history itself, whether it includes perusing a personal collection like that of James Bryant Smith, or researching the Georgia Political Heritage Collection at the University of West Georgia. Entering the professional field of public history means that I will get to share that passion with the general population on both local and national levels. The work that I am being trained to do behind the scenes creates an accessible way for the public to interact with history on a hands-on, personal level that reaches beyond looking at a museum exhibit through plated glass. (Left: rare book by Phillis Wheatley, Archives Division, AARL.)

Posted by Tiffany Luoma, University of West Georgia Intern