Number 116 • March/April 2017
ISSN 1944-7639 (online version)
Contents
CLIR Awards $154,817 for Recordings at Risk
Webinar Series Available on Best Practices for Increasing Usability of GLAM Collections
Jacqueline Goldsby Appointed CLIR Presidential Fellow
Endangered Data Week Highlights Threats to Public Data
Benjamin Rearick Receives 2017 Rovelstad Scholarship
CLIR Names 2017 Mellon Dissertation Fellows
Call for Proposals: DLF Forum, LAC Preconference, DigiPres 2017
IIIF Showcase: Unlocking the World’s Digital Images
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CLIR Awards $154,817 for Recordings at Risk
The Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) today announced that the following seven institutions have been awarded Recordings at Risk grants:
Institution: City of Savannah, Georgia, Research Library and Municipal Archives
Project: W. W. Law Collection Audio Recordings Preservation
Amount: $13,111
Institution: Mississippi State University, Mitchell Memorial Library Special Collections
Project: Citizens’ Council Radio Forums: Digitizing the Interviews of Segregationist Politicians, 1957-1966
Amount: $25,000
Institution: The Museum of Flight
Project: “Down we went into the maelstrom…” – The American Fighter Aces Oral History Digitization Project
Amount: $25,000
Institution: University of Alaska Fairbanks
Project: Digitization and Dissemination of Technically Problematic KUAC-FM Radio (Alaska) Programs (1979-1997)
Amount: $24,690
Institution: University of California, Santa Cruz
Project: Digitizing the Avant-Garde: Selections from the KPFA music archive in the Other Minds Records
Amount: $17,766
Institution: The University of Texas at Austin, Harry Ransom Center
Project: Preserving the Interview Recordings of Mel Gussow, American and British Theater Critic
Amount: $24,600
Institution: William Way LGBT Community Center
Project: Reformatting of the Tommi Avicolli Mecca cassette tapes on LGBTQ history
Amount: $24,650
More detail on this year’s funded projects can be found at:https://www.clir.org/recordings-at-risk/funded-projects/.
This is the first group of projects supported by the Recordings at Risk awards program, a national regranting program administered by CLIR to support the preservation of rare and unique audio and audiovisual content of high scholarly value. Generously funded by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the program will award a total of $2.3 million between January 2017 and September 2018.
CLIR will begin accepting applications for a new Recordings at Risk grant cycle on June 1, 2017.
While the pilot call focused exclusively on the reformatting of magnetic audio media to be digitized through the Northeast Document Conservation Center’s (NEDCC’s) newly implemented audio preservation service, the three subsequent calls in June 2017, December 2017, and May 2018 will cover costs of preservation reformatting for audio and/or audiovisual content by eligible institutions working with any external qualified service provider. Information about the next application cycle will be posted on our website at https://www.clir.org/recordings-at-risk/applicant-resources/ by June 1.
Webinar Series Available on Best Practices for Increasing Usability of GLAM Collections
A webinar series presenting techniques and best practices for increasing the visibility, usability, and sustainability of collections in the GLAM (Gallery, Library, Archive, and Museum) communities is now available online. The series, Strategies for Advancing Hidden Collections (SAHC), includes six 90-minute webinars and an online resource library. Speakers highlight the unique needs of organizations with limited funding and resources, but content applies to all collecting institutions.
Drawing on lessons learned by teams awarded grants under CLIR’s Cataloging Hidden Collections program, webinars cover the following topics:
- Where to begin: Basics of project planning for GLAM organizations – Angela Kipp
- Building resources and relationships: Determining what and who you need – Rosemary Pleva Flyyn
- Making the most of people: Recruitment, retention, and recognition – Sarah Leu
- Collection access: Describing, cataloging, and processing with the future in mind – Beth Knazook
- Overcoming project hurdles: Approaches to identifying and managing collection red flags – Jessica Bitely and Yvonne Ng
- Closing the loop: Project assessment and leveraging goals for future planning – Ellen Ryan
The online resource library gathers a wide range of resources compiled by the SAHC Curriculum Committee, speakers, and participants. The wiki format also allows any registered community member to add additional resources in the future.
Recordings can be accessed from the SAHC home page, any of the individual webinar pages, or the online resource library. Adobe Connect recordings are available now, but CLIR plans to provide access to additional formats in the future. Rough transcripts of the presentations are also available, as are PowerPoint files and transcripts of all chats. Those who view the recordings and wish to receive a Certificate of Completion can complete the relevant evaluation found with the recordings.
The series was made possible by funding from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
Jacqueline Goldsby Appointed CLIR Presidential Fellow
CLIR has appointed Jacqueline Goldsby Distinguished Presidental Fellow. Goldsby is professor of English and African American Studies at Yale University and chair of the African American Studies Department. Her research and teaching focus on African American and American literatures. She is especially interested in the ways that authors and texts articulate un-archived, “secret” and thus unspeakable, developments that shaped American life during the century of Jim Crow’s segregation’s reign, from 1865 to 1965.
She is the author of the award-winning A Spectacular Secret: Lynching in American Life and Literature (2006), and editor of a Norton Critical Edition of The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man (2015). Goldsby is currently writing Birth of the Cool: African American Literary Culture of the 1940s and 1950s, using previously hidden source archives documenting Black Chicago’s literary, cultural, and visual histories during the 1930s to 1960s.
Goldsby has been active as an advisor and reviewer for CLIR’s Cataloging Hidden Special Collections and Archives program. “Jackie’s exemplary work in systematically revealing hidden scholarly resources in Chicago libraries was the model for our Cataloging Hidden Collections program, and serves also as the basis for our current digitization effort,” said CLIR President Chuck Henry. “She will help guide us as we strive to inculcate national-scale standards and best practices to preserve and make accessible our collective cultural heritage. Our effort to evolve the postdoctoral data curation fellowship cohort into a vibrant program focused on teaching and training will also benefit from Jackie’s insight, gleaned from her distinguished academic career. We are privileged to welcome Jackie Goldsby as a CLIR Distinguished Fellow.”
“I’m deeply honored—and thrilled—by this opportunity,” said Goldsby. “Conducting archival research has always been foundational to my scholarship and teaching as a literary critic. Working with primary source materials is my passion and joy. But directing Mapping the Stacks led me into conversations and collaborations with librarians, archivists, and curators to build practices and systems that connect the world of research to the public. I hope to use this fellowship as a chance to foster more of those conversations across the communities CLIR aims to serve.”
CLIR awards distinguished presidential fellowships to individuals who have achieved a high level of professional distinction in their fields and are working in areas of interest to CLIR and the Digital Library Federation. Fellows may be appointed for one or two years.
Endangered Data Week Highlights Threats to Public Data
April 17–21 marked the first annual Endangered Data Week, a new collaborative effort—coordinated across campuses, nonprofits, libraries, citizen science initiatives, and cultural heritage institutions—to shed light on public datasets that are in danger of being deleted, repressed, mishandled, or lost. More than 50 events were organized worldwide to promote care for endangered collections by publicizing the availability of datasets and increasing critical engagement with them, encouraging political activism for open data policies, and fostering data skills through various workshops.
Among the events was a live conversation April 21 hosted by the new DLF Interest Group on Records Transparency/Accountability. “Endangered Accountability: A DLF-Sponsored Webinar on FOIA, Government Data, and Transparency” featured presentations by Alex Howard, deputy director of the Sunlight Foundation; Denice Ross, a fellow at New America; Alina Semo, director of the Office of Government Information Services (OGIS), the Federal FOIA ombudsman’s office; and Amy Bennett, an analyst with OGIS. Links to the presenters’ slides and a recording of the webinar are available here.
Benjamin Rearick Receives 2017 Rovelstad Scholarship
Benjamin Rearick, a student in the Master of Science in Information program at the University of Michigan School of Information (UMSI), has been selected to receive this year’s Rovelstad Scholarship in International Librarianship.
After receiving a bachelor’s degree in linguistics from Truman State University, Rearick spent two years working in the U.S. Peace Corps in Ethiopia. He taught English and shared his love for reading with his students by raising funds and buying new books for the school and local library. Upon his return to the United States, he received a Paul D. Coverdell Fellowship, a graduate school program for returned Peace Corps volunteers that partners with schools across the country, including UMSI, to offer financial support to volunteers who also complete substantive internships related to their program of study in underserved American communities.
“I’ve watched support grow for libraries as a critical piece of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals,” said Rearick. “I do think that libraries—public/community, school, and academic—are vital hubs of both digital and analog information, as well as community hubs that can contain vital local knowledge.”
The Rovelstad Scholarship provides travel funds for a student of library and information science to attend the annual meeting of the World Library and Information Congress, which takes place this year in Wrocław, Poland, August 19-25.
CLIR Names 2017 Mellon Dissertation Fellows
Seventeen graduate students have been selected to receive awards this year under the Mellon Fellowships for Dissertation Research in Original Sources program, which CLIR administers.
The fellowships are intended to help graduate students in the humanities and related social science fields pursue research wherever relevant sources are available; gain skill and creativity in using primary source materials in libraries, archives, museums, and related repositories; and provide suggestions to CLIR about how such source materials can be made more accessible and useful.
The fellowships carry stipends of up to $25,000 each to support dissertation research for periods ranging from nine to twelve months.
Bench Ansfield
Born in Flames: Arson, Racial Capitalism, and the Reinsuring of the Bronx in the Late Twentieth Century
Yale University
William Bamber
Visual Transnationalism and the Spread of the Fez from Ottoman Turkey to South Asia, 1876-1908
University of Washington
Eddie Bonilla
Debating the “Fronteras” and “Fanning the Flames”: Centro de Acción Social Autónomo, the August 29th Movement, and Chicano Marxism During the Chicana/o Movement, 1968-1990
Michigan State University
Yuting Dong
Empire on the Ground: Railway Towns and Urban Encounters in Japan’s Manchuria (1905-45)
Harvard University
Robert Franco
Revolution in the Sheets: The Intimate Politics of the Mexican Left, 1901-1981
Duke University
Hazem Jamjoum
Capitalist Commodification and Cultural Hegemony: Music and Power in Egypt, 1903-1938
New York University
Yi Lu
Socialist Pulp: Print and Information in Revolutionary China, 1940-1980
Harvard University
Megan McDonie
Explosive Encounters: Volcanic Landscapes, Indigenous Knowledge, and Cultural Exchange in Early Modern Mesoamerica
Penn State University
Marijana Misevic
Literacy and Multilingualism in the Early Modern Ottoman Balkans
Harvard University
Murad Mumtaz
Sufi Icons: Mapping an Unexplored Genre of Indian Devotional Painting
University of Virginia
Diane Oliva
Earthquakes in the Eighteenth-Century Musical Imagination
Harvard University
Laura Quinton
Ballet Imperial: Dance and the Reinvention of the British State, c. 1945-70
New York University
Hosung Shim
Central Asia’s Last Nomad Conquerors: The Zunghars between China, Russia, and Tibet
Indiana University Bloomington
Halimat Somotan
The Making and Unmaking of a Capital City, Lagos and Post-colonial Nigeria, 1951-1976
Columbia University
Lucia Tang
Virtue Aesthetics: Ugliness and Female Exemplarity in Early and Medieval China
University of California at Berkeley
Tara Tran
Hospitality Engendered: Women’s Bodies, Empire, and Humanitarianism in Cambodia, 1863-1954
Johns Hopkins University
Sim Hinman Wan
Hybrid Architectural Import: Dutch and Chinese Philanthropic Establishments in the Seventeenth-Century Urbanization of Indonesia
University of Illinois at Chicago
Call for Proposals: DLF Forum, LAC Preconference, DigiPres 17
The 2017 DLF Forum‘s call for proposals is open! The deadline to submit is May 22. Details and guidelines can be found here. The conference will run from October 23 to midday on October 25 in Pittsburgh. Hashtag #DLFforum.
The 2017 Liberal Arts College Preconference, October 22, will take the form of an unconference on digital library pedagogy with a focus on the intersections between liberal arts colleges and Historically Black Colleges and Universities. Proposals for lightning talks are welcomed through June 26. Read more about the day here. Hashtag #dlfLAC.
NDSA’s Digital Preservation 2017: “Preservation is Political” will take place October 25–26, just following the Forum.The call for proposals is open until May 9. More information is available here. Hashtag #digipres17.
IIIF Showcase: Unlocking the World’s Digital Images
Join the International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) community on Tuesday, June 6, in The Vatican, for the IIIF Showcase: Unlocking the World’s Digital Images, a one-day event featuring the basics and benefits of IIIF for both institutions and end users. Embraced by a growing number of the world’s leading research and cultural heritage organizations, IIIF provides an open framework for organizations to publish their image-based resources with reduced cost and time, while simultaneously improving end-user experience with a new host of rich and dynamic features such as image manipulation and annotation.
Showcase event topics will include:
· An overview of the IIIF community, APIs, software, and examples of IIIF projects and content
· IIIF benefits for digital image repositories and image providers
· Advanced interactive functionality for researchers, scholars, and other end users
· How to get started with IIIF
· How to join the IIIF community and get involved
Schedule information for the Showcase is available via Sched. This event will be useful for organizational decision makers, repository and collection managers, software engineers; for cultural heritage or STEM (science / technology / engineering / medicine) institutions; or for anyone engaged with image-based resources on the Web. It is intended for people who have not been involved with IIIF in the past to quickly get up to speed and understand the community and its benefits. Attendance is free, and widespread dissemination of the event is encouraged. Registration is required to ensure that we do not exceed the capacity of the venue.
