Repositories of Primary Sources

Anyone looking for primary source materials housed in archives across the world is in luck, as the website Repositories of Primary Sources will be your free research matchmaker! The site lists 5000+ websites which describe “holdings of manuscripts, archives, rare books, historical photographs, and other primary sources for the research scholar.”

The repositories are divided by geographical location — as far as I could see there is no search function. This project is really useful and the fact that it doesn’t cost anything to use is much appreciated. Other sites like Archive Finder require a subscription.

 

Backtalk/Crosstalk: The Scholar-Activist in African Gender Studies

I just saw on Facebook that the Barnard Center for Research on Women is hosting another wonderful event! This time it’s called Backtalk/Crosstalk: The Scholar-Activist in African Gender Studies. This year’s Backtalk/Crosswalk forum will feature three amazing scholar activists – Gayatri Spivak, Jane Bennett, and Amina Mama – on a panel moderated by Yvette Christiansë.

The event will be held on March 1st at 6:30PM in James Room, 4th Floor Barnard Hall.

Free download of my zine!

Last year I published a zine called “My Feminist Friends,” consisting of interviews with five of my friends on all things feminist. The zine includes artwork created by friends and family as well. It was a joy to make and I am toying around with the idea of making a second issue later this year.

I sent a copy of “My Feminist Friends” to the Queer Zine Archive Project a couple months ago to be digitized, and was quite pleased today to see on Facebook that my zine is now available for free digital download! QZAP is one of my favorite zine projects ever.

“Out of the Attic and Into the Stacks”

My blogging buddy Anna- the feminist librarian- just informed me about the event of my dreams — Out of the Attic and Into the Stacks: Feminism and LIS: the Unconference. According to Anna’s blog the unconference  will be a “meeting of practitioners, scholars and aspirants in the field of library and information studies to explore feminism as theory, boundary, ecology, method,flavor, relationship, and epistemology — among others.”

It will take place at the University of Milwaukee from March 9-11th.  I’m really disappointed that I can’t attend- especially given the fact that I will be in the Midwest two days later for a different library conference!

The registration fee is very reasonable – $25!  Anyone interested in attending can sign up here.

Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Academic and Research Libraries

My friend Charlotte just sent me a resource which is going to come in extremely handy in my work as a  librarian and could also possibly be useful to you, reader! Its a free downloadable document called the Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Academic and Research Libraries,  and it was published earlier this month by the Association of Research Libraries (ARL).

According to the ARL website, the Code’s purpose includes answering copyright/fair use questions such as (and I quote):

• When and how much copyrighted material can be digitized for student use? And should video be treated the same way as print?
• How can libraries’ special collections be made available online?
• Can libraries archive websites for the use of future students and scholars

In order to obtain the necessary information for the report the Code’s research team interviewed dozens of academic and research librarians. It makes me really pleased that ARL made this detailed document freely accessible to anyone!

P.S. This 10 page FAQ for librarians on copyright is quite handy, too!

American History Online

If you’ve read my blog much before than you might know how much I adore digital archival collections. Imagine – then – how pleased I am to be writing today about American History Online, a project which boasts 362 historical digital collections! This site is as rich in primary resources as my favorite West Village bakery (Molly’s) is in cupcakes.

Brilliant Luna Park at Night (Underwood & Underwood, 1904)

The site is extremely well-organized and current. Visitors can browse by subject, (i.e. Government, Music, Religion, etc) , place, or time. It’s also possible to search by keyword and/or year.

I could (and probably will) spend hours exploring this project. Have fun!

National Visionary Leadership Project

Oral histories are such a rich primary resource – I always get excited when I meet a researcher hunting for them. Anybody looking for oral histories of African American visionaries who have played pivotal roles in American history should absolutely check out the National Visionary Leadership Project (NVLP).

A non-profit located in Washington, DC, NVLP maintains an extensive oral history digital archive, which features video interviews with 100+ visionaries from a wide variety of professional and activist backgrounds.

For an example, please see the below video of Derrick A Bell, Jr., a Civil Rights lawyer and author who passed away last year.

Hack Library School

I really, really wish that the blog Hack Library School had existed when I was in library school. Anyone either currently in library school or interested in a career in Library and Information Science should definitely check out this excellent blog, billed as “by, for and about library school students.” Inspiration for the blog stems from this 2010 article written by Micah Vandegrift for the blog In the Library with the Lead Pipe. Check out this corresponding video, too:

Hack Library School is updated very frequently, at least several times per week, and also boasts an extensive list of other library-related blogs to check out. The blog invites people to “participate in the redefinitions of library school using the web as a collaborative space outside of any specific university or organization. “

American Libraries publication

Over two years ago I interned at Brooklyn College with Barnaby Nicolas under the leadership of professor/librarian Beth Evans. This was my first experience interning at an academic library as a graduate student – my only other library position had been a work-study job in the Interlibrary Loan department of my undergraduate library.

During the internship Beth suggested that the three of us plus another intern apply to present a poster at the 2010 National Diversity in Libraries Conference, held at Princeton University. We created a presentation based upon our experiences at Brooklyn College, calling  it A Few Drops Wrought a Ripple Effect: A Diverse Pool of Interns Offers Short-Term Staffing Solutions and Long-Term Benefits for New Professionals and the Library.

The poster session was a success, and after the conference Beth, Barnaby, and I decided to write an article on the importance of diversifying the library profession from the internship level onward. This article – entitled Reflecting Our Communities – was published by American Libraries online yesterday, and will be printed in the January/February issue.

Victorian Women Writers Project

Interested in British Victorian Women Writers? Look no further than the Victorian Women Writers Project, established in 1995 and still going strong over 15 years later! The project was begun to better represent British female writers of the 19th century. Genres featured include novels, poetry, political pamphlets, and children’s books.

Visitors can either search the database via keyword, author, etc. or browse by author, title, or year. Once you find a particular work that looks interesting, just click on the title of the work and from there you can view it in text, full text, or XML. All of the texts in the collection were published before 1923 and thus are in the public domain.