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Race, Ethnicity and Post-Colonial Studies
African American History; African American Genealogical Data; African American Lineage Societies; Collaboration; Community Archives; Digital Collections; Digital Projects; Historical Photographs; Metadata; Partnerships
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Full-Text Articles in History
Freed Faces, Our Past Americans: Collaborations To Create, Digitize And Describe The “Former Slaves In Freedom” Collection, Gayle Porter
Freed Faces, Our Past Americans: Collaborations To Create, Digitize And Describe The “Former Slaves In Freedom” Collection, Gayle Porter
Collaborative Librarianship
The Chicago State University (CSU) Archives collaborated with the International Society of Sons and Daughters of Slave Ancestry (ISDSA), a Chicago-based lineage society, to digitize, describe, and make accessible online a collection of 359 private historic photographs of formerly enslaved African Americans, and 90+ brief family histories, submitted by descendants. This case study describes the benefits, processes, and challenges of this unique, unfinished collaborative project. The study also describes: 1. Creative, flexible approaches to collaborative digital projects by an academic institution and a community organization; 2. Balancing cataloging/metadata standards while respecting a curator’s goals for the collection.