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The University of Texas at Arlington Libraries
have taken a step forward this year in raising external funding in
support of library projects. Gerald Saxon and Ann Hodges collaborated
in the spring of 2001 to write three proposals seeking funding for
projects to improve access to Special Collections materials. At the
time of this writing, positive responses have been received to two
of the proposals. The award deadline for the third proposal, a request
to the Institute of Museum and Library Services for funds to catalog
and digitize Mexican War materials, is pending.
A National Endowment for the Humanities Preservation Assistance Grant
will provide $3,839 to purchase supplies to rehouse a portion of the
photographic negatives in the W. D. Smith, Inc., Commercial Photography
Collection. The W. D. Smith Collection, which was featured in the
Fall 1998 issue of The Compass Rose, was acquired by Special Collections
in 1997 and contains well over 100,000 negatives. W. D. Smith opened
a commercial photograph studio in Fort Worth in 1941 and, working
with his son, Gordon, quickly established the company as the leading
photographic firm in Fort Worth and the surrounding area. His clients
included major businesses in the area, social clubs, fraternal organizations,
individuals and families, and government entities. In the process
of building his business, Smith documented the visual history of Fort
Worth and environs, including their rapid growth after WWII.
The earliest items in the W. D. Smith Collection,
approximately 8,670 negatives dating from the 1940s, were selected
for preservation for two reasons. First, they are not only the oldest
in the collection but are also the most heavily-used, and consequently
are the most at risk from age and handling. Second, these negatives
also include approximately one thousand copy negatives that Smith
made from the work of some early photographers when he opened his
company. Smith began working as a photographer in Fort Worth during
the 1920s, and, since that time, built numerous relationships with
the photographers he called "the old timers." These "old
timers" allowed him to copy their images of Fort Worth and North
Texas dating back to the 1890s. All of these photographers are now
deceased; their collections have not survived, except in part in the
W. D. Smith collection. Consequently, while Smith's negatives were
actually made in the 1940s, the subjects that they document date back
to the late-nineteenth century. In short, from a historical perspective,
these negatives are the most important in documenting the early history
of North Texas.
NEH Preservation Assistance Grants are given to assist repositories
to enhance their capacity to preserve their humanities collections
and to increase their availability for research and education. The
funds furnished by the NEH will allow the purchase of archival polypropylene
negative sleeves; buffered, acid-free negative storage envelopes;
and acid- and lignin-free storage boxes in order to rehouse the negatives
according to professionally accepted preservation standards. Archivist
Shirley Rodnitzky will direct the project, which will be in effect
from September 1, 2001, through August 31, 2002. Student help is being
used to create a database from the information present on the original
negative envelopes. The database will enable the printing of the information
on the new envelopes, and will also improve access to the collection
by allowing electronic searching of information about the 1940s negatives.
Access to the W. D. Smith Collection presently is achieved by use
of Smith's client card file. It is hoped that the project will serve
as a prototype for future extension of treatment to the remainder
of the W. D. Smith Collection.
The TexTreasures program of the Texas State Library and Archives Commission
awarded the U. T. Arlington Libraries $20,000, the maximum amount
permitted under the program's guidelines, to increase access to its
holdings of oral history interviews with Tejano leaders. The TexTreasures
program, which is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library
Services, is designed to assist public and academic libraries in Texas
to provide access to their special or unique local collection holdings
and to make information about those holdings available to library
users across the state. U. T. Arlington's proposal was ranked first
among all applicants in the competitive evaluation process conducted
by the TexTreasures review panel.
The project, known as Tejano Voices, will provide
access to 77 oral history interviews conducted during the 1990s by
U. T. Arlington political science professor, José Angel Gutiérrez.
The interviews emphasize the personal stories and struggles of Tejano
leaders, many of whom are the first individuals of Mexican descent
in their communities elected or appointed to government office. The
interviews uniquely reflect the history of the Tejano community as
it pressed for an end to racial segregation in the state and access
to political power in the post-WWII period.
The Tejano Voices project will run from September 1, 2001, through
August 31, 2002, and will be under the direction of Ann Hodges, Special
Collections Projects Manager at the U. T. Arlington Libraries. Julie
Williams, Kris Swenson, and Sarah Jones of the Libraries' Digital
Library Services program area will create digital files and will design
and implement the project web site. Digital Library Services Coordinator,
Marie Irwin, is technical advisor to the project. In addition to staff
resources, the Libraries will contribute the use of the equipment
required by the project.
Grant funds will be used to pay the salary of
a professional cataloger, who will work on the project half-time for
one year in Special Collections. Carolyn Kadri, who has worked half-time
in Special Collections for four years as Garrett Map Cataloger, has
been selected as Tejano Voices Project Cataloger. She will be a full-time
Libraries employee for the duration of the project and will continue
her work with maps. Carolyn's contribution to the Tejano Voices project
will include creating full-level catalog records for the interviews
and contributing information to the project's database and web site.
In other words, she will create the descriptive information that will
permit greater access to the interviews.
A preliminary web site will provide an explanation of the Tejano Voices
project and of the activities being performed by project staff, as
well as biographical information about Professor Gutierrez and insight
into his role as interviewer. When completed, the project web site
will be a vehicle for access to the interviews. It will present a
mechanism for searching the interview transcripts and will feature
a list of the project interviews, with links to individual pages for
interviewees. Each interviewee page will link to a text file of the
interview transcript and to a streaming audio file of the interview.
Additionally, each interviewee page will display a still image of
the interviewee and biographical information about him or her, and
will link to the interview's catalog record in PULSe, the Libraries'
online catalog.
We are pleased that the National Endowment
for the Humanities and the Texas State Library and Archives Commission
found our proposals worthy of funding. U. T. Arlington Libraries staff
are already at work on the projects. Researchers can look forward
to improved access to the materials being addressed by the grants,
thanks to the funds provided by the granting agencies and the hard
work of committed U. T. Arlington Libraries staff members.
All of the resources being addressed by the projects are housed
in Special Collections at the U.T. Arlington Libraries. They are
available for use by the public during Special Collections' normal
operating hours of Monday 9:00 am - 7:00 pm and Tuesday-Saturday,
9:00 am - 5:00 pm. Please telephone (817) 272-3393 to confirm these
times, as evening and Saturday hours vary with the academic calendar.
Special arrangements can be made in advance for the convenience
of researchers traveling from a distance.
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