NEH Supports Los Angeles Community Histories Digitization Project | USC Libraries

ab1630's bookmarks 2018-04-28

Summary:

"Thanks to generous support from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the USC Libraries will collaborate with six Southern California archives, the L.A. as Subject research alliance, and the Center for Religion and Civic Culture and Cecil Murray Center for Community Engagement at USC Dornsife College to digitize a wealth of photographs, video recordings, letters, documents, theatre playbills, and other unique items documenting many facets of Southern California history. Upon conclusion of the two-year project, the six archives will make freely available online more than 17,000 items documenting underrepresented L.A. community histories via the USC Digital Library and the Digital Public Library of America. The project will add to the visibility of unique historical collections held by members of L.A. as Subject, a research alliance of 230 archives hosted by the USC Libraries. The digital library project will focus on less-visible histories from neighborhoods throughout the Southland, ranging from Eastside communities to downtown L.A., Pasadena, South Los Angeles, and the Westside. The six archives include the Filipino American Library, the First African Methodist Episcopal Church of Los Angeles, the Go for Broke National Education Center, the Pasadena Museum of History, the Southern California Library, and the Workman and Temple Family Homestead Museum. The NEH-supported project will create digital collections and working relationships between L.A.-area archives that will help to advance the USC Libraries’ Collections Convergence Initiative. The initiative is creating a community of researchers, artists and library curators to deepen the convergence of collections with scholarship and creative practice. Particular areas of focus for the initiative are primary sources like those from the 6 archives joining forces in this project. The primary sources selected for this project document watershed events in L.A. history, including the incarceration of Japanese-American Angelenos during WWII, civil rights activism by allied African-American and Jewish groups during the 1950s and 1960s, and the civil unrest following the 1991 Rodney King beating by LAPD officers and their acquittal by a Simi Valley jury on April 29, 1992. The 6 historical collections also capture the tissue of daily life in a number of L.A. communities, including playbills and broadsides from late 19th and early 20th century Mexican-American theatres; photographs of early 20th century African-American businesses and prominent families in Pasadena; testimonies from WWII Japanese-American and Filipino-American combat veterans; daily organizing activities by members of the Emma Lazarus Jewish Women’s Clubs; and sermons by Rev. Dr. Cecil “Chip” Murray at the First AME Church of Los Angeles at pivotal moments in Southern California history...."

Link:

https://libraries.usc.edu/article/neh-supports-los-angeles-community-histories-digitization-project

From feeds:

Open Access Tracking Project (OATP) » ab1630's bookmarks

Tags:

oa.new oa.digitization oa.usa oa.libraries oa.ch oa.glam oa.cities oa.history oa.images oa.preservation oa.u.southern_california oa.collaboration oa.dpla oa.neh oa.ssh oa.humanities

Date tagged:

04/28/2018, 11:16

Date published:

04/28/2018, 07:16