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Herstory Archives
Digital Collection
Presentation
Location
Pratt Institute School of Information, New York City
Date
Fall 2022
Class
INFO - 665 Projects in Digital Archives
Project Description
The INFO 665-01: Projects in Digital Archives class, taught by Dr. Anthony Cocciolo at the Pratt Institute School of Information, continued its partnership with the Lesbian Herstory Archives. The Lesbian Herstory Archives is an organization that exists to “gather, preserve and provide access to records of Lesbian lives and activities” in an effort to “uncover and document [the] herstory previously denied to [them] by patriarchal historians” (“Why We Exist”, n.d.). This partnership gives the students experience in archives and helps the organization build its archive. The organization gave boxes of material to the class with the ultimate goal of integrating them into the digital archive and creating an exhibition. To accomplish this, the class was divided into three groups: Digitization, Metadata, and Curatorial. Our team was the Curatorial team and consisted of Sara Almai, Emily Bailey, and Allysha Leonard. The goal of the Curatorial team, as set out by the assignment, was to “Curate the collection in a way that makes it meaningful to end-users. Create research materials around the collection (research the collection, people, events, etc.) and make it available to end-users online. Find additional materials to augment the collection (e.g., photographs)”. Much of the work the Curatorial team did was in the scope of curation and much of the work we did was probably not. We had a small class and the lines between the work of the three teams were sometimes fuzzy. The work we did mostly encompass metadata, research, curation, and transcription. The following report covers Workflow and Achievements; Challenges; Decisions; and Future Directions regarding the work of the Curatorial team within the digital archive of the Lesbian Herstory Archives.
Methods
For this project, we used Omeka-S to build web pages and collections. We also used Google Spreadsheets to manage the new digitized radio audio strips between the three teams and determined what step in the process of digitization the assets were in. Finally, we used Descript to make transcriptions of each audio recording to make it more accessible for the hard of hearing.
My Role
This was a group project made up of three people. As I was the most familiar with Omeka, I took leadership in much of the website organization and upload of assets passed from the digitization team. I also was a key part in choosing the title and theme that would lead our process of choosing items for the curated collection.
Learning Outcome Achieved
Professionalism
Rationale
This project shows a concrete result of having built upon an existing collection and having created new collections, subcollections, and an exhibition. This was a practice of following conventions and making decisions, prioritizing collaboration but retaining initiative, and consolidating theory and practice. I have enhanced my professional identity through this project, and the work clearly demonstrates my capabilities for archival and curatorial works in the museum profession. Our team project has successfully added a finalized digital exhibition to the website for Herstory Lesbian Archives, showing applicable work for professional clients.
