>> Marya McQuirter: Good afternoon, everybody, and welcome to the Connecting Communities Digital Initiatives 2024 Awardee Project celebration events. And my name is Marya McQuirter, and I am the program director for CCDI. I'm joined by my colleagues, Kimber Thomas, the senior innovation specialist, and also Olivia Dorsey, the program specialist. And a quick note, this event is being recorded and will be available for viewing online soon on the library's website at loc.gov or loc.gov. Throughout this event, we encourage you to submit any questions you have for our presenters in the Q&A feature. And I do want to mention to my interlocutors Kimber and Olivia and anybody else well, particularly Kimber and Olivia, if you all need to tell me anything, feel free to text me, because I just have the screen fully up and can't see the chat or anything else. All right, so CCDI is part of the libraries of the People Widening the Path multi-year initiative funded by the Mellon Foundation since 2021. CCDI has provided financial and technical support to individuals, institutions and organizations to create imaginative projects using the library's digital collections centered in Asian, American, black, indigenous, and Latinx studies. The awardees you will hear from today make up our 2024 cohort of award recipients. In their presentations, you'll hear about their collaborators, what they created, what library materials they used, their challenges, and also the reverberations of their respective projects. We will begin with scholars in residence. After their presentations, there will be time for Q&A, so get ready for that with your questions. after 15, excuse me a five-minute break, we will have presentations by the Higher Education and Libraries, archives, museums, awardees, and after their presentations, there will be time for Q&A. And for your questions, we'd like you to use the Q&A feature for that. And so now I'm happy for us to move right into the program. I'll pass it over to Kimber to introduce you to our artists and scholars and residents. >> Kimber Thomas: Thank you, Marya. This year, we had two really incredible artists/scholars and residents, Dr. Allie Martin and Maya Freelon. Our first artist in residence presenter is Dr. Allie Martin, with her project Sampling Black Life, soundscapes and critical intention. And I'll now hand it over to Allie to share more about her work. >> Allie Martin: Thank you, Kimber. Hi, everybody. I'm Allie Martin. I did a project called Sampling Black Life as a part of my residency this year, and it's really been a really wonderful experience. So Sampling Black Life is a project that asks, how can we sample and think through and listen to Black Life more ethically and more intentionally? And so what I've done for this year is to sample audio in Library of Congress collections and to create soundscape recordings from that audio. So when I say soundscape recording, I'm talking about for me, short pieces that are kind of like sonic collages. So this might have a layer of audio from the recording, or the original Library of Congress recording, might have a layer of a field recording that I've made elsewhere. and then it might have some layers of composed music that I've put on top. It really just depends on the particular piece. And so for my project, I've worked with three collections at the library. The first would be Voices Remembering Slavery. These are audio interviews from folks who had been formerly enslaved. There are 22 of them that we have audio for. There are more that we have transcripts for. These took place in the 1930s and 40s with the Federal Writers Project and the WPA. And the second collection I worked with was Chicago Ethnic Arts. This one comes from the Illinois Arts Commission in 1877, commissioning a bunch of folklorists to go out into Chicago and survey ethnic art. This was a huge project, but I worked primarily with the audio on the interviews and performances, and other recordings focused primarily on blues and gospel in Chicago. And then the third collection I worked with was now at a time, the Fort Valley Folk Festival. So this was in the 40s, 1940s at Fort Valley State University in Fort Valley, Georgia. And they had a folk festival every year that was part of this larger agricultural event called the Ham and Egg Show. And so I have sampled material from each of these three collections to create pieces. And I'll play some for you in a minute. But then in addition to creating these pieces, I've also done some community listening sessions based on these different collections. So in June, I got to go to Chicago and did some weeks of field work in Chicago, made some contemporary field recordings, made some pieces, and then was able to have a listening session in Chicago with the community there. And then I also had a listening session in Fort Valley, Georgia on campus, which was really great and worked with them. And I also had a listening session at the library during Summer fuse. So I'm going to pause here and I'm going to ask can you all play the audio, not from this slide, but from the next one? I realized today that they were out of order. So this audio is from one of the first pieces I made, which samples an interview from Fountain Hughes, who was interviewed in Baltimore but was formerly enslaved in Charlottesville, Virginia. >> Colored people are free. They ought to be awfully thankful. And some of them are sorry they are free now. Some of them would rather be slaves. >> Which would you rather be, Uncle Fountain? >> Which I would rather be? You know what I'd rather do? If I thought had an idea that I'd ever be a slave again, I take a gun and just end it all right away because you're nothing but a dog. You're not a thing but a dog. Night never comes that you have nothing to do. Time cut tobacco. If they want you to cut all night long out in the field, you cut. And if they want you to hang all night long you hang tobacco. It didn't matter about your tired, being tired, you're afraid to say you're tired. >> Allie Martin: So there's a lot going on in that particular piece. But what I do in this process is to listen to the full interview. And then oftentimes there are moments that really jump out at me. And so there was this exchange with Fountain Hughes as an interviewer, where Fountain Hughes is talking about that kind of complexity of being enslaved and then emancipation and them having no resources, no information, no idea about what to do next, and saying that some people might want to still be enslaved. The interviewer then asks the ridiculous question of would you rather be enslaved? And Fountain Hughes tells this really heartbreaking story about never wanting to be enslaved again. And so what I did in that piece was really try to shame the interviewer a bit to splice that, to rehearse that exchange more because it goes by pretty fast. and so these are the kinds of pieces that I've been making so that just has a layer of Fountain Hughes, a layer of me messing with the interviewer, a layer of wind, and then some background vocals as well. So just some notes on like what this project has done for me. I think the most important thing that I've gotten out of this was being able to meet and connect with so many people about this work and to be able to have so many conversations with people about this work. From my very first listening session in Chicago in June, all the way up to being able to collaborate with Maya last week for the opening of whippersnappers, which was like the most beautiful experience, and I hope she tells us about it. But yeah, this project has really put me in conversation with a lot of communities and a lot of ancestors, and I'm really grateful for the opportunity to be able to work with all of this audio. So I can't remember what my time was, but I'm going to stop there. Yeah. >> Kimber Thomas: Thank you, Allie. That was great. Our final artist in residence presenter is Maya Freelon. With her project whippersnappers recapturing, reviewing and reimagining the lives of enslaved children in the United States. And I'll now hand it over to Maya to share more about her work. >> Maya Freelon: Thank you, Kimber, and thanks, Olivia and Marya. I really enjoyed this experience and I'm glad to be celebrating with everybody, including Dr. Allie Martin, who she mentioned. We had an event where we collaborated this past weekend, and it was just really beautiful. I want to start with the title Whippersnappers: Recapturing, Reviewing, and Reimagining The Lives of Enslaved Children in The United States. I could have left it at just whippersnappers, but it was really important for me for folks to say those words out loud because one, it wasn't that long ago. Two, it's something that's been swept under the rug and not even taught in schools accurately and from the perspective of the atrocity rather than the enslaver. And three, sometimes we feel disconnected from history and we miss certain aspects of it. So I wanted to actually have everybody say that out loud, read it out loud and know their connection, regardless of what it is. so if we go to this first slide, I used a few different collections. My original criteria was I wanted to pick images that were a joyful. I wanted to find some joy in the archives of the enslaved children and highlight that and bring that out. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to find a lot of joy. There was a lot of racism. There was a lot of notes that said this could be considered offensive today. There was a lot of stereotypes and caricatures. But what I did find was at least what you would call- it wasn't happy, but it wasn't sad. Maybe a candid shot or curious. I was able to accept curious or even just ambivalent. if you think about who is doing the capturing, who is doing the shooting, to have that much attention on you as an enslaved child immediately probably brought fear or question uncertainty. So that's captured in a lot of the pictures. in this one, you can see in the original image, Robert and Tommy Bagby, in this one, they're named and they have their birth dates on it, their birth year, how old they were. But in a lot of them, the names aren't there. Because if you consider their value, it was considered not that valuable and therefore not documented. But this one was interesting from the archives and you can see the link there. Robert and Tommy Bagby. Now, I'm guessing Robert's to the left. He's looking a little shy but big brother is up there as well. I love the innocence of this so I titled this shy-shy. And the tissue-ink monoprint process is that I use tissue paper to create watercolor paintings and use the paper kind of as a paintbrush if you were to think of getting it wet and the water being released. So I wanted the images to look kind of like photo emulsion, but also capture the texture of the paper. And then I collaged original artwork into this work. So when I'm talking about recapturing, I'm talking about recapturing their essence, seeing their beauty and reimagining what their lives may have been like if they were honored and respected. Next slide please. This one is interesting. One of the images that I found working with Michelle Smiley, she helped me kind of guide. That was a librarian that I work with mainly. This one's called Young Africa, or the bone of contention. When I said there were racist images and texts, this was one of them. But the innocence of the face was just so adorable to me. So I ended up obscuring the text below and putting this child in just a beautiful kind of dreamscape. And again, this one is not titled. We don't know the age or name of the child, but we know that it was used not for good intention. And I called this, We Got You Covered. I also wanted to -- a lot of these images are very tiny, and so with the grant funds, I was able to procure large format printer. And because of the great resolution of the slides, or the scans of the original photos, I was able to blow up the image to life size. And so when you see these images in person, which Allie got a chance to do at the opening reception, you're confronting them and seeing them in a way that's unlike they've ever been seen before. And just for everybody, if anyone's in the North Carolina area, there's a historic site called Stagville. and maybe Olivia could find a link to this. If you just Google Maya Freelon Stagville, it'll show the exhibition information. It'll be up through January. And the original images are actually -- they're not original Library of Congress, but the artwork is up. And it's a former plantation in North Carolina. The former largest plantation enslaved over 900 people, and over 200 children were born there. And so it seemed like a great site to show this work and bringing a lot of attention to the Library of Congress as well in their archives. Next. When I said ambivalent, this face to me represents that just kind of standing there. These were used I heard of through for propaganda for abolitionists up north to help with the fight for emancipation. Again unidentified young African American girl in dress with hat on chair. That's the description. And I was thinking about what she might have been thinking. And as a tiny photo, you don't really notice. But when you make it bigger, just her eyes seem so blank and so -- But children, they -- if they're told to pose one minute, the next minute, they could be smiling or laughing. And that's why I titled this one complex. Next one. And so I did find one moment of joy, one sheer, unadulterated, beautiful, joyful moment. Regardless of how it was captured, this child is smiling at something and it looks like a genuine happy moment. This one is titled Young African American girl wearing long dress and bonnet, standing in a field holding flowers. And I just loved this photograph when I first saw it, and I knew it was going to be hard to work with just because of the degradation of the photograph. And also it wasn't lit very well, so I had to do some digital manipulation there. But what I found was that she just glowed. And a lot of the photographs that I chose, because they're not categorized very well in the archives, it really was by happenstance. So I took that as these are the children that I wanted to be remembered, and they came to me. When I was working, it was very synergistic and I considered it a collaboration with them as ancestors. And so this one I wanted to create like a flower scape and really center her in those cute little teeth and smile and this beautiful bonnet dress. And it looks like to me, the eyes are looking at somebody who is bringing her joy. So that's what I'm focused on. Because if she were scared, she wouldn't make that face, I think and I called it a beautiful flower. Next one. And this one was also called Rosa, a slave girl from New Orleans. That's just the title of this postcard that, again, was shipped up to the abolitionists up north to pull on their heartstrings to end slavery. They also used girls who were clearly mixed or what they call mulatto to try and sway folks to end slavery. But this girl was enslaved and her name Rosa. So I renamed this Rosa a beautiful girl. But again, her eyes are telling a story that is deeper than we can even imagine. And so this portrait is actually larger than life. that is deeper than we can even imagine. And so this portrait is actually larger than life. It's 40 by 40. And the striations and colors that you see going out of her face, when I do a process called spinning monoprint, which means I'm working on a pottery wheel that's actually spinning, and that's why the colors are kind of going in and out there. Next one. And so because I couldn't find a ton of joy in the archives of actual enslaved children during those time periods, I did expand my search into looking at other images, and I found some from W.E.B. Du Bois in the 1900 World's Fair. And as I was working, I saw this image of a boy. And I immediately thought, that looks just like my nephew. And so one interesting part of the grant is I wanted to work with some contemporary photographs and take some images of children now, and kind of show the likeness of the kids then and kids, African American children now. So if you look to the right, that's my nephew. His name is justice. And if you look to the left, that's the African American man portrait, and that was part of that collection. And I thought about the idea that we came from these children who grew up and had children of their own. And like I said, the generations aren't that far off. It wasn't that long ago we could talk to our grandmother's grandmother’s grandmother and they would have a story for us. And so this one was really interesting to work with because I immediately felt a connection. And I feel like for African Americans, we oftentimes are looking for when we see photographs that we're not familiar with, we'll say, oh, that looks like my cousin Jojo, or that looks just-- you got to know, it's just like my auntie. It's because our history was disjointed, taken away from us, and we oftentimes are still grasping for that lineage that was lost. And I believe that's the last slide and then we're heading into Q&A. Oh, no, there's one more. This one I call wonder again. This child is sitting on a chair. But I also printed on tissue paper. And to the right -- I don't know if you can play that video again, but that just shows you the translucency and texture of when the paper is -- when the print is actually on tissue paper. And so this one I called wonder. >> Kimber Thomas: Awesome. Thank you Allie and Maya for such wonderful presentations. We'll now jump into Q&A. If you haven't already, and you have a question for Allie or Maya, please place the questions in the chat and I'll read them out loud. And Allie and Maya, you can feel free to come back off mute to respond. No questions. >> Maya Freelon: I bet you have a question, Kimber. >> Kimber Thomas: One just popped up as soon as you said that. We have a question from Lori. She'd love to hear about the event you recently hosted. So the event at Stagville, I'm assuming. >> Maya Freelon: I'm sure. Allie, feel free to jump in here, too. When I first heard of what Allie was doing with sound, it sounded similar to what I was doing with images. And when we were invited to the Martha's Vineyard African American Film Festival, we had an amazing conversation led by Kimber. That's why I said she would have a good question, where we realize that our common connection was remembering our grandmothers and using their legacy and their stories to remember and share to the next generation their story so they're not lost. And so we decided that at the opening of the Whippersnapper’s event, wouldn't it be amazing if we had a soundscape that was created live with the folks who came to see the exhibition? And so if you can imagine Allie in her brilliance, capturing sounds as we played childhood games like Miss Mary Mack and slide and all of these other games that we remembered then taking her crew running to this amazing barn built by enslaved folks. It's like three stories high, setting up this beautiful soundscape that is triggered by motion and doing a processional down to that space and actually our bodies playing the sounds. It's really hard to explain. Allie, can you jump in here? >> Allie Martin: Yeah. It was really a beautiful event. I mean, it's one thing to see these images on the slides, but Maya really has done an incredible amount of work just in terms of volume like and filling these spaces. But yeah, there's a barn, the great barn at Stagville, and I did an installation for the barn that was really based on my grandmother's. I'm from Prince George's County, Maryland, but both of my grandmothers are from North Carolina. And so one is living, one has passed. And so the primary sound for the barn installation was my grandmother, so I have audio of my living grandmother humming because so many of the things that I make are really just emulating her humming anyway. But then I also called my cousins because one of my grandmothers is buried like 45 minutes from Stagville. And so I called my cousins and I said, can y'all go get me five minutes of wind from the cemetery? And they were like, what? But they did it and it was great. And so the foundation of the sound in the barn was both my grandmother's wind from the cemetery and humming from my living grandmother. And so then I built a soundscape around that. And then the end of that soundscape was going to get sounds of children's games, of the work that they were doing in Horton's Grove. And the whole thing was motion activated so that the barn became an instrument that people could play. And as you walked around, you built the texture yourself. >> Kimber Thomas: Awesome. We have another question for Maya. Were there more photographs available or were they limited? Why is that? And was it difficult to find photos in the LLC collection? >> Maya Freelon: It was definitely difficult to find photos of African American enslaved children. One, because photography was just coming out. It was expensive. It was a new technology, and it wasn't something that they wasted or utilized to shoot something like a child, not a child that you own. And the way that things are categorized in the Library of Congress are a few different ways. So you could look for child, but you might only find white children, or you could look for African American, but you only might find adults. And so it took a lot of mining, a lot more work during my research time there just sheer volume of photos and I'm sure if I had unlimited time I would be able to find more. But like I said, I really asked for the ones that really wanted to be remembered to be easily found so that I could actually start the project. And one of the beautiful things about CCDI and this residency is one, like Allie said, the connections to people, the conversations that are started. But also just being a catalyst for a new body of work, which is what Allie was talking about. Those two things that we did were in addition to our grant. Now, we didn't ask to do a bunch of extra work. It just came out of the experience of being in community. >> Kimber Thomas: Awesome. Thank you for the wonderful work you did on your projects. And this is for Maya and Allie. Did anything surprise you as you searched the collections for content to use in your art? >> Allie Martin: I would say something that surprised me was the way that these interviewers were talking to people on voices remembering slavery. I don't know why I was surprised by that. I shouldn't have been. But there they were just very like coercive at times, trying to get people to sing, tell stories, do whatever they wanted to record. And that surprised me because it's just like, as a trained ethnographer, like, you have to be respectful, but I remember that I do not come from a particularly respectful or grateful for discipline. but yeah, I think that surprised me. >> Maya Freelon: That reminds me of one of the workshops I think was put on by CCDI, which was about consent and recording and how to interview ethically. And I hadn't even thought about, like, I'm a pretty careful person, I thought, but I didn't even think about all of the things that could happen. When you're interviewing somebody who you don't have a cultural understanding of, and that there's a set of rules or ways to approach it to get something both authentic but also ethically mined information. And so I completely understand what you're saying there, Allie. And I think I should have known there wasn't going to be much joy in enslaved children. I just thought I get at least ten smiling faces and I didn't. So it seems strange in retrospect that I didn't know that, but I really was expecting more. It's not that they weren't smiling, but they weren't smiling at the photographer who took their photograph. >> Kimber Thomas: Wait, we have another question. This one is for Allie. Oh, this is Jamie wants to hear more about Allie's listening sessions. How were those run? What happened and how did it add to the work you did? >> Allie Martin: Yeah, the listening sessions were cool. They were very site specific. So Chicago was in the basement of a record store in the South Side. And it was nice and it was like 15 of us, and we were like, just kind of like, locked in like this. And it was really special because Donald Gay Pastor Gay is actually featured on the 1977 recordings, and he came to listening session. and he was so supportive and so thoughtful, and he called me after and was like, this was so great. So that was good. And then like Fort Valley was different because Fort Valley, like, this is a college campus I'm working with a professor on campus. And so this was more like a lecture where I talked about the work and talked about ethnomusicology. There are no ethnomusicology PhD programs at HBCUs. None because I would have went to one. I asked. And there are ethnomusicologists that work at HBCUs, but there are no doctoral programs. And so that one turned more into a lecture on what I do and how I do it. So it really just depended on what that space needed. And I was trying to be very open and very receptive. Martha's Vineyard was a completely different vibe because that was more interactive, and I had people sing and do call and response. So yeah, I was just really trying to be where I was. But in each case, everybody was really receptive. And I think we had some good times just sort of being in that sound together. >> Kimber Thomas: We have a comment that both of your collections are very moving, and thank you for sharing and that this person wants to see and hear more. And then another question for you, Allie. Were there a large number of recordings available or were they few and far between? >> Allie Martin: There were a lot. There were quite a lot. I mean, there's 22 voices remembering slavery. There's way more than that for Chicago ethnic Arts. And then because I tend to work with such small sample sizes, like, I tend to work really in the specific, and so I could be listening to an interview that's an hour and a half long, but it'll be like 1/32 exchange and I really just can't get out of my head. And so I ended up with way more material than I really needed, but it was still good to sort of sift through it all. But there's a lot and it's all digitized and available. >> Kimber Thomas: And then I think we have time for one more. So I will combine Aubrey's question and Olivia's. So this one is for Maya. What will happen to your artwork after the exhibition? And then how does this fit into the larger portfolio of your work, this project? >> Maya Freelon: I hope people will buy it. That would be great so I could continue being a working artist. But what I will do is after January, hopefully -- well, what every artist wants is for the exhibition to travel. And so I'm open to any of the universities or gallery museums that would be interested in hosting it, especially since this was a site-specific installation in. I don't think I said this in the former slave owner's house that is where the art is. And that really made it even more poignant and special to put these children in a place where they weren't even allowed to be exist or even step in the threshold? Stagville does a really good job of sharing the perspective from the descendants. And I think I would love for the artwork to travel, and then it fits into my greater portfolio because I've always been interested in historic photos and black and white photos for that very reason that we're always trying to figure out who is who and who we're related to and our ancestry. And so I think seeing these faces just made me feel more familiar and more connected to my history. And so I hope that does that for not only African American folks, but everyone. >> Kimber Thomas: Awesome. Thank you again, Maya and Allie. This was wonderful and it's been so much fun working with the two of you this year. Thank you also to our attendees for the engaging questions for Maya and Allie. Before we move ahead to our higher education presentations, we'll take a quick five-minute break. So we will be back here at 1:45 p.m.. >> Olivia Dorsey: All right. Welcome back. During this portion of the event, our higher education and our libraries, archives, museums award recipients will present on their projects. At the end of all six presentations, we'll hold time for Q&A. So definitely make sure to enter your questions into the Q&A feature of Zoom. First up are our Higher Education Award recipients. This round, we welcome three recipients for this category. Our first presenter is University of Houston downtown from Houston, Texas. Their project is Discovering Afro-Latino Heritage, a reflective story map project to enhance student belongingness and learning. And now I'll hand it over to their team. >> Gregory Dement: Thank you, Olivia. If you'll go to the first slide here, My name is Greg Dement. I'm director of the center for Teaching and Learning Excellence. And as Olivia mentioned, this project is a story map project where we have been working with faculty and students to create story maps that tell the story of Afro-Latino heritage and culture for the purpose of providing to the community and enhancing a sense of belonging for our students, and really being a resource for a number of disciplines for faculty at UHD. It's been an honor to work with Dr. Chiquillo, who's a professor of Spanish in the Department of Humanities, History and Languages, as well as Jennifer Fuentes, who is our online learning librarian who has worked very closely with students and faculty to get into the Library of Congress collections. And Fabiola Vacatoledo is our instructional designer. She worked a lot with faculty to design assignments for students to be able to create these story maps. So we worked a lot with faculty and students. And in the next slide, I'll pass it on to Dr. Chiquillo to talk about those partnerships. >> Raquel Chiquillo: Thank you, Dr. Dement. Yes, our project actually did depend a great deal on the willingness of the faculty to participate, because it was through them that we engaged the students with the projects in their classes. So we're very lucky that we had a variety of faculty and a variety of disciplines that chose to work with us. We had faculty in Spanish, Latino studies, English. If you could, go to the next slide. And then for the fall, we added sociology and also history. One professor did do it both semesters because his project became so big that he just needed more time. And then another professor just did a separate project for fall. So one of our goals, of course, was to help our Afro-Latino students feel that they are being heard and that they are important to our institution and to us as faculty as well. And part of our project is -- One of the main things for our project is to incorporate the story maps into our different classes, in our different disciplines, so we can have at least a unit that deals with Afro-latinos or Afro-Latino literature and different things. And if you could pass to the next slide. And then, of course a dream was to have our story maps translated. So we do have a translation program at UHD, but we opened it up kind of like as a job for students. And these three students made it through the beginning, the interview process. And so they have been wonderful. They have translated everything. All of the story maps that we have had translated have been done by one of these three students. So we have Marya Ontivero, and we have Celine Garcia and then Libni Martinez Benitez. So all of them are UHD students. And I think most of them have taken the translation class that we offer at UHD, and they translate both into Spanish and into English. So it has been really a proud moment to see our students really shine in this project as well, and the kindness of our faculty in taking the time, because it has taken a lot of time to guide them as well. And I think that's it for me. So I think maybe Fabiola's next. >> Fabiola Vacatoledo: Yes, please. The next slide. And thank you. An important goal of our project is to highlight AfroLatinidad in our community. So we were able to collaborate with the center for Latino Studies in their Latin Fest, and of course, they've done it every year. But we were able to collaborate with this grant and highlight the Afro heritage and celebrate it. And so we had Dr. Tequila with the station of showing the story map projects, a craft table and a wall of notable Afro-Latinos. But especially we had a very special performance, if you can see on the next pictures in the next slide and of the Garifuna dance group. It's a Houston group and we have a Garifuna community here, and they brought food to share. And they were also, most importantly, given a platform to inform our community in their own voice about their history and culture and show their beautiful music. Personally, I felt transported to the ocean waters with the sound of their chanting and their music. And so this was a very unique Latino and Houston experience for all of us. And so that is something that we’ll take away and will continue and expand in our community. So for the main product of our project is the collection of story maps. And the next slide. So the story maps are going to be divided in collections of topics, and some of them will be influential Latinos, Afro-Latinos ones that deal with the Caribbean, and there's also a Garifuna collection. So this is a -- I just wanted to show you a screenshot video of one of a big story map. This one is of music and so you could see what it kind of looks like and it's quite big. So it is able to have different sections since you can click on it instead of having to scroll, you can see the different types of interactions that it has with the maps where you can click and expand and it has content and timelines, videos, images from the Library of Congress, of course. And so we could definitely get a lot of interactive information engaging. And we can't wait to share this publicly with everyone. So many people can get to take advantage of it. Yeah, so just wanted to share a little bit of that and pass it on to Jennifer. >> Jennifer Fuentes: Next slide please. So, as Fabiola was telling us, there were a lot of images and maps that we found through the various collections, and we really charged our faculty and students with locating as much as they could from the Library of Congress Digital Collections to help create these interactive elements. And this really led to a bit of a challenge for them to find some of these things. And it led to a lot of opportunities for learning with the Library of Congress classification systems and as well as researching within those historical contexts. So they were able to find quite a few resources within the collections, and also using the blogs and the different research guides that they were able to find through the Library of Congress, as well as some external resources. So this discovery and collection process made this a really important learning opportunity for both our faculty and our students to really discover what the Library of Congress has to offer. Next slide please. So we'd like to take this opportunity to thank all those at the Library of Congress for their pivotal role in making this project a reality. We'd like to extend a special thank you to reference librarian Danny Thurber for the excellent support that she gave our faculty and students throughout the development of the story maps. And we'd like to thank CCDI and the Mellon Foundation for their support as well. We'd also like to thank the various departments of UHD who participated in the project, including the center f or Teaching and Learning Excellence, the library, bearing the history, the Department of History, Humanities and Languages, and the center for Latino Studies. we're really grateful for this opportunity to help share these stories not only of the past, but also of the present. Thank you very much. >> Olivia Dorsey: Thank you, UHD, for a fantastic presentation. Next up we have Indiana University from Bloomington, Indiana, and they'll be presenting on their project Connecting Collections Indigenous Identities in Edward Curtis and Joseph Dixon Materials. And I'll hand it over to their team. >> Kelsey Todd Grimm: Hi, everyone. My name is Kelsey Grimm, and I'm the curator of archives and library resources at the Indiana University Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, or IUMAA. Next slide please. So let me introduce you to our team. For this grant, we invited three indigenous guest curators to guide the project and resulting exhibits. You'll see in the picture on the left is Brandie MacDonald, Chickasaw, Choctaw. She's the IUMAA's executive director. Debrah Yeppa-Pappan, she's Jemez Pueblo Korean, and she's a contemporary multimedia artist specializing in photography and digital collaging based in Chicago, Illinois. Melina Two Balls Parker, Oglala Lakota, Northern Cheyenne specializes in beadwork, quilting, and handmade dolls based in Red Shirt, South Dakota. And on the right is Yatika Starr Fields, Osage, Muscogee Creek, and Cherokee, who's a painter, muralist, street artist, and community activist based in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The curators, as we mentioned, use the Edward S Curtis Collection from the Library of Congress, the Wanamaker Collection of Photographs and Documents at IUMAA, and the cylinder recordings from both found at IU's Archives of Traditional Music as inspiration for these exhibits. found at IU's Archives of Traditional Music as inspiration for these exhibits. It was important for us to prioritize the curators’ indigenous voices and their artistic visions. They are the content bearers and the knowledge bearers. That's not me. It's them. They specifically stated in the early planning stages that they wanted to decenter harmful colonial narratives found in these ethnographic collections materials that were created by non-indigenous white male photographers whose explicit goals were, to quote, capture the vanishing race. Instead, the project curators chose to reconnect to moments of laughter and joy, community, identity, and humanity. Next slide. Some, but not all of the created works by the curators are found on this slide. On the left, Molina Two Balls, crafted for dolls using cotton, buckskin seed beads, ribbon, and other materials in order to celebrate the women in her life. Her approach intertwines traditional Lakota cultures and designs with modern art and artists like Andy Warhol and Frida Kahlo. The flag in the top right was created by Yatika and reclaims the colonial Wanamaker Expedition flag, stripping away past harms and filling it with a new story, a native narrative. In the bottom right is Deborah's art, celebrating the Pueblo culture and connecting to the joy of her family. Her culture is thriving and growing and changing, and her art connects back to her people, past and present and future. Next slide. The physical and virtual exhibits of Through Our Eyes a reclamation, the title of the exhibits debuted through a series of events the week of Indigenous Peoples Day in October 2024, specifically chosen by the curators. It's now one month ago. The curators connected with indigenous staff and students at Indiana University with lots of food and conversation and laughter. Melina even taught a simple beading workshop to those interested in learning a little of her craft. And an hour got me just like a very tiny little thing. It was so much fun though. Next slide. Another big moment of the opening week was a program hosted in collaboration with IU libraries. IU libraries hosted a conversation between the curators for the community, where Melina, Debra, and Yatika discussed their experiences and reflected on the significance of telling their own stories in their own words. During the event, they didn't shy away from discussing the challenges of working with institutions of higher ed or libraries or museums, digging through archives where navigating administrative red tape is sometimes beyond difficult, where reservation addresses sometimes don't exist in computer systems or deer hide is challenged as an art supply. There was a lot of joy in these events and these moments, though. We saw each other face to face and celebrated the work that has happened this year. Next slide. I briefly mentioned the virtual exhibit earlier, which is actually a large part of this grant. In August and September, our team worked with IU's Advanced Visualization Laboratory to three dimensionally scan the artworks created by the curators in order to place them in the virtual world. Michael Saari, pictured here, is the one creating the virtual environments on the platform, Spatial. So visitors to the museum at IU, as well as those around the world, can experience the artworks wherever they live. We do still have a few technology challenges with our touch screen in the physical exhibit, and the curators are continuing to work with Michael to make final adjustments in their virtual exhibits for the next month. I had to showcase the two pictures on the slide on the right, where you can see the back of Yatika’s flag at the top, where he literally built the canvas upon which he painted. It's beautiful. And I thought an art in and of itself. And Milena's doll at the bottom is getting her editorial high fashion photo shoot moment, which was also really fun. Next slide. Here you'll see a teaser of each of the curators created environments, but please use the QR code on screen to explore more. It will take you to the three-RI’s IUMAA’s web page, which has a link to the virtual exhibit on spatial. Melina's environment on the left creates or celebrates the Lakota lands found in the plains. Debra's environment in the middle there is like a modern Pueblo Kiva in the Chicago skyline. And I think you can hear birds chirping and things like that, which is beautiful. And Yatika on the right is just one of multiple rooms that he's created where he plays with size and quantity of the artworks that you can't actually do in the physical world. And it features also a special Oklahoma location that was scanned in the real world in order to make it virtual. So please check it out and let us know what you think. Next slide. I want to send a big thank you to Olivia and the CCDI team at the Library of Congress. Brandie McDonald, Abigail Epstein, Camden Hill and Amelia Fall at IUMAA. Those who supported us at the IU libraries Archives of Traditional Music, First Nations Education and Cultural Center, and the Advanced Visualization Lab, and of course, Debra, Melina and Yatika for their hard work and dedication this whole year. Feel free to connect with me or IUMAA for any future inquiries and thoughts. I look forward to hearing from you all. Thank you. >> Olivia Dorsey: And thank you, Kelsey for that presentation. Next up, our final higher education presenter is Angelo State University from San Angelo, Texas. With their project, All History is local celebrating the people of West Texas. I'll now hand it over to their team. >> Aubrey Madler: Hi, good afternoon. Our project also ended up being a collection of stories, much like the University of Houston downtown, and it was set up to fill a gap of information that's available about the West Texas region, and to help bring that identity to those that live here in this rural and remote area, and to show those members of those minority communities that their stories matter. They matter today, and they mattered in history as well. If you'll switch to the next slide, please. Our project was led by several people across campus. The PIs are pictured here myself. Aubrey Shannon is with me today, and Dr. Matt Gritter is associate professor and chair of our Department of Political Science and Philosophy. And in addition to us, it also engaged several other faculty, partners and students who engaged in the writing and the research of the stories that were gathered. Next slide please. And our story or our project aimed to satisfies several objectives, four primary objectives here. And overall we felt were successful in meeting those objectives. We felt that we did give voice to the folks of West Texas and bringing those narratives to life, bringing faculty and students together toward a common goal and a unique project that we had never seen before here. And ultimately, the product is aimed to be a unique teaching and learning tool or research tool that will continue to build on in the years to come. And the next slide, it features a short video clip that tours you through this product. Please do play the video clip. >> To make the tool publicly available, The project link lives within Angelo State University’s Library's Special Collections unit, the Dr. Ralph R Chase West Texas Collection. Upon clicking on the All History as Local virtual exhibit link, users will be taken to the project hub within the ArcGIS platform from ESRI. This home page for the project features a basic description, links to various thematic stories, and a footer, with additional details such as contact information for the project, acknowledgements, and links to more information about each of the project partners. Options for additional information include the ASU Digital Repository, where full articles are published as written by the students, plus the Library of Congress Digital Collections link, and a link to the Handbook of Texas, each of which served as key resources for many stories represented in the project. Clicking on one of the thematic collections takes users to a page that looks something like this, where they choose which story to start exploring. Users can simply scroll through the entire story or they can skip to different sections. Some stories include unique visual features such as timelines and interactive maps. And when permissions allow, digital artifacts are embedded directly throughout, while others live as external links. Users can navigate to any and all stories within the same collection. Go back to the main collection page, or start all over again at the Project Hub and choose a different collection to explore. >> Aubrey Madler: Thank you. In advance to the next slide please, and Shannon will take over to talk more about the collections used and lessons learned. >> Shannon Sturm: So we really enjoy digging into the Library of Congress Digital Collections for this project. Our student researchers and designers use many of the collections available through the Library of Congress, including Chronicling America, the Prints and Photograph Division's collection, Farm Security Administration collections, Civil Rights History Project Collection, and the African American Perspectives Collection, along with many others. These were used in various ways that we'll talk about a little bit if we can advance to the next slide, please. So as you saw in the story maps, as they were presented to you, the digital collections that we could embed were embedded straight into those story maps so people could interact with and see those visual cues right in the stories. You can see examples here of embedded photographs from the prints and photographs collections, as well as oral histories you can see embedded directly from the Farm Security Administration collection. This was done when we had permissions, both for any kind of restrict without any kind of restricted use or copyright barriers. But we also found that we wanted to be able to link out to images that perhaps we didn't have the ability to link directly in. And so we used links out to those, and we can show you those if we advance to the next slide. So what you'll see on this slide is where we have those red blocks. That's where you can link out to additional collections. We did this if there were restrictions or if we wanted to highlight larger collections. So for example, we used links for some of the photographs found in the NAACP collections because use for those was restricted by copyright or permissions. But we wanted to be able to show people that link out from our own local chapter here, and people who are participating in our local chapter of the NAACP and connect it back to that national level and show photographs of people doing similar things in different places to tie our West Texas history into the larger national narrative. So we have those links out. In addition to that, we have links to the Civil Rights History Project as a whole, not necessarily because we couldn't embed those, but because we wanted to draw attention to that collection in its entirety so people could go out and explore and find more information than just having one link or one digital artifact embedded into our stories. And so those are some of the ways that we use the links. We also have links to the Library of Congress Digital Collections landing page as a whole, hoping that people will get on that page and explore and find things that we haven't even discovered yet. And so we provide those links out as well. If we can go to the next slide, please. So I want to talk a little bit about our challenges, the outcomes and our long-term impacts. Of course, like any project, we did have some challenges that came up along the way. The first was actually the ease of use of some of these story maps and content creating. We intended to only be able to create a map, and then we realized, wow, we can create this entire website and these thematic sections to that web page to guide people through that experience and to learn more. And so that caused us to reimagine our layout as we had the project started already. It also caused us to go back and have to kind of rework some of those narratives to fit those new thematic structures. But we did that, and we think that we're providing a much more in-depth look at these stories. After we realized what the product was capable of, we also encountered some copyright issues, especially in working with our local newspaper. We had some images and articles that we'd like to use. We were only able to use one due to copyright restrictions and having to purchase the rights to be able to show those. But we still feel like we picked the best image and we are still able to tell the story that we wanted to tell. Scheduling conflicts with our students. Our students did the bulk of the research as well as the writing for our project, and so just scheduling conflicts with curricular and co-curricular activities was a little challenging at times, but at the end of the day, what made this so important to us was that collaboration with our students and our faculty. So all of that was worth it. For the collaborations, for those outcomes and long-term impacts, I think that what was really fascinating and wonderful for me to see was the college campus coming together. So we had faculty and staff from across all of the disciplines. We worked with the College of Arts and Humanities as well as science and engineering. We had IT help. The College of Education jumped in and helped us with one of our outreach projects was actually to bring in local and regional teachers, as well as pre-service teachers to introduce them to this tool as an opportunity for them to bring it into their classrooms, but also to highlight primary source teaching in general and to talk to them about the tools the Library of Congress already has in place. So those lesson plans, as well as the primary source sets, we're able to incorporate that as well. And most importantly to me, was watching our student growth and the leadership that they took in the project and doing their research and coming up with ideas, tying them to resources both from our collections as well as the Library of Congress. And there wasn't a meeting that went by without a student coming up and saying, I'm so excited, look what I found, or did you know this? And being able to incorporate into their stories, watching them do history rather than just read about it and making it their own and understanding their community better, was really rewarding, I think. I hope for all of us, but certainly for me to get to watch that one story I'll share really quickly was just with one of the most recent items that we found in the Library of Congress. It was from the African American Perspectives collection, and it was a pamphlet by Prince Hall, who was a founder of the Prince Hall Masonic lodges. And we have a Prince Hall lodge here in San Angelo that the student has been working to do the history on, and to find that connection back to its founder and be able to draw that forward into the present was really just this revolutionary moment for her, and really exciting to see and to see that our history is part of that larger, not only national but global history. It's unique, but it also falls into the context of something much bigger. And so I would just end this presentation by thanking everyone for their help, both here on campus, the Library of Congress, for this fabulous opportunity that we've been given, and to know that the work will go forward. We don't intend to stop here, so we're very excited to see what comes in the future as well. Thank you. >> Olivia Dorsey: Thank you, Aubrey and Shannon. Next up we are going to start with our libraries, archives, museums, presentations. So our first libraries archives museums presenter is Hoboken Public Library. And they will be presenting on their project The Puerto Rican Experience in Hoboken and America. And I'll pass to James. >> James Cox: Hey, everybody, I'm James Cox. I'm the special collections manager at Hoboken Public Library. Next slide please. These are some of the people who worked on the project on a daily or weekly basis. And the roles they played. There are other people who helped me as well who sort of passed through the ranks. but these are the people who worked with me on a regular basis. I'm just one of the many people who worked on this project. I'm a bit of a Luddite, so if they didn't help me, this wouldn't have happened the way it did. Next slide please. So to give you a little bit of background, Hoboken is known as the Mile Square City because it's approximately a mile square and is located in northeastern new Jersey in Hudson County on the western banks of the Hudson River, opposite Manhattan. Hoboken developed in relationship to New York City, first as a bucolic destination for New Yorkers in the 19th century and more recently, the last 40 years or so as a bedroom community for commuters. The intent of our project was to study the Puerto Rican diaspora in Hoboken. Puerto Ricans began arriving in Hoboken in the early 20th century. By the 1950s, there were approximately 5000 Puerto Rican residents living in Hoboken. Between 1950 and 1960, the population doubled to 12,500 individuals, and by 1980, the population topped 16,000 individuals. Some of these numbers are anecdotal. Those numbers pale in comparison to, say, New York City. But the overall population in Hoboken at its greatest is like 60,000 people. So these numbers of Puerto Rican people living in Hoboken represents the largest per capita Puerto Rican population in the continental United States. Next slide please. We reached out to our community in a number of different ways. We reached out via the Hoboken Public Library's newsletter and the Hoboken Historical Museum's newsletter. We created a special landing page where people could upload information. We co-hosted three senior luncheons with the Hoboken Housing Authority and held a garden party at the main branch of the library. And we were fortunate to be invited to the Puerto Rican Cultural Committee of Hoboken's 58th annual Puerto Rican flag raising at Hoboken City Hall. And I'm hopeful we'll continue to attend the flag raising ceremony year in and year out. These are some of the photos we took at these events. I'm a terrible photographer, so probably on mine. Up in the upper left-hand corner is my colleague, Brenda, making empanadas for the garden party. The upper right-hand picture is a bunch of senior citizens at one of the senior luncheons, and I took a picture of that guy standing in front of me because he had a Roberto Clemente jersey on. Bottom right, of course, Spanish food, very important to all public events is eating food. And the panorama in the bottom left-hand corner is the Puerto Rican flag raising ceremony inside City Hall. Next slide please. So there are two outputs of our project. One is an Omeka site and the other is a night lab timeline. Omeka is a platform widely used by libraries and cultural institutions to organize materials for online display. They have a structure that is similar or sympathetic to a museum setting just online. The reason we settled on these resources was we thought they'd offer the greatest flexibility for the subjects we're exploring. We hope to collect oral histories or interviews and artifacts from our study groups or population. It seemed the best way to organize these types of data for public consumption from anywhere in the world would be these online resources. My intent was to study the population as both an anthropologist and historian. Despite these lofty sounding academic goals, I was interested in producing a bottom-up history rather than a top-down history. However, practically I was still very reliant on published sources, primarily the local and soon to be shuttered Jersey Journal. I'm showing you a couple of images from the Omeka site. You can see this is the landing page, and at the top on that ribbon it says browse collections and browse exhibits. if you go to the next slide, please. So these are the collections, and they're organized by repository or provenance. So you can see the Library of Congress is there in the upper left-hand corner or not the left hand-- upper left hand corner, but they're on the left hand corner. So we used a lot of Library of Congress maps and images. So they're embedded in their own collection on the website and then sometimes incorporated into exhibits. I don't have a picture of the exhibits, of course, or unfortunately. Oftentimes, I wanted the materials to speak for themselves, so I didn't always incorporate them into the exhibit format. For instance, we conducted oral histories and we contracted with an oral historian named Christopher Lopez. You can see his name on there. And a lot of his resources are standalone things. We didn't want to impose our worldview on these resources that we acquired. Next slide please. So this is an example of this is the first page of the night lab timeline. The night lab timeline is very dynamic. I'm used to producing, like timelines or chronologies that are just dates and text. This is more dynamic than that. It has the ability to have graphics. Also, it's online, so you can adjust it at any time and add more material or take material away. Throughout the resources that we use, we link out to various Library of Congress study guides or story maps. An example of that is the Taino culture, the Taino were the indigenous population that existed in Puerto Rico prior to the arrival of the Europeans. Our project does not specifically address the Taino, but I link out to Library of Congress resources about the Taino. Another example is the Young Lords. The young Lords were kind of like a social organization started by Puerto Rican youth in Chicago in the 1960s. And they had some representation in New York City and Newark, New Jersey. And they may have come to Newark, or they may have come to Jersey City or Hoboken rather during the 60s and 70s. but rather than expound on that within our text, I link out to Library of Congress research guides about the Young Lords. Next slide please. So what is the outcome or impact of our project? The immediate outcome is that we've created a digital repository marrying disparate groups and resources together. The timeline is published on the Hoboken Public Library's website. I'll insert a link in the chat, unless Olivia already did that. As pointed out by my supervisor, we've now created the thing that we've been talking about for the past year to a bunch of people. It's no longer an abstraction. Going forward, we can tell people, take a look at this website. We'd like to include your story. Ideally, this will drive interest in the project and give participants a tangible resource to reference. The functionality of Omeka allows us to collect materials through the site, and it allows users to contact us, which is very important to us because if we got something wrong or if there's something else to add, we'd like to know that, or I would like to know that. I hope this is useful for students who need to do research into their community or scholars interested in the Puerto Rican diaspora even a backwater like Hoboken. I have more information to add, so it's still a work in progress, and we'll be working on it as long as I work here. I'd like to take this moment to thank some of our partners and some of my friends. Thank you to Bob foster and Holly Metz, Christopher Lopez, Raul Morales junior, Raul Morales senior, My friends at the Library of Congress, Isabel, who is not in this group anymore, Kimber, Marya and Olivia. An extra special thanks to some people who gave us their stories. Ramona Diaz, Deles Gonzalez, Myrna Milan, Juan Pizarro, Angel Rivera, Sylvia Rivera, Carmen Sanchez, and Carmen Vega. And let me use this postscript to say this population is very special because the first children who came to the continental United States from Puerto Rico in the 1950s are senior citizens now. And so if we're able to capture their stories sooner rather than later that's a really unique resource that we would have. And with that said, one of our interviewees, Carmen Sanchez, passed away since we interviewed her. So rest in peace, Carmen Sanchez. Next slide please. And that's it for me. So if you have any input, I would love to hear it. I love helpful criticism, so email me. I should have put my phone number. Another way to contact me. But you can email me And I'll put the links to the Omeka site and the night lab timeline in the chat now, but that's it for me. >> Olivia Dorsey: Thank you, James. Next slide please. Our next presenter is friends of Tijeras Pueblo from Tijeras, New Mexico with their project the Ancestral Tiwa World connected to the present Taos Pueblo and context. I'll hand it over to Judy to share more. >> Judy Vredenburg: Good morning. Or actually, it's not morning anymore. It's afternoon. Even though I'm in the mountain region, it hasn't been afternoon very long here. Next slide please. The Pueblo archaeological site was populated during the 14th century by a community of Tiwa speaking Ancestral Pueblo people, known in the Tiwa language as the Shell Place. It is considered an ancestral site by the Pueblo of Isleta. The site is protected and preserved by the USDA Forest Service in partnership with the Friends of Taos Pueblo, a 501C3 organization. The site is located just east of Albuquerque, about eight miles east of Albuquerque and just off the Interstate 40. So it attracts international visitors as well as people from all over the United States. It includes a self-guided interpretive trail, a garden of native plants, and a small museum and learning center. You may note in the picture in the left, which shows the main part of the archaeological site, you see a mound, but you don't see ruins, except for the model of the village, which is shown on the right and is a part of the interpretive trail. This is a disadvantage to the site in some ways, because many visitors visit these sites historic and archaeological sites to see ruins, but the visitors who take the time to walk the interpretive trail and visit the museum learn that there is much more to an archaeological site than just ruins. Next slide please. The museum features a mural map painted by Deborah Jojola Isleta Jemez, and it includes also a full size loom, which you see in connection with the clothing learning station. There are six learning stations dealing with archaeology and five of them dealing with Pueblo life, various aspects of Pueblo life. The loom was created and installed by Luis Garcia, who is a Tiwa/Piro master weaver. The mural map you can possibly tell from the picture is essentially a map of the central Rio Grande Valley, but it includes vignettes of Pueblo life. This was inspired by the Zuni mapping project from some years ago that did a similar thing with many Zuni artists participating. So that was the inspiration for this map by Isleta artist. The interactive additions to these two displays or exhibits include videos. In the case of the mural map, videos made by Isleta elders that talk about various aspects of the map, various aspects of Pueblo life. And two of those videos are in the Tiwa language. The Luis Garcia himself, who was the creator, as I said, of the loom narrates a discussion of pueblo weaving and the introduction of cotton to the United States. This is introducing to our museum a new dimension of information and experience. Next slide please. The third part of the project is an entirely new exhibit, a digital scene entitled We Are Still Here. It utilizes numerous 19th and 20th century photos of Isleta Pueblo people from the Library of Congress collections. It is a tribute to the resilience of the Pueblo people, who have not only survived, but have thrived despite centuries of abuse and intervention in their life ways. This contributes to our goal of helping our visitors have a better understanding of the true nature and status of the Pueblo people moving beyond the stereotypes. Next slide please. As project coordinator, I was very fortunate to work with an outstanding team. This team included Sandra. This is from left to right. Yours truly is on the far left. Sandra Arazi-Coambs, who is the zone archaeologist for the Sandia District of the USDA Forest Service, Amanda Ginithan, the district ranger, The artist, Deborah Jojola and Isleta Pueblo elders. This is a representation of the Committee for preservation -- for historical and cultural preservation. From left to right, the woman in the center is Stephanie Zuni. Then we have one -- sorry, I have to look at my notes here. Juan Trujillo, Ignacio Lujan, and Dr. Henry Walt, the tribal historic preservation officer. Next slide, please. I should have mentioned, too, that our team also included an interactive design firm in Corrales, New Mexico, known as IDM. They were wonderful to work with in that. They were always in their work with us, culturally sensitive in their work with the elders and creating the videos that we were doing. The outcomes, though we are not completing -- the project, isn't completed yet, it's still an ongoing thing, we have only one of the videos installed at this point. But even with that, we have learned a lot about our visitors reactions to what we are doing. We've been very fortunate to have a very close working relationship with the Pueblo of Isleta over the past ten years or so. The Department of Cultural and Historic Preservation that I mentioned before has reviewed all of our exhibits, both for the museum and the interpretive trail. This project has created an even closer working relationship with the Pueblo of Isleta, as we work together to digitally enhance our exhibits and create the new exhibit. Now, the Department of Education at Isleta is considering incorporating visits to our site into its curriculum. We've already welcomed three groups of students during the course of the project, and this is beginning to realize our goal of providing a valuable resource to the descendants of the Shell Place, as well as to other pueblos. As I said, we've only installed one of the five digital units at this point, but we've already begun to see the impact this is having on our visitors. Having the opportunity to hear from Pueblo people themselves, and to actually hear an ancient language is a very new experience for most visitors, and the opportunity we find is greatly appreciated. We hope our visitors come to realize -- And may I have the next slide, please? We hope that our visitors come to realize that it's not just about what other cultures have in common with white European culture, but that we can and must celebrate the differences as well. Anthropologist Wade Davis wrote, the world in which you are born is just one model of reality. Other cultures are not failed attempts at being you. the world in which you are born is just one model of reality. Other cultures are not failed attempts at being you. They are unique manifestations of the human spirit. I want to thank the Library of Congress and the Mellon Foundation for helping us create a more profound experience for our visitors, and thank you for your interest in the CCDI Grant initiative. >> Olivia Dorsey: Thank you, Judy. All right. Our last libraries archives Museums presenter is DC Public Library from Washington, DC with their project documenting the Ethiopian communities of DC. And I'll now hand it over to Maya Thompson. >> Maya Thompson: Thank you, Olivia. Okay, so good afternoon. My name is Maya Thompson, and I'm the library program coordinator for the People's Archive at DC Public Library. I'm serving as the project lead for documenting the Ethiopian communities of DC. Next slide. Our project team also consists of Tsedaye Makonnen, who is the principal artist and curator, Aisha N. White, who was the project manager and community impact consultant. Gelila Kassa, who is working on transcription, translation and metadata, and Hannah Giorgi, who is our oral history interviewer. Next slide. Ethiopia is an East African nation located in the Horn of Africa. It is the second most populous nation in Africa after Nigeria and encompasses numerous ethnic groups and languages. It twice successfully resisted colonization by Italy. This was a point of pride for Black Americans in the 20th century. In the 1970s, the Ethiopian Revolution led Ethiopians to begin to migrate in large numbers to Washington, DC. This corresponded with an era during which black residents made up the majority of DC residents, an era that lasted from the late 1950s to 2011. Dc is now widely considered to be home to the second largest population of Ethiopian people in the world after Ethiopia itself. The city has undeniably been shaped by its Ethiopian residents, just as it has shaped them. Through this grant, the People's Archive aimed to highlight the stories of DC's Ethiopian communities. These stories remain largely underrepresented in our collections, and we hope to build relationships with DC's thriving diasporic communities. We also hope to explore the symbiotic relationship between DC and its residents with geographic ties to Ethiopia, to highlight the experiences of DC residents whose relationships to the city and to Ethiopia span multiple generations and identities, and to use Library of Congress collections as a prompt for the community to build upon the archive. Next slide. This project uses Elena Bradunas’ collection of photographs and interviews as its starting point. The collection, part of the 1982 Ethnic Heritage and Language Schools in America project conducted by the American Folklife Center, includes almost 400 images and several recordings of DC's Ethiopian community. To quote the website, the purpose of the project was to survey selected religious and secular ethnic community-based schools, conducted at least in part, in languages other than English, to document the continued ethno linguistic and cultural diversity of the United States. Our project aimed to expand upon the stories collected through this 1982 project, to represent an array of Ethiopian life in DC. We approach this primarily through the collection of oral histories and public programming. Next slide. We did encounter a combination of predicted and unforeseen project challenges. This project required an expansive view of Ethiopia and the many populations with historical ties to the nation. Like many other immigrant and diasporic populations, the DC area Ethiopian community is not a monolith. Conducting oral histories of any demographic requires navigating inter-group tensions, and this project was no different. We sometimes have to contend with language barriers when talking to interview subjects who may not be fluent in English or Amharic, which is the official political language of Ethiopia, but not the native language of the country's largest ethnic group. Furthermore, because the region has been subjected to tremendous political volatility in years long conflicts that ripple out to the diaspora, the questions of what it means to be Ethiopian at all before even considering Ethiopian American identity or Ethiopian identity within the context of DC is notably fraught. Some interview subjects who felt less troubled by contemporary geopolitical conditions are nonetheless concerned about speaking candidly because of past strife. These conversations were navigated by leading with empathy and striving to ensure that the project reflects a range of varying viewpoints, demographics, and lived experiences. Finally, the navigation of local government funding regulations and timelines led to project delays. Our team worked with the Library of Congress staff to think creatively about reworking and paring down our project in a way that did not sacrifice its quality or compromise its original goals. We decided to deliver six robust oral histories in one community event. Next slide. Our oral histories include Hailu Dama, owner of the popular Dama bakery and Cafe. Mr. Dama left Ethiopia in 1974 due to the Ethiopian Revolution. In his interview, he discussed being proud that he created a community space with longevity and his feelings about America in the state of American politics. Musician and ethnomusicologist, Kumera Gannett, discussed his experience performing in the DC area, mentioning important cultural venues such as the restaurant Apollo and art space rhizome, protesting at the Saudi Arabia embassy, and the relationship between Americans and Black Americans, as well as well as his Oromo identity. Artist Wosene Kosrof discussed his life and journey as a student and artist. After leaving Ethiopia, he eventually ended up in DC, where he finished his arts education at Howard University. His interview includes his encounters with notable black artists who taught at Howard, his experiences with jazz and gospel, Various DC locations he visited, and the expansion of his artistic career. This collection of oral histories will be available in December on our DC library website, and later on our new digital platform, coming in January. Next slide. Finally, gatherings are a cornerstone of Ethiopian culture. Thus, we held a community convening which we called DC Ethiopian Archives Day as part of this project. Thanks to the support from the DC Public Library Foundation, we were able to hold this event at Sankofa Video Books and Café, an establishment near Howard University important to both the African American and DC's Ethiopian communities, and to feature the Ethio jazz band known as Ross Band. Attendees were invited to view materials from the People's Archive and Library of Congress collections, listen to Orson Castro's oral history and digitize their own personal photos with our mobile memory lab. It was a beautiful, multigenerational event that invited people to learn more about this initiative. Many people showed interest in helping to cultivate this burgeoning archive. We hope that this project, these oral histories, this community convening will serve as the beginning of an archive and more programs that honor the contributions of a community that continues to shape our nation's capital. Next slide. Thank you all for listening. Thank you to Tsedaye Makonnen, Hannah Giorgi, Aisha N. White, and Gelila Kassa for working with our library on this project. And we are very grateful for the Library of Congress for making this project possible. >> Olivia Dorsey: Thank you, Maya, and thank you to all of our higher Education and libraries, archives, museums award recipients for your fantastic work over the past year and also your phenomenal presentations this afternoon. Now we'll hop into the Q&A for our award recipients for our higher education and our libraries archives museums award recipients. If you haven't done so already, please place any questions that you may have in the Q&A feature of Zoom, and I'll go ahead and start us off with a couple of questions. So this question is for all awardees. Where does one even begin with a project like yours? If someone wanted to create a project like yours from scratch, where might they start? What are some of the lessons learned or unexpected opportunities that you'd like to share with other people? >> Aubrey Madler: I'll start. Just start talking. Just honestly, ours came together by a conversation over coffee, and we were just talking about the histories of the area here and turned into conversations about gaps in sharing those histories. And it started with a conversation of what six people, faculty members from across our campus and there's just an idea that sparked with a similar tool that just created this inspiration, if you will. So just being aware of what's out there, have those conversations, start talking to people, build those relationships, and then when an opportunity comes your way, just jump on it and present your ideas and see what happens. Honestly, just if you don't ask, if you don't try, then it's hard to start. Even if you're not quite sure what it will be in the end, Start with an idea, start with a conversation. >> Olivia Dorsey: Thank you, Aubrey. Anyone else have a response? >> James Cox: I would say develop a timetable after that or a timeline after that, so you can see where you are and where you'd like to be at some point. >> Kelsey Todd Grimm: I'd like to throw in there though. The caveat though, especially for higher ed or other large institutions if you're working with community, build in flexibility. We need to meet community where they're at, not where we want to be or necessarily. Like we need to navigate and collaborate together. And sometimes it's not constant emails or Zoom conversations. Sometimes you need to go face to face and have coffee or send Instagram messages back and forth. Meet the community where they're at and build in flexibility because we're all people, and we have families and lives and so do our communities. >> Judy Vredenburg: I agree with Kelsey that flexibility is really, really important. if you're working, especially with different ethnic groups, there are times when there are celebrations going on that we have to take into consideration. In our case, we were trying to bring together all of the elders at the same time in order to do the videos in one day, one full day of filming. And that proved to be very difficult. So flexibility is of the essence. I agree Kelsey. >> Maya Thompson: I would agree with all of that. I would also add to be open to whatever questions are answered. you may come into a project having an idea of what story you might want to tell, but you will learn so much through the process of connecting with a different community that might be different from your own that the narrative that you end up learning about is different from the one that you came in being prepared to tell. So just remaining open. >> Judy Vredenburg: I think it helped that so much preparation was required in the application for the grant. So you're not going into it blindly. You already have a lot of that initial planning done. Again, flexibility has to enter into that. But at least you have a start on outlining what you want to do and having a timeline as required by the application. >> Raquel Chiquillo: I would just say just believe in your project because I answered a call at my university for different -- They were looking to see what would be the topic for the grant, and it was just an idea that I had and it ended up being chosen. So I would say you need to believe in the project. And that may sound like cell phone. Like, of course you're going to believe in your own project, right? But sometimes you don't. Sometimes you have doubts. Sometimes you wonder, did I bite off too much? Is this going to actually happen? So I would say be positive and feel like it is going to happen. When people ask me, how did you know it was going to end up being done? I'm like, I didn't, but I had this really strong belief that it was going to be done right. Like, I never thought it wasn't going to work. And I think that plays a big role in how successful it ends up being. >> Olivia Dorsey: I see that we have another question from the chat from John. For any of the awardees, where might this work take you either in terms of using other resources at the Library of Congress or looking for related collections in other repositories? >> Kelsey Todd Grimm: I'll throw out there. Yatika created a video for the physical exhibit using Images from the Wannamaker collection and the Curtis collection, but he also found video which I did not know about. And so I'm really interested in connecting with where the video is and connecting these collections again. We're also starting to do a project where the Wannamaker collection has World War I veterans images. So we're connecting with the Sequoyah Research Center. It's doing a World War I, native World War I website. And so we're starting that project. So connecting with some of these other groups and organizations and community members to get their stories told in different ways, too. So that's what's next for us. >> Raquel Chiquillo: I think we need to finish building the site that we're going to be using to house the story maps on at UHD. And then we would like, of course, for them to be completely public so anyone can look at them and view them, and I'm not sure where we will go beyond that. it is a project that could continue if we had support from the university or from someplace else. but it will depend. I'm not sure exactly how it fits institutionally right now into my institution. I don't know how else to say that. So we'll see we'll see how. I do see that it will be useful for professors and student. Yesterday at our showcase event was asking if it could be used by high school teachers and honestly, the way we've designed it, if it works out the way we want it to work, it will be open to anyone, anywhere that has an internet connection, right? So if even if you're in El Salvador or you are in Argentina or wherever and you want to see them, you should be able to see them and read them from anywhere. So we think they're going to be useful. They ended up being really interesting, at least that is my very biased view of them. >> Aubrey Madler: That sounds similar to our anticipation as well, where it'll live as a public site. And we've already gained a little bit of interest from our K-12 teachers in the area who wish to be able to tap into it as a teaching tool and a learning tool for their students, and also for the university community and anyone else just looking to discover those stories from people they knew or used to know, or their family members and so forth. And we do have plans also to expand on those stories and continue with the project through other funding sources. >> Shannon Sturm: I want to add just to grow our holdings here in our archive as well, but to make sure that our archive is a mirror of our community so that everyone is it's seen and heard and so to continue on this project. >> Aubrey Madler: And we've already gained a couple new oral histories in the process, which we didn't know we would, and building those connections throughout the community where -- and that was a surprise, a happy surprise. And so or gathering the artifacts and the photographs that build the local special collections and then also tied to those national narratives. So it's been a really great environment and experience in that regard. >> Judy Vredenburg: Well, we have received a New Mexico Arts grant. It's for an art project that is focused on the mural map. It will involve identifying art students in underserved high schools, which will be -- then they will be offered a series of workshops. And in fact, our mural artist, Deborah Jojola, will be the instructor for those workshops. The thing that really interests me is that first of all, I believe that we were awarded this grant partly on the basis of our Library of Congress grant. And the Library of Congress grant projects are adding a lot of depth to what we will be doing with the students when we have that group identified for the workshop. So this is sort of a continuation. In addition to that, I mentioned before, the Department of Education at the Pueblo of Isleta is incorporating the Pueblo archaeological site into their curriculum. And also they are developing a museum themselves. And we will be working together. Just as they collaborated with us in this project, we'll be collaborating with them in their projects. So there are a lot of offshoots from this. >> Olivia Dorsey: Just want to pause for a moment and see if there's any other questions or any other comments from our award recipients. All right. I'm not seeing any additional questions in the Q&A or in the chat and we are going down on time. So I think that's all the time that we have for questions. Thank you again to all of our awardees for sharing such fantastic work. I'll now go ahead and pass to Marya to close this out. >> Marya McQuirter: Thank you, Olivia, and thank you awardees for your presentations. They were incredible. Even though I saw some drafts of them before. It was just wonderful to see them again in this space. It was truly wonderful. And so if we can give a round of applause, either by hand or with emojis or whatever in the chat let's thank and say bravo to our awardees for their presentations and their hard work. Kimber, Olivia and I thank you all very much for joining us for this event. If you'd like to stay up to date on all things CCDI and the other of the people program as a whole, please do subscribe to our blog of the people if you haven't done so already, and either Olivia or Kimber will drop it in the chat. so again, thank you all very, very much for joining us. We hope you do take care, take care, take care, and also chow.