The Colored Conventions were meetings held by African American men and women between the 1830s and 1890s to discuss various issues, fight for their rights, and discourse. These conventions were held in both the United States and Canada. Although these conventions started by being dominated by men, soon women took influential roles in them. The Colored Conventions Project assembled all the records of the Colored Conventions on their website to make them easily accessible to a wider public. The first visible on their website is a drawing of how one of these conventions would look like. This image although simple is used as a powerful representation of how these conventions were held. It shows the unity of black people in one space with one common goal: civil and human rights. This website has some illustrations that will give the reader a mental image of the importance of the material.
The reader is able to explore all the conventions that have been recorded, and for his or her convenience, they can be searched by year, national conventions, or state conventions. When the specific convention is chosen, the reader will be redirected to a new page that will show a scanned copy of the text published after the convention. On this page, before opening the text the reader can know the subject of the text, the creator, source, publisher, date, type, etc. Once the text has been opened the reader has a detailed description of what happened during the convention. There are not many pictures or visuals of each of these conventions, but the information that is being shared is compelling. In spite of the vast information found on this website, these records are not complete; all the titles appear for all the conventions known to have happened, but a lot of them do not have anything recorded. Since this information is influential in understanding and appreciating the fight for black rights, it is critical that all conventions have their own records.
When looking at the conventions by the state it is relevant to observe that some states had a myriad of conventions, and a few others only held one or two. For example, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, Texas had the most conventions; on the other hand, Florida and District of Columbia have one each. The first recorded Colored Convention in New York (1840) is a facsimile document that begins with the call that was given to free black residents of the State of New York calling them to meet and discuss their rights. On this call, the invitation is toward every single person that can attend, which shows how important these meetings were for those who were organizing them. Then what proceeded on the meeting is described, everything that was said by the leaders. The list of the people who were appointed to the business committee is on the first pages. Then, the rules ought to be followed during the convention, followed by the names of the men who attended it. And finally, everything else that was said each day of the convention followed by reports. One of the main purposes of this convention was to expand suffrage rights. Each convention had its own purposes.
The Colored Conventions Project website, additionally to records of the conventions, has also some exhibits. One of them is an interactive map of the communities of African Americans in Philadelphia from the 1830s; which showed how connected the community was. Another one is showing schools where African American women attended alongside African American men in the 1850s. There was a strong fight for African Americal women to get an education and in 1853 the Colored Convention in Rochester decided to open the doors of a manual labor school for women to attend. Although the exhibits are significant, if someone is looking for information specifically about them, then, the Colored Conventions Project does not hold enough information.
The Colored Conventions Project is a perfect example of remediation. At first, the documents of the conventions were useful for those who want to know exactly what happened during the convention and to point out critical topics that were discussed for future reference. Now all these documents have been put on one website, more organized and accessible, so the person who reads them today can work with them. Some people may choose to use them to learn, others for small or big projects, and they can even be used for activism. Although all these records are in one place, their authenticity has been kept, they have not been edited or corrected before being put on the website. In a lot of cases, they have been typed out to make them more legible. According to the website, all the original collection is conserved in the University of Delaware Library Institutional Repository.
A lot of times works that are adapted for different purposes and for a different public are misappropriated which can cause conflict to the author, or to anyone who has identified the importance of the original work. However, in the case of the Colored Conventions Project, all the work that has been collected has been well preserved and organized. This project has not changed the original intent of the documents, but it has expanded it. And having it be accessible to a wider public takes away the authoritativeness of them. Because, although not every single person that will come in contact with this project will be an academic, the value of the content of this project will be universally appreciated.
The New York Public Library’s Billy Rose Theatre
Division is one of the world’s largest and most extensive archives of the theatre
arts. It is located at The New York Public Library (NYPL) for the Performing
Arts (LPA). The division’s special strength is American and European
performance in the 19th and 20th centuries including:
Set, costume, and lighting designs and other production
materials
Posters, window cards, and other visual material
Rare books
Theatre on Film and Tape Archives (TOFT)
From producing live theatre recordings to the collecting of personal papers and ephemera, the division boasts more than 10 million items documenting drama, musical theatre, film, television, and radio, from the Renaissance to the present day. Not all items of the division are digitized, but to date 800,000 items are represented online or provided as links with directions to viewing the personal objects. Due to the size and complexity of the NYPL and the wealth of resources it attracts from individuals, it has taken over one-hundred years of archiving and organizing skills to develop, maintain, and digitize the collections to date, and it grows each year with new acquisitions and donations. For a comprehensive list of Theatre Division clippings, photos, programs, reviews, and scrapbooks, you will have to visit LPA’s third floor and search the freestanding card catalogs, but a fair sampling is available online. No thorough research of any subject or topic could be said to be complete with only an online search of the materials there, but as far as standards are concerned, the NYPL is a frontrunner regarding the classification of materials, and many online archives follow their examples and system. Some classifications are Dewey Decimal system ones, and others are their own (writer them down, don’t bother trying to figure them out). Like all libraries, recording all associated and catalog numbers, as well as noting locations, are essential for tracking down any objects.
While online you can see much of what’s available in NYPL’s
online Classic Catalog. https://catalog.nypl.org/search/
Here
you can do a keyword, author, title, or subject searches. There is an Advanced Search
tool on the left-hand side where you can search, multiply or individually, by title,
author, subject, etc. With library membership, it is easy to register, search
in different ways, and save searches. This is an invaluable aspect for
researchers. Also, library assistance is only a call, an email, or a visit
away.
In the case of manuscript collections, or among the papers of individual artists, records of theatre companies, producers, and related companies-the Archival Materials search page allows you to do keyword searches within NYPL’s “digitized finding aids,” and bring different results from the regular catalog search. Finding aids provide detailed information on the subject of individual collections, such as biographies, lists of the collection’s contents, and other relevant research information. It is important to remember that the items you are researching are actual items in a box or a folder and usually information, from manual cataloguing is written on the back, or they are tagged. Only an actual visit to see the physical items at the library will produce comprehensive results. http://archives.nypl.org/ Therefore, the Archival Materials search will also link to the catalog record, and the information you will need in order to find out where a box is stored. You will need both the finding aid and the catalog record to accomplish this.
Recently the library launched a website https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/
to access and engage with all of its currently digitized content, both at the
NYPL, within its divisions and collections, and as provided by outside partners
including Hathitrust, and others, making it easier to find additional material,
and the collections themselves. This site is updated everyday and is especially
useful for keeping up to date on recently added items. Broadway.com also
liaisons with the library concerning theatrical materials and records and posts
regular articles by appropriate personnel about new acquisitions, feature
artists, and background material. One can sign up for alerts there as well.
If you are looking for a published play-the Billy
Rose Theatre Division does not collect published plays, only scripts and
promptbooks-check the Drama Desk. Most of the scripts and promptbooks are
listed in the card catalog, but older scripts are available on digitized card catalog records here https://s3.amazonaws.com/cardimages.nypl.org/index.html
One example of a collection which has theatre
holdings related to LPA, but not stored at LPA is The Schomberg Center for
Research in Black Culture. https://www.nypl.org/locations/schomburg
Physical sites, such as these might have related materials to your research by
name, topic, etc.
The NYPL has been collecting theatre materials prior
to 1931, when the executors of David Belasco’s estate offered his holdings on condition
that a collection be created. Foremerly known as the Theatre Collection (Sept.,
1931-), it was renamed the Billy Rose Theatre Division https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/divisions/billy-rose-theatre-division,
retaining its location. The Billy Rose Division is now the largest research
division at the NYPL.
The Theatre on Film and Tape Archive (TOFT), which
produces video recordings of New York theatre productions, is a groundbreaking
enterprise begun in 1969 by Betty Corwin. Due to her energetic research and
union agreements, over 7,901 titles have preserved, including interviews,
ethnic and minority productions, oral histories, and the work of specific
playwright’s. Screenings limited to students and researchers are available. Between
50-60 live recordings are produced each year, covering most important
productions. Copying is not permitted. https://www.nypl.org/about/divisions/theatre-film-and-tape-archive
Browse or click on one of the collections to view
holdings.
Doing a filtered search will give various options and
the number of individual records is listed beside the heading. It is possible
to refine searches and to cross search this way among the different
collections. Larger collection containers will appear first and those with
fewer items will appear later.
Click on the item for details. You can zoom and
print.
Scroll down for more information and to view the
hierarchy, container, and sub-collection results, where else to view the photo,
etc. Note the photos within that group/collection can be viewed as a book,
which is particularly helpful if you do not want to click on every item in the
group search results.
Also note some items in the group will sometimes (usually
not) be cross-referenced in other Divisions, such as Jerome Robbins Dance
Division, if applicable.
Under More Details, Item Data and how to Cite this item
are available.
Searching within the collections is much easier than a broader search, but it is easy to assume that more records and items are not available-you have to do a wider search and include more divisions. This is possible using the directions above.
To search within the collection itself, click on the collection icon and all of its holdings will pop up. If this number does not match the folder number, it is because more items from different collections are being included. I haven’t determined exactly why this happens yet, but I think it has to do with the exact folder the item is in and the fact that it is cross-referenced somewhere else. It does not contain all those items in the result here, but viewing the item itself will bring the additional items in that folder up. At least that is one theory.
Search filters and information are on the left-sometimes
pertinent biographical information of the collector is available by this method
in the About area. In The Billy Rose Theatre Photograph Collection,
there are 50,092 items, but by using various filters more, or fewer, items are
grouped together.
Contents, as well as additional search filters, are
listed on the left. The largest categories are listed as well as 3,300
additional topics. The topics are also listed underneath the photos, so that if
you see one that interests you, you can click on it. Other photos in that group
will be available at the bottom of the page once you click on it.
Under Filters, additional options are available. I can
search through the “Navigation: Productions” photos for pictures of dancers, or
I can search in “Filter: dancer” for different results.
Note, also, the different numbers of the results for the
containers searched.
I have found the Divisions of the NYPL/LPA very useful
for researching performing arts in New York, although there are other very
useful resources for my subjects of interest, i.e., dance/ballet. It is one of
the easier websites/archives to use, although different and repeated searches
are necessary to find items sometimes-this can get confusing due to jumping
back and forth. Remember to save your searches, to make records/take screen
shots.
There are some glitches with the system I have found,
particularly in the failure to cross-reference material, and the lack of
information available on some NY-based artists/producers who are
underrepresented, or not represented at all here. However, overall, they are
accurately archived, and their holdings are just about the largest I have encountered
related to theatre arts in the country, with exception of the Smithsonian and
the Library of Congress (for some material), and it is easy to use for
research.
The advantages of their cross-referencing, and the
ability to cross-search across the divisions and collections is superior to any
other searchable archive, bar none, although that is not wholly addressed in
this review. I have included a great deal of information regarding the
structure of the catalog system at NYPL because it is so important to research
in the performing arts to be able to search across divisions for possible
literary, business, and other categories which the keywords will produce
results.
Examples of frustrated searches limited to the Billy Rose
Collection include few references of actor/dancers, such as James Cagney, businessman
and philanthropist Lincoln Kirstein, and no results for theatrical manager,
author, and publisher Elisabeth Marbury or her friend and roommate, Elsie de
Wolfe. However, a broader search of the Digital Collections/Digital Gallery produced
Lincoln Kirstein (173): https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/search/index?utf8=%E2%9C%93&keywords=lincoln+kirstein
From there, you can expand even further-the broader
the search, the more results are going to appear over the whole of the library’s
holdings, other divisions, locations, etc., and it is essential to visit the
Billy Rose and other Divisions of the LPA personally as the card catalogs are
an invaluable resource. It is clear from the number of results, in contrast to
the vast record of holdings, that about only 1/10 of the items are digitized to
date.
Billy Rose Theatre Division, The New York Public Library.
“Valentina Kozlova (Vera Barnova replacement) and Leonid Kozlov
(Konstantine Morrosine replacement) in the 1983-1984 revival of On Your
Toes” The New York Public Library
Digital Collections. 1984. http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/7b7e0625-6b49-5b28-e040-e00a18061238
Link to the digital Archive: https://ecda.northeastern.edu/
The Early Caribbean Digital Archive (ECDA) is a digital archive platform for pre-twentieth-century Caribbean archival texts (colonial Caribbean cultures and literary histories to be exact). The Northeastern University hosts the website that contains the archive. Most of the team members of this project are professors and students of Northeastern University’s English department, although they have backgrounds in cultural studies, history, digital humanities, network, and Caribbean studies. Nicole Aljoe and Elizabeth Maddock Dillon received a grant from Northeastern University to develop this digital archive. Aljoe and Dillon realize that many of the early Caribbean texts are collected in Europe and the United States, but some are still scattered across the globe. In order to make these materials more accessible to students and scholars, they found this digital archiving project necessary.
The several collections in ECDA categorize and store photo scans of texts
as PDF. Careful digitalization and metadata curation of these texts enable the
user to search keywords and even words in the documents. The scanned images are
transformed into “editable texts,” in which the user can search and
copy characters from the texts. Therefore, the texts in ECDA are capable of
electronic search. In the site’s contribution page, it is written on the
contribution form that digital images of texts should be at least 300 PPI so
that the submitted images can be considered of high quality. In the essay “Electronic
Scholarly Editing” of A Companion to Digital Humanities, Martha
Nell Smith points out that “high-quality color images of a writer’s
manuscripts offer a more ample sense of their textual conditions, including the
conditions of the writing scene in which they were produced.” The color
scans of ECDA faithfully preserve the extratextual physical details that are
required for documentary editing.
Each text in ECDA has its page, which contains its metadata, file link,
copyright information, and an abstract. However, some of the texts have an
additional scholarly annotation that introduces the cultural and historical
settings of the text and the author describes its different editions throughout
history and gives a brief literature review. This scholarly annotation makes it
a critical edition. The “exhibits” section of the website also serves
as an introduction to some specific groups of texts in this archive. Being
different from a scholarly annotation/introduction, the opening of an exhibit
is more a map for a group of texts: it starts with a short introduction to the
collection and continues with introductions to the individual texts with
hyperlinks that can direct the reader to pages in the archive. The editability
of the digital archive also allows the collections to expand, not only in the
quantity of texts, but also in scholarly annotations. However, this digital
archive has not fully explored its multimedia capability. The exhibitions of
music have only texts and scans of notes but no music files at all. If any
contributors can find related music files in the public domain, they should add
those supplemental materials to the collections and provide users with a
multimedia experience of the pre-twentieth-century Caribbean history. In the “classroom”
section of the site, two featured student projects, instead, use Google Maps to
visualize literary history.
This site is for any students, teachers, and researchers who are
interested in literary arts and history of this period. The digital archive is
more accessible than a physical one, and it is able to draw materials from many
different sources across the world. The “classroom” section offers various
kinds of resources for them, especially syllabi, bibliographies, exemplary
student projects. Although this archive is open-access, contributors to these
pedagogical materials (not many in fact) seem to be limited to the faculty and
students of Northeastern University.
The team claims to challenge the pre-established knowledge in a European
colonial framework and decolonize the archive through “remix and
reassembly.” They seek to dig out hidden materials, and review, question,
and revise the existing knowledge structures in Caribbean Studies. A digital
archive is what they find to be the mean of decolonization. Other than
remediation, the team believes that their “nonlinear” organization of
texts, which is from a traditional archive, can create new structures to house
knowledge and allow texts and images to collide, grow, and evolve, eventually disrupt
the colonial knowledge infrastructure for pre-twentieth-century Caribbean
literary history. However, they have a lot of work in order to “reassembly,”
and that includes adding many more materials from old and new resources, annotating
the rest of the texts, locating and creating multimedia materials for the
existing collections and exhibitions, and finally, inviting researchers and
students from institutions other than Northeastern University to participate in
this project.
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