Minutes - November 12, 2009

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Maryland History and Culture Collaborative (MHCC)
Loyola-Notre Dame Library, Baltimore, Maryland
November 12, 2009
 
Attendees:
 
Alison Foley (AFO), St. Mary's Seminary and University
Ann Hudak (AH), UMCP
Anne Turkos (AT), UMCP *
Bill Cady (BC), EPFL/SLRC, Maryland Digital Cultural Heritage
Bill Sleeman (BS), UM Law Library*
Barbara O'Brien (BO), McDaniel College
Charles Lockwood (CL), Loyola Notre Dame Library
David Ranzan (DR), Salisbury Univ*
Doug McElrath (DM), UMCP
Elizabeth DiCataldo (ED), Bryn Mawr School
Elizabeth Howe (EH), Washington County Free Library
Evan Howe (EH), Student
Jan Danek (JDA), MDHS
Jill Craig (JC), Western MD Regional Library
Jennie Knies (JK), UMCP*
Jenny Ferretti (JF), MD Historical Soc*
Jennifer Neumyer (JN), UMES *
John Gartrell (JG), Afro-American Newspapers
Kat Ryner (KR), St. Mary's College
Katherine Baer (KB), MD State Law Library*
Kathy Cowan (KC), MICA*
Lindsey Loeper (LL), UMBC*
Liz McAllister (LM), UMCP
MaryJo Price (MJP), Frostburg State University*
Mary Mannix (MM), Frederick County Public Library
Michael Scott (MS), Pratt *
Nadia Nasr (NN), Towson University*
Nancy Perlman (NP), Loyola Notre Dame Library
Rich Behles (RB), UMBC * (did not attend mtg, sent updates)
Robin Emrich (RE), Columbia Archives*
Rob Jenson (RJ), Montgomery County Historical Society
Rob Schoeberlein (RS), MD State Archives
Rob Shindle (RSH), UB*
Tom Beck (TB), UMBC
Tricia Pyne (TP), Associated Archives
 
*Emailed updates included
 
 
I.   Library Tour with PR/Instructional Librarian, Alison Cody
 
II. Welcome to the Library, by John McGinty, Library Director

Included a brief history of how there came to be one library for two universities and an
overview of the planning of the library building/archives.
NP took us on a brief tour of the archives and explained why they kept two distinct collections; one for Loyola and one for Notre- Dame.
 
III. Lunch
 
IV. Brief Introductions
 
V. Towson University/Baltimore Hebrew University collections merger, from Nadia Nasr
 
Towson has begun integrating the collection from Baltimore Hebrew University's Meyerhoff Library.  There are over 80,000 items of Judaica in the collection including oral histories and it is the largest collection of Judaic studies in the region.  Adding this collection will allow Towson to offer various Judaic studies programs.  OCLC has begun the catalog migration and has loaded the BHU records into a test catalog.  There have been renovations to their special collections facilities allowing for a dedicated processing area, user area, staff area and a climate controlled closed stacks.
 
VI. Maryland State Historical Society Status, from Jenny Ferretti
 
The Maryland Historical Society's Director resigned two-weeks ago and they are actively looking for a replacement.  There were a bunch of layoffs, basically the entire Education Department.  They have also cut library hours back and are only open 2 days a week.  They have begun to do a lot of de-assessing of the collection.  JF was beginning to start some interesting projects and got approval to work with MICA on starting a photography collection that would use the Society's collection.  There are concerns about how much can be done with so little staff. DM and RJ suggested drafting a letter in support of the MHS and asked what MHCC could do to help out at this time; including volunteering and going to the press. [Re: helping out -JF sent out email post-meeting looking for an photography intern].  JK asked the group if any others were facing similar cuts and RB responded that the Montgomery County Historical Society has also experienced cuts.  Other problems include hiring freezes and furloughs.
 
VII. Wiki Update, from Lindsey Loeper
 
LL asked for input on how MCHH may better use the Wiki and asked for suggestions on increasing outreach and marketing.  Rich Behles has gone in and put content on every member page so there is a template that folks can expand upon. LL offered to help any one who needs it.  It was suggested that folks begin to add news & updates to the main page.  LL will resend out instructions for using the Wiki.
 
VIII.  Importance of Collaboration, from Nancy Perlman
              
NP just wanted to bring up the point that membership in MHCC could be expanded to include more private facilities and wondered what had been done to promote membership.  JK explained that a lot of it was word of mouth and suggested that members invite others who they think may be interested in joining.  NP then showed brochures from MAX (Mobile Archive xpress).  This is a mobile unit that travels to places and digitizes materials on site.  MS stressed that she is available to help with digitization issues and if anyone knows of any smaller projects that PRATT may be able to work on to please let her know.
 
IX. Future of MHCC, led by Jennie Knies
 
JK initiated a conversation around the future of MHCC.  According to the survey done by DM members like the informality and would like to continue in the same vein.  Members acknowledged that a lot of the work was falling on JK.  It was suggested that MHCC start a steering Committee and their main responsibility would be to arrange the meetings; e.g set up the date, place and agenda.  JK asked that members who were interested din volunteering to please send her an email.  The idea to hold a meeting in conjunction with a MARAC meeting was brought up.  This may entice other Maryland archivists to join.
 
X. Other Business 
 
McDaniel Record Collection: BB was wondering if anyone knew someone who might be interested in a record collection that is being housed at McDaniel.  The collection is from the Diane Rehm Show and is the recordings of many of her guests.
 
Wiki Updates:  Members will try and post more updates; hopefully quarterly, to the Wiki.  There is also a vendor list and other pages that could be added to.
 
Member Updates:
 
Columbia Archives - Robin Emrich
            Columbia Archives celebrated American Archives Month in October with a mini-course on Columbia. In 1966 James Rouse, founder of Columbia, said "Here we are the most advanced society in the history of the world, with all of the knowledge that exists among doctors, teachers, ministers, psychologists, and psychiatrists about what works well and what works badly with man living with man, and none of this knowledge goes to work in the planning of a city.  Well, we determined to put it to work and we did. . ."   To tie in with MARAC's theme of Choosing a Better History we explored how Columbia used that knowledge and built on it and continues to build on it by discussing the four goals of Columbia.  "Going Green" presented a historical look at Columbia's environmentally conscious planning.  "A Place for People to Grow" showcased a panel of people who grew up in Columbia during the 1970s when Columbia itself was growing up.  "A Complete City" looked back at the plan to provide all the essential elements of a city and then looked toward the future with ideas for development in the Town Center.  "How Do We Measure Success" explored Quality of Life indicators and how Columbia measures up.  Each session was preceded by a showcase of archival materials that related to the topic.  More than 50 people participated in the series attending multiple sessions. 
 
            Our upcoming event is "Meet the Authors at Holiday Open House." Columbia Archives will host an open house on Tuesday, December 8 from 7:30 to 9:30 pm to showcase books about Columbia and their authors.  The public is invited to peruse the books and meet with Josh Olsen, Better Places, Better Lives - A Biography of James Rouse; Joe Mitchell, New City Upon a Hill; Bob Tennenbaum, Creating a New City; Missy Burke, Robin Emrich and Barbara Kellner, Oh you must live in Columbia. The origins of place names in Columbia, MD.   Columbia Archives is located at 10227 Wincopin Circle, American City Building, Columbia Town Center.
            A special exhibit of the unique holiday cards created by artists Gail Holliday and Betty Cooke for The Rouse Company and Enterprise Foundation will be on display for the event.  Refreshments will be served and Archives staff will be on hand to answer any questions about the collection. 
 
For more information contact columbia.archives@columbiaassociation.com or 410 -715- 6781.
 
Enoch Pratt Free Library/Maryland Digital Cultural Heritage Program - Michael Scott
-                      Since the last MHCC meeting, a new digital collection has been posted to the Maryland Digital Cultural Heritage (MDCH) website. The Works Progress Administration of Maryland collection includes over 100 photographs dating from the mid-1930's. Photos in the collection show WPA workers engaged in wide variety of activities throughout the state, including: constructing roads, buildings, and bridges; repairing schools; improving public utilities; sewing; and distributing school lunches. Also, in keeping with the fact that 2009 marks the 200th anniversary of Edgar Allan Poe's birth, 49 additional items have been added to our existing online Edgar Allan Poe collection, such as letters, poems, and portraits. Transcripts are included with the items.
-                      Over the summer, MDCH also participated in a pilot testing of the Digital Collection Gateway, a new feature of CONTENTdm digital collection management software which enables the upload and synchronization of our metadata into WorldCat. We started with a few small digital collections, and will continue to upload our metadata records to WorldCat in the coming months.
-                      We are currently working on a number of other digital projects/partnerships, including:
o        War Posters collection - 150 items will be added to Enoch Pratt Free Library's existing digital collection of war posters dating from WWI and WWII in the coming months.
o        Aftermath of the Great Baltimore Fire collection- This is a collection of approximately 300 photographs related to the Great Baltimore Fire of 1904. The collection was digitized a few years ago for a special online exhibit done in conjunction with the 100th anniversary of the fire. Only a few of the images were used in the online exhibit, so we are working on making the rest available online.
o        17th and 18th Century European Maps- A collection of European maps from in Pratt's Special Collections Department have been digitized and will be made available online on the library's digital collections website. The maps date from 1629-1759, and were done by some of the preeminent mapmakers of the time.
o        Baltimore Museum of Art- MDCH is currently partnering with the E. Kirkbride Miller Research Library at the Baltimore Museum of Art on a lantern slide digitization project. A collection of lantern slides relating to the museum's buildings and early exhibits, most of which were taken during the 1930's and 1940's, will be posted on the MDCH site this winter. MDCH is also working to with the BMA to digitize a collection of lantern slides related to Maryland and Chesapeake Bay regional architecture.
o        Oral history projects- MDCH is partnering with three Maryland public library systems (Carroll County Public Library, Harford County Public Library, and Southern Maryland Regional Library) to make their oral history collections available online. All three projects involve audio and/or video content.
o        UMBC- Beginning in January, MDCH will be working with UMBC's Special Collections to digitize and provide online access to a collection of speeches written by Ferdinand C. Latrobe. Latrobe was a Maryland native and an important figure in state politics in the late 19th century. He served as Mayor of Baltimore seven times, and held several positions at the state level, including Speaker of the Maryland House of Delegates.

Submitted by Michael Scott
Digitization Supervisor/MDCH Coordinator
Enoch Pratt Free Library
 
Frostburg University - MaryJo Price
After reading the information from other libraries, archives, museums, I
confess to no wonderful projects or digitizing. My major efforts for an
improved Special Collections area at the Ort Library, Frostburg State
involved a major shifting project of the Special Collections area, Rare
Book Room, and Vertical Files.  Shifting is a challenge both physically
and mentally.  I also organized the framed art, cataloged and
uncataloged so that it is now accessible.  The FSU photo collection is
being sorted and labeled for easier searching via Excel.  This puts us a
step closer to the digital process, now we only need funding.
Over the summer we received a gift from Consolidation Coal Company,
Pittsburgh, PA of 23 ledgers, journals, etc. for the coal company's
Western Maryland interests.  Richard Sauer is working on the Clarysville
Register, Civil War Hospital in Clarysville, MD from 1862 through 1863.
This is the register for Dr. M.M. Townsend only.  Sauer has entered the
data from the Register, checked various rosters for accuracy, confirmed
medical diagnosis, etc.  There are some questions that he is still
checking.  The end product will include an introduction of the methods
used in transferring the information as well as a history of Clarsville.
 
Maryland Historical Society - Jenny Ferretti
MdHS hired me as the Digitization Coordinator in March of this year in  
order to implement new digital initiatives.
I am managing the Charles Edward Hilgenberg Archive, which will  
contain 84,000 images from our holdings of the German-language,  
Baltimore-based newspaper, Der Deutsche Correspondent. So far, about  
half of our holdings have been digitized by The Crowley Company in  
Frederick, Maryland.
I am currently digitizing the manuscript collection, MS 1846 War of  
1812 Collection. Aside from the Der Deutsche Correspondent collection,  
this will be our first collection to be digitized in it's entirety.  
Only a few items (15 or so) will need to be outsourced due to their  
size.
The library and museum have changed it's hours, as it has been  
discussed on this listserv. I'll be more than happy to discuss this  
and more at the meeting on Thursday.
Marc Thomas, Special Collections Librarian, and I look forward to  
meeting everybody on Thursday.
 

Maryland State Law Library - Katherine Baer

The legal information preservation project The Chesapeake Project started by Georgetown Law and the state law libraries of Maryland and Virginia finished up their 2-year pilot project.  In our final evaluation we did a survey of "link rot" and found that 14% of the original URL's were no longer available on the web; this translates to 1 out of 7 items.  Maryland continues to focus on web-born state documents and now has over 900 individual titles and almost 2500 individual items harvested and available via Worldcat.  We are also in the process of digitizing older Task Force reports and they are available through MSLL's catalog.
 
MICA - Kathy Cowan
Updates from the Maryland Institute College of Art Archives at the Decker
Library
An historical timeline has been created for the college's website,
incorporating many images from the MICA Archives. Timeline URL:
http://www.mica.edu/About_MICA/Facts_and_History/Historical_Timeline/1824-18
35_The_Beginning-Expanding_Education_in_Baltimore.html
The timeline is the first published product of several years of research on
MICA history by Doug Frost and Amy Hunter of MICA's Advancement Department,
in preparation for a comprehensive book on MICA's history back to the early
19th century. Much support for the project in the form of locating and
digitizing images and documents has been provided by the Library staff.
The book is now being edited and designed, and should be available in 2010.
The book design is being done by the internationally acclaimed firm
Pentagram, whose Baltimore office employs several MICA alumni, and the
design project is led by J. Abbott Miller, a MICA faculty member. I have
seen page designs for the first section and they integrate the text and
imagery in creative and exciting ways. Pentagram book design:
http://pentagram.com/en/new/book-design/
Doug Frost made a presentation to MICA's board that was an overview of the
history project - see attached PDF file. The history and some of the
documents and images will be very familiar to some of the MHCC participants!
I have just installed The Archivists Toolkit and am beginning to work with
it - am very optimistic about its potential to facilitate output of existing
collection inventories and input of new acquisitions and descriptions. It is
also promising in supporting a local authority list for names, subjects,
etc. I welcome conversation with others who are using it - thanks already to
Emily Rafferty from the Baltimore Museum of Art Library for showing me their
implementation earlier this year.
Amy Hunter invited me to share this PDF with you all, containing the initial
page designs for the forthcoming MICA history book. [see attachments]
Kathy Cowan
11/10/2009
 
Salisbury University - David Ranzen
Activities at Salisbury University and the Edward H. Nabb Research Center for Delmarva History and Culture.
-           On Monday, October 12 through November 20, the Edward H. Nabb Research Center for Delmarva History and Culture Gallery at Salisbury University opened an exhibit of historic photographs depicting life on Smith Island, a small, remote island in the Chesapeake Bay. Entitled At the Whim of the Waters...Smith Island Remembered - A Photographic Exhibit of a Disappearing Island Culture, these images, which were shot by Rollins Tyler, portrayed the powers, perils, and relationships between nature and humankind. Guest curator, Barbara Bohrer, rescued the priceless images from the trash in a house that she bought. 
Also available, during the Whim of the Waters gallery hours, the Nabb Research Center celebrates the 50th anniversary of the modern day skipjack race held each September in Tangier Sound with a display titled, Catch of the Day:  Harvesting Chesapeake Bay Artifacts.
-           During the summer, the Nabb Research Center collaborated with SU's Ward Museum of Wildfowl Art to curate an expansive "Visual Taste of Salisbury, 1609-1909" exhibit. The Ward Museum invited the Nabb Center to participate in an event that has become a popular local event. The exhibit opened July 26 in conjunction with the annual Taste of Salisbury hosted by Ward. This year, guests will be treated not only to a gourmet taste of Salisbury but also to a visual taste of Salisbury. Using artifacts, maps and narrative, the exhibit shows the transformation of the Salisbury area from the Indian village of Tondotanke to the establishment of Salisbury in 1732, through two disastrous fires, to its growth and development into the early 20th century.
-            The Nabb Research Center curated a permanent exhibit on "The 17th Century Tobacco Economy" and contributed to others, notably the "19th Century Wharf and Marketplace" exhibit for the Delmarva Discovery Center on the Pocomoke River. Also, images from the Nabb Collections are displayed throughout the Discovery Center
-           From January 16-Febrauary 28, 2010, the "Sources of Black Community: Family and Faith" Exhibit will be on display at the Nabb Research Center Gallery. Through images, documentary evidence and memorabilia, a picture of the growth of African American community emerges.  Family connections and the role of religious institutions among Delmarva's African Americans are examined.  Co-curated by L. Paul Morris, Jr.  This exhibit is free and open to the public.
-           Two digital postcard exhibits depicting Somerset County and Salisbury were created and are available online.
-                        The Salisbury University Historic Image Gallery (SUHIG) was created and will be included in the new SU history page along with a timeline, history of the structures on campus and biographies of the institution's presidents. An exhibit pertaining to the history of the School Seal is also on display in the Blackwell Library.
-                         
Towson University - Nadia Nasr
The renovation and expansion of the special collections facilities was completed in mid-July and we've been working on moving back in, getting organized, and unpacking. The new special collections facilities boast new dedicated user space, new staff work spaces, a new collections processing area, and a new conference/seminar room. The existing Towson Room, which previously served as reading room and user space, was given a dramatic facelift complete with new wood crown molding, chair rails, and baseboards, as well as specialized lighting for portraits and/or framed items on display. Both the seminar room and the Towson Room are fully equipped with a built-in projector, speakers, and projection screen. The renovation also provided two new climate controlled closed stacks spaces that increased our storage capacity by 50%.
Now that we've got all this work space we were able to have our first history student intern who has been working on collections processing. With our regular student assistants we have continued digitization activities on a couple of collections.
Today we had a visit from former Governor Ehrlich, who stopped by to have a look at an exhibit we pulled together of his memorabilia from his career in public office.
 
UB- Robert Shindle
From the University of Baltimore
*    We have digitized our complete run of the University's yearbooks
The Reporter, published from 1928 and 1975.  The volumes are full-text
searchable.  See: http://archives.ubalt.edu/ub_collection/yearbooks.html
*    A new finding aid for our Roland Park Civic League collection
has been developed and is available online.  This collection includes
almost 600 drawings approved by the Roland Park Roads and Maintenance
Corporation for the following Roland Park Company communities: Roland
Park, Homeland, Guilford, Original Northwood, The Orchards, and several
properties in the Roland Run Valley of Baltimore County.  Series level
descriptions are available at: http://archives.ubalt.edu/architect.htm*.*
*    As part of the University's civic engagement work in central
Baltimore, we are digitizing the Model Urban Neighborhood Demonstration
(MUND) collection (1967-1974) and preparing a comprehensive finding aid.
MUND was a project of the Greater Baltimore Committee (GBC) with funding
from the U.S. Office of Economic Opportunity.  In Phase I, the GBC set
up the program and conducted research through several consultants,
primarily Westinghouse Electric Corporation.  In Phase II, the GBC
contracted management services from Westinghouse and organized a
neighborhood council.  In Phase III, the Neighborhood Council and its
Neighborhood Development Corporation (NDC) took control.  The collection
came to the University in 1975.  It also includes approximately 6,000
black and white 35mm photographic film negatives that are being
digitized as positive images and represented online in PDF "contact
sheets."
Digitization of textual documents from the MUND collection is complete
and can be viewed at: http://archives.ubalt.edu/mund/index.htm*.  The new*
finding aid and photo contact sheets are scheduled to be available
online by December 2009.  
We recently acquired the digital collection management software,
CONTENTdm, and plan to use a curated selection of the MUND images as our
first digital exhibit in 2010.
 
UMBC - Rich Behles
I will not be attending the meeting this Thursday, but I can offer these few brief meanderings to read or toss.
We are in the planning stages of developing an institutional repository for the departments and schools whom we serve on the University of Maryland Baltimore campus.  We have identified two open-source products which we are testing and populating with selected sample items.  We recognized that branding, logo identification, etc., not only establish the *institutional* context of such a resource, but becomes even more important at the school-specific level, where each of the organization's subunits has its own identity, character, and predictably - turf.  Customization and user community support are but two of many factors involved in our review, along with search capabilities for users, and workflow progressions for staff.
We have developed the list of questions and received participatory agreement in preparation for an oral history project.  Our subject is our retired Professor Charlotte Ferencz, who held appointments in our School of Medicine in the areas of Epidemiology and Pediatrics.  Dr. Ferencz devoted much of her professional career to the study of congenital heart defects, culminating in an extensive research project called the Baltimore-Washington Infant Study.  As an extremely loyal and enthusiastic library user and supporter, she worked with members of our staff in devising several pages on our library web site to document the highlights of that study.  Additionally, she continues to donate her personal books and research papers to the library, all of which have instituted our Ferencz Historical Collection.  She shares our excitement over the prospect of the oral history project, which is of particular importance during these advanced years of her life.
Finally, I believe that on Thursday you will be hearing from Lindsey Loeper about progress in developing the pages for each of our respective repositories on the MHCC wiki.  As a colleague working along with Lindsey on this project, I would like to encourage you all to visit the pages for your own institutions, and enhance them as necessary.  Lindsey will fill you in with more details on Thursday.
 UMBC - Lindsey Loeper
We have officially launched our Digital Collections website:
http://contentdm.ad.umbc.edu/
The Digital Collections website includes images from the Special
Collections Photography Collections including Lewis Hine's child labor
photographs, George Bretz's coal mining photographs, Civil War photos,
and other important collections; selections from UMBC publications and
photographs; electronic theses and dissertations starting in 2007;
promotional materials from the Theatre Department productions
(1967-2009); and the digital archive of The Retriever Weekly. New
collections and images will be added throughout the year.
In conjunction with the Maryland Digital Cultural Heritage program we
are digitizing speeches from our Ferdinand C. Latrobe papers. The
English department is assisting us in the digitization of our student
newspaper, The Retriever Weekly. And we are using donor funds to
digitize the meeting minutes for the International Union of
Immunological Societies (IUIS), a collection in our Center for
Biological Sciences Archives. Over 2000 images from the Hughes Company
glass negative collection have been scanned and selection of these
images have been made available for public comment on our Flickr page:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/umbclibrary
The contract for our Project Archivist, Jeff Karr, has been extended
until September 2010. Jeff is currently working on the Presidents office
records. A graduate assistant, Homira Pashai, is working on the records
of our university senates. We are also rehousing and inventorying our
university publications and creating accession level catalog records
within PastPerfect for our unprocessed university photographs.
The current Gallery exhibit, "Art of Persuasion," has been extremely
well received. "/The Art of Persuasion/ surveys a century of development
in the visual language of posters. Presented in three distinct thematic
groups---Pleasure & Leisure, Politics & Propaganda, and Commercial
Advertising, this broad selection of posters highlights transformations
in the art, culture, and technology of posters. Disseminating vital
information through use of diverse visual strategies, poster artists
engage the viewer to sell ideas and products." The exhibit features
items from our holdings and is on display until December 13th.
 
UMCP -Anne Turkos
2009 has been a very active year for the University of Maryland Archives.  Of particular interest to the Maryland History and Culture Collaborative is the completion of the review of all 36 years of the published installments of the Maryland History and Culture bibliography to ensure that all entries were represented online.  All missing entries have now been input, so we are now completely up-to-date through 2008.  The 2009 bibliography will be input in summer 2010 as soon as this installment appears in print, if the Maryland Historical Magazine continues to be produced.  Currently there are a total of 14,700 entries in the bibliography, a very impressive number indeed.
Also tops on our list of accomplishments is the publication of three books,
the University of Maryland Football Vault, Musical Ambassadors of Maryland: A Centennial Celebration, and Songs of Maryland: A Centennial Edition.  University Archivist Anne Turkos co-authored the latter two, which commemorate the 100th anniversary of the establishment of the University of Maryland band program.  Anne and Acting Assistant University Archivist Jason Speck worked closely with author John McNamara on the football vault, which includes hundreds of images drawn from the Archives' collections.  Anne will have copies of all three publications at the collaborative meeting.
            There is also a new book in the works.  Jason will be starting work on a pictorial history of the university for Arcadia Publishing, for their College and University History series, similar to the books previously produced by the University of Baltimore and Towson University.  Publication is targeted for Homecoming in fall 2010.
            The University Archives has also been busy on the exhibit front.  Two of their recent exhibits, "Musical Milestone," celebrating the UM Bands' centennial, and the exhibit that honored the Class of 1959 at this year's Homecoming, are now available on Flickr.  Our current photo caption contest images are also on Flickr.  The contest, called "What in the World???,"  is being run through the Archives' new blog at: http://www.lib.umd.edu/blogs/univarch_exhibits/
Please enter early and often.  The contest runs through the end of the semester, and a new image is posted each week.
            The Archives has also started its own Facebook page for posting recent news and activities, with more than 110 fans (please find us and become one!).
            In addition, the Archives is collaborating with other UM staff on three preservation and access projects.  UM Development staff  are assisting the Archives with raising funds to preserve Maryland's historical football films, and the first batch of films will be sent out for duplication and restoration later this fall.  The Archives has also been working with UM Libraries' Manager of Digital Collections, Jennie Levine Knies, to digitize key UM publications.  Thus far, all UM yearbooks, commencement programs, and student handbooks have been digitized and are linked from the UM Archives website: http://www.lib.umd.edu/univarchives.  The Archives is working to finish off the course catalogs, which will also be linked from their site; thus far catalogs from 1859 (the first one) through 1945 are available.  Lastly, the Archives has been working with the Memorial Chapel as part of a project to research the names of fallen veteran alumni listed in the Chapel's Memorial Book, helping students conducting the primary source research that will eventually become the backbone for an addition to the Chapel's website.
            Finally the UM Archives are pleased to be participating in the University of Maryland and Affiliated Institutions (USMAI) Archivists Community of Interest (COI), organized earlier this year through the efforts of MHCC members Lindsey Loeper (UMBC) and Kat Ryner (St. Mary's College).  The next meeting of the COI will be held in College Park on January 12, 2010.  We are very excited that this group is finally off the ground, and we look forward to future interactions with our colleagues throughout the UM System.
 
Submitted by Anne Turkos and Jason Speck
 
UMCP - Jennie Knies
The University of Maryland Libraries continue to participate in
Lyrasis's Mass Digitization Collaborative with the Internet Archive. In
addition to making all of the University of Maryland yearbooks,
commencement programs, and student handbooks available online, we have
also been digitizing rare Maryland materials, particularly those
relating to the Civil War in Maryland. We have also digitized certain
valuable state documents, and our run of Baltimore City directories that
date prior to 1923. We have over 1000 volumes in the Internet Archive at
present, all of which can be viewed here and downloaded in multiple formats:
 
http://www.archive.org/details/university_maryland_cp
 
We have also been adding over 200 images every month to our Digital
Collections@UM (http://www.lib.umd.edu/digital). Items added include
University of Maryland-related images (to our University AlbUM
collection) and postcards from our National Trust for Historic
Preservation Library Collection. University AlbUM now contains over 1300
images (we have a backlog of 4000 images waiting to be uploaded) and the
National Trust Postcard Collection contains 161 postcards (with a
backlog of 700 postcards to be uploaded shortly).
 
To complement the Maryland Digital Cultural Heritage's WPA photograph
collection, the University of Maryland Libraries has started to digitize
our own WPA photographs. So far, we have digitized over 60 images from
five different WPA "projects." For example, Baltimore City Road Repairs!
(http://hdl.handle.net/1903.1/6151). Believe it or not, researchers love
this stuff!
 
With the assistance of a graduate assistant, the staff of the
Marylandia, Rare Books, and National Trust Library Department at the
University of Maryland Libraries has made our Maryland Map Collection
database available online: http://www.lib.umd.edu/sapps/mdmap/ The
Maryland Map Collection is a comprehensive collection of more than 2,500
map titles depicting Maryland, the Chesapeake Bay, and the surrounding
region. Search and browse the collection using the search box and links
on the left side of the screen. Selected maps have been digitized for
this web database. Some maps in the collection are also described on the
library's online catalog. The collection includes such noteworthy maps
as the first map to depict the Chesapeake Bay, published in 1590 as a
result of Sir Walter Raleigh's expedition. Other highlights include John
Ogilby's 1671 Nova terrae-Maria tabulae, the earliest map that shows the
counties of Maryland, and Dennis Griffith's 1795 landmark map of
Maryland, the most detailed and accurate map of its time. One of the
most spectacular maps in the collection is the Bird's Eye View of
Baltimore published by Sachse in 1869, measuring approximately 12 feet
in length by 6 feet in height.
  
UMES - Jennifer Neumyer
I am having a 3-4 pp. article published in Archival
Outlook's Nov. Dec issue called Librarian or Archivist? My Special
Collections Symbiosis.
 We also have a new exhibit that opened mid-September titled From
Princess Anne to the Pros: A Small College's Football Legacy. Complete
with blown up photos from our archives collection to look like
"fatheads", football programs from the 50's-70's, action and still
photos of our turned-pro football athletes, football trading cards and
stats and real memorabilia from the pros. Our most ambitious exhibit yet.

UM Thurgood Marshall Law Library - Bill Sleeman
 The Thurgood Marshall Law Library has been busily adding new documents (35 to date) to our joint project with GPO and the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights - http://www.law.umaryland.edu/marshall/usccr/index.html.
 
We have also released several new collections and resources this fall as part of our African Americans in the Law Special Collection.
 
The first of these is a multi-part introduction to materials in the Larry Gibson Collection. Professor Larry S. Gibson has played a leadership role in the campaigns of many Maryland and national politicians beginning with his first effort organizing the campaign of Joseph Howard for Judge on the Supreme Bench of Baltimore City in 1968. Success in the Howard campaign was followed by work on the local campaigns of Milton Allen, William H. Murphy, Paul Chester, Wayne Curry and Kurt Schmoke. At the national level he has worked on the presidential campaigns of George McGovern, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton. The website - Crafting Victories - features documents, images, audio and video from this extraordinarily rich collection of Maryland and Baltimore political history.  - http://www.law.umaryland.edu/marshall/specialcollections/craftvic/  The donor of this collection was recently featured on WYPR's Maryland Morning discussing the collection and his experience in Maryland politics.
 
In addition, the library has launched two new image galleries via the Law School's Digital Commons project. The first focuses on campaign images from the Gibson collection while the second collection focuses on photographs from the Baltimore City Chapter of the NAACP.  http://digitalcommons.law.umaryland.edu/special_collections/
 
Finally, the Thurgood Marshall Law Library has partnered with Maryland Public Television to provide access to the 2001 documentary - Color at the Bar. This hour long video presentation created by MPT and the Monumental Bar Association effectively tells the story of how African American lawyers [many of them graduates of the University of Maryland School of Law] secured the right to practice law in Maryland.  http://www.law.umaryland.edu/marshall/specialcollections/aalsc/index.html