University Libraries releases guide to Conscious Editing
The University Libraries has released “A Guide to Conscious Editing at Wilson Special Collections Library.”
The guide compiles practices that staff at the Wilson Special Collections Library have refined as they update, edit and create new archival finding aids. Finding aids are documents that describe the contents of archival collections. They help researchers identify materials of potential interest.
“Conscious editing is an ethos of care that we are using when we write about materials in the Library,” said archivist Dawne Lucas, who contributed to and helped finalize the guide. “It’s a way to be inclusive and make sure that collections are available and approachable to everyone — not just established scholars, but also students, genealogists and members of the community.”
Two partners join On the Books project
The University Libraries has selected the University of South Carolina and the University of Virginia as partners for On the Books: Jim Crow and Algorithms of Resistance, funded by the Mellon Foundation.
On the Books uses text mining and machine learning to identify racist language in North Carolina legal documents during the Jim Crow era (1866-1967). Libraries at the partner institutions will work with the project team at UNC-Chapel Hill to compile machine-readable versions of their states’ laws and identify Jim Crow language in them.
“Queerolina” online exhibition presents oral histories of LGBTQIA+ Tar Heels
A new online oral history exhibition from the University Libraries shares the lived experiences of UNC-Chapel Hill community members who identify as LGBTQIA+.
“Queerolina: Experiences of Space and Place through Oral Histories” is a collaboration of the University Libraries, the Carolina Pride Alum Network and the Southern Oral History Program. The site presents and maps excerpts from oral histories that are part of the project The Story of Us: Documenting and Preserving LGBTQIA Carolina History.
Exhibition marks Warren County protest anniversary
Forty years after activism in Warren County, North Carolina launched the environmental justice movement, a Wilson Special Collections Library exhibition tells the story through the perspectives of those who lived it.
“We Birthed the Movement: The Warren County PCB Landfill Protests, 1978-1982” emerged from a collaboration between archivists and exhibition specialists at Wilson Library and the community members, activists and reporters who made history, as well as the Warren County Environmental Action Team.
The project “flips the dynamic from having the exhibition narrate to having the creator or the subject of materials tell their own story,” said Biff Hollingsworth, collecting and public programming archivist. Many of these individuals also came together for a public panel discussion at Wilson Library.
“We Birthed the Movement” is on view at Wilson Library through December 22, 2022, and online permanently.
