10:31:39 what if I LinkedIn work because I needed to get started or some Here they come.
10:31:46 Let me know when you're ready to start video.
10:31:50 Start Recording Excuse me.
10:32:05 Okay, great. It looks like we're recording. so we will get started.
10:32:11 Let me share my screen.
10:32:18 So good morning everyone and welcome to session six of the Merrick spring 2021 virtual conference engagement with local and institutional history initiatives.
10:32:28 Recent opportunities for the archives at the University of Virginia. This session will share work undertaken at to University of Virginia libraries. The Arthur j Morris Law Library, and the cloud more Health Sciences Library.
10:32:37 In response to recent interest in local and institutional history in the Charlottesville Albemarle region.
10:32:48 And I am losing, I'm using the term recent a little bit loosely we originally planned this panel for America spring 2020 conference in Harrisonburg Virginia, which of course was canceled, but we're very glad to be able to bring these presentations to
10:33:02 you virtually today.
10:33:05 And during these presentations we hope to share some of the opportunities and challenges we have encountered and the different roles we may have taken on along the way.
10:33:20 Our first speaker is going to be, Randy Flaherty Special Collections librarian at the UVA, Arthur j Morris Law Library. The second speaker will be myself, Emily Bowden historical collections librarian at the UVA cloud more Health Sciences Library.
10:33:37 And the final speaker will be Dan cabinet.
10:33:39 Alvin fee and Nancy Baird curator for historical collections at the cloud more Health Sciences Library.
10:33:46 Before we get started, just a couple of brief notes alive transcript is available for this session.
10:33:53 So, participants can choose to show or hide the subtitles according to their preference by using the live transcript settings and zoom. There will be a q amp a section following the three presentations, so please use the q amp a feature to submit your
10:34:08 questions will be monitoring those and we will get to those after the three presentations. Also, please feel free to use the chat feature in zoom during the session, and this session is being recorded.
10:34:23 So I'll just remind the panelists to please keep themselves muted when they're not speaking, and I will go ahead and turn things over to Randy.
10:34:35 Great, thank you. Emily.
10:34:38 I'm just gonna share my screen here.
10:34:46 Okay.
10:34:48 So thank you all for coming.
10:34:51 I'm really excited to be on this panel today and to be able to share with you a very new project for us here at the UVA Law Library. It's a project called UVA law and slavery.
10:35:03 Slavery School of Law, and it's really an example of telling old institutional histories and a new way and really adding to our institutional history with particularly with information on on enslavement and an experience of the enslaved.
10:35:19 The law school.
10:35:20 The site is sort of part curated exhibit.
10:35:26 looking at historical experiences of enslaved people reinterpreting, our faculty, their their their biographies, and it's also part digital archive, with some student notebooks that we've digitized and made available on the site.
10:35:43 So I'll start by just sort of talking about my department a little bit, which is up in LA special collections. So I serve as the Special Collections librarian here in LA archives.
10:35:54 And we have a team of four full time staff members. So, we have, in addition to me that we have a digital collections librarian, we have an archivist, and we also have a postdoctoral fellow and legal history.
10:36:05 So, we're a small department, we manage the archive but we also have a very big mission to interpret and make accessible the history of the law school.
10:36:16 So my background is in history and that's a lot of what I do work on interpretation and presentation and.
10:36:25 and. Our primary audience is UVA law but also we reach a scholarly audience or a public audience so it's it's pretty broad, and I also wanted to add that sort of that that that researchers or curatorial aspect was really started by Marcia tremble years
10:36:39 ago my predecessor I know she's been very important to this organization so I just wanted to mention her I come across your work every single day, and I'm so grateful to all that she did to start our department.
10:36:51 So,
10:36:53 getting into the project a little bit here at UVA, you know the past 510 years, specially a great deal of work has been done on the history of the university and slavery, the history of enslaved people here at the university and I, our project really
10:37:09 could not have been done without all that work and we and we rely on our colleagues, so much at every step.
10:37:16 So we had the commission here at the university.
10:37:21 Out of that commission came a report on slavery came.
10:37:27 We have now the newly dedicated memorial to enslave people really important things that sort of have marked this type of research and this history is something that's really important not only for a public audience but for scholarly work.
10:37:43 And so we had, we had this this sort of body of knowledge. This this sense of importance to build from and and one thing I want to say about sort of the report that came out is that it was so wonderful in stating of this research is important but it also
10:37:59 also wasn't comprehensive right it's not, it didn't give every single example of of you know every single enslaved person here for example, and that was sort of a blessing and a curse right it's, it's like a statement that is important.
10:38:12 It's supposed to be a launching point for new research which is terrific. But, you know, it is a finalized report and can and you know we sort of had to brush up against a little bit like, Well, why do you have to do more.
10:38:22 So, so that was sort of one challenge.
10:38:27 But another thing that came out of this moment of University studying its history is the jewel project Jefferson's University. The earliest project which is another tremendous resource a resource I put the URL down at the bottom that that I use every
10:38:44 day. And it's a gathering of archival material of transcription that's interpretive working essays, and this was another, Another piece that really helped us do our work.
10:38:55 So we were inspired by these projects.
10:39:00 At the same time, we saw you know an opportunity to, to talk a little bit more specifically about the law school. You'll notice you know the picture of the academical village here so much of this history that was done as part of this report, really all
10:39:23 of it was about the academical village. That's of course where the law school had its, you know its first home.
10:39:20 But now as a law school, we are separate in many ways we are physically separate on different campus, it's very independent from from the main grounds and it was sort of very easy to forget, particularly within our community, that this history was our
10:39:33 history.
10:39:35 And at the same time we were getting a lot of questions from, you know, first year law students will you know what was the history of slavery the law school so there was, there was a real opportunity and growing interest, not only in the students but
10:39:48 also in the faculty and even even alumni to to address this.
10:39:53 So we, we took on this project about two years ago to look at the law school historical connections to slavery.
10:40:00 The goals of the site, were to sort of Park curatorial to really spotlight. A lot of the research that had been done to spotlight a lot of the archival records that had been identified that were specific to the law school, so to really to draw on what
10:40:18 what jewel and others had already done.
10:40:21 One thing that's really interested me is sort of in this very residential academic community. What, you know, what was the importance of enslavement to academics, for example john miner who is a longtime law professor here at the law school.
10:40:37 And, you know, this is a quote that's always a quote from his diary it's always what stuck out to me, Albert is an enslaved man in the minor household and he's the one that sort of in pavilion 10 where john minor is teaching, he's around, and he gets
10:40:52 john minor this news during, you know when he has students around as well that the, the Union Army army is coming. So just the presence of enslaved people and sort of the role they played in this academic residential settings always interested me so again,
10:41:07 sort of spotlighting experiences spotlighting those human experiences as it related to the law school was was one important goal.
10:41:16 Another important goal was to sort of help with a lot of these questions that are that are particularly coming up now about sort of systemic issues about racism, discrimination poverty disenfranchisement.
10:41:31 So not only sort of anecdotal elements, but really systemic interpretation systemic research, and for that we turned to an archival source that sort of has traditionally been considered a snoozer, and also just sort of a, an archive of white men and that
10:41:48 is a student notebooks.
10:41:51 So, the lecture notes that were kept by law students in the antebellum period.
10:41:56 We had about 20 in our collection, and the end small Special Collections has a really really tremendous resource of additional ones.
10:42:04 We took a lot of inspiration from the Litchfield law school notebooks project up at Yale, and we started thinking about these archive this resource these resources as ways to understand how slavery was taught in the classroom.
10:42:21 Not only sort of these big questions about slavery, but also just the minutiae, you know, how the classroom could become a place where slavery is normalized where it's legitimized where it's where it's, it's really perpetuated.
10:42:37 And I for us it was really important for sort of these two components to exist together.
10:42:43 The human experiences, particularly of enslaved people, and also these sort of the more intellectual discussions about slavery to see how they shaped one another.
10:42:56 So we spent, as I said, we spent a couple years building the site. We spent the first year really researching, writing text.
10:43:11 We connected with the digital humanities community here in the library to think about. Audience user experience, things like that.
10:43:14 We started scanning student notebooks using a cradle scanner that we have and preparing them for the website.
10:43:21 And we also started building a site and we build.
10:43:24 I don't do it but our digital collections library and build our site in Drupal, we have, we have a basic template that we use for all of our sites and so we can sort of customize that for this project.
10:43:38 I'll give you a sense here, of the people who worked on this project and sort of definitely had to bring together a diversity of skills archival skills researcher skills.
10:43:47 We have some student workers who are helping us out as well. but this was the main core project team.
10:43:56 And now I'm just going to give you with what time I have left I'm going to give you a little tour of the site.
10:44:02 And Emily if you wouldn't mind putting the site link into the chat, invite you guys to look around as well.
10:44:09 This is really new.
10:44:11 We launched it. Just a couple months ago and I would say it's a work in progress we are really excited to to continue to build on the site to continue to add more information.
10:44:28 So it's really only just begun. And so I, you know, I'd love to hear feedback thoughts, questions from anyone who wants to check it out. But you can see from the basic structure of the site.
10:44:34 Can you guys, you can see the site on the screen. Okay, we've broken it down into teaching about slavery. We also have some, which I'll get back to. We did a lot of our interpretive works sort of in essays and also people in places.
10:44:51 So we've started to do some profiles of enslaved people who are associated with the law school and and when I say associated with the law school, I mean, people's whose whose bondage was owned by law faculty who also lived and labored here on our current
10:45:11 site so we actually law school is now on North grounds. And this area was formerly owned by the Duke family and there was before that other families who who enslaved dozens of people on this property so we also want to look at that history as well.
10:45:27 So Jane and Cesar young both lived here on our current site.
10:45:33 We also went through the faculty profiles that we had previously done and re examine them. We talked about our antebellum faculty as enslavers. They all were.
10:45:43 And then we also went and did some profiles of the places of the law school so the two pavilions with the law professors have lived and taught, along with the people enslaved, and also Sunnyside which is our current site.
10:45:57 And I'll just show you one thing, you know, you know one challenges we think about presenting these histories is presenting enslaved people as their own independent individuals, which is something we struggle with we don't have a lot of information but
10:46:13 we want to make sure that we show as much as we can and and portray, these people as individuals. So, you know, if anyone has any ideas or things they see that really really work I'd love to hear about it.
10:46:25 We've taken a lot of inspiration from enslaved.org. For some of their design.
10:46:29 But it's something that we're always thinking about.
10:46:33 And the last thing I'll show you on the site is teaching slavery. So I talked about how we sort of have a curatorial aspect and a digital archive aspects, the teaching slavery is our digital archive aspect where we do do interpretive work to talk about
10:46:44 the legal curriculum to give some context so these materials but the meat is really these student notebooks that we've digitized so far.
10:46:54 We've started with our collection, and I, we don't have all of our is up now but there's about eight of them.
10:47:01 And it'll show you what they look like.
10:47:03 We're we've, we're dedicated this point to using triple A of viewers.
10:47:08 So you can zoom in,
10:47:12 you know, see how resin high res images.
10:47:15 We started by using Universal Viewer. We had some issues with with using a secure server. So we've now just recently moved to a Mirador viewer. And so, we do have.
10:47:31 We do have not only features of there in terms of downloads and things like that. But we do really like this as the triple if viewers. We want people to be able to use our stuff to to incorporate our stuff into their own collections or their their their
10:47:46 exhibits their research.
10:47:48 And, you know, as we build out the site. We've also thought about incorporating other collections, such as the jewel project has has made a lot of their images available through triple and fewer, how can we sort of re curate that to truly spotlight materials
10:48:03 that talked about the law school so that's one reason we use that viewer.
10:48:09 I'm going to end there, but I'm excited to hear more, hear your questions afterwards.
10:48:20 Great, thank you so much Randy.
10:48:28 Alright.
10:48:30 So for my part of the presentation I'm going to describe a special project.
10:48:38 we go.
10:48:39 Especially projects to create a large scale museum exhibition, highlighting the history of the Health Sciences at the University of Virginia.
10:48:46 This project was titled The VA Health System 200 years of learning research and care, and the project was led by the cloud more health sciences libraries historical collections and services department and close collaboration with colleagues at the UVA
10:49:00 School of Nursing overcrowd are maturing center for nursing historical inquiry and the VA, Albert and surely small Special Collections library.
10:49:09 So just a little bit of background on the project and how it came to be.
10:49:14 Historical collections, which is where I'm based, as well as Dan, or our final speaker, and camera.
10:49:21 Historical collections that they'll Sciences Library has historically often been involved with putting on small displays and exhibits, often featuring medical artifacts or other materials from our own collections.
10:49:34 But these exhibitions have always been small local efforts, and we're not really expected to draw a substantial audience beyond the usual patrons of Health Sciences Library.
10:49:46 Historical collections has a staff of two ft ease and at the time of the UVA health 200 years exhibition.
10:49:55 Those two positions where supplemented by two part time employees.
10:50:10 Bell Sciences Library to give you a little more background operates largely as a separate entity at UVA separate from the main university library system.
10:50:09 And so historical collections stands on its own as sort of many Special Collections and Archives operating.
10:50:17 Much like the sort of small archives run by a minimal staff that many of you are no doubt familiar with, where we fulfill every sort of archives role from acquisitions work and donor relations to reference and instruction to digitization and preservation
10:50:34 and when time permits outreach work and small scale exhibit development.
10:50:39 So that lengthy explanation is hopefully to help show why this large exhibition that I'm going to talk about was such an unusual project for the Health Sciences Library to undertake.
10:50:52 And.
10:50:54 And so, Let me tell you a little bit about that.
10:50:57 So the project came about when the Health Sciences Library was offered a six month time slot to use the main exhibition gallery at the VA, Albert and surely small Special Collections library, along with they were going to provide some resources and support
10:51:14 to create an exhibition to fill the space.
10:51:17 There was an interest in displaying items from the Health Sciences libraries, medical artifacts collection, which includes 2000 physical artifacts related to the history of medicine and nursing.
10:51:28 The idea was to create a visually interesting exhibition.
10:51:32 So the opportunity to showcase materials from our library and that sort of stage was very appealing and offered an exciting chance for our collections to receive new exposure and reach new audiences.
10:51:46 However, it was clear that this would be a very involved and resource heavy undertaking, which furthermore would need to come together over a pretty short span of time, we had nine to 10 months from the beginning of serious exhibit development, until
10:52:03 the date the exhibition was scheduled to open, which sounds like a pretty good chunk of time but there was a lot to do, so it went by very quickly.
10:52:13 Ultimately, we decided it was too good of an opportunity to pass up. despite the big scale of the project.
10:52:21 And we certainly wouldn't have been able to pull it off without the terrific partners that we that we have along the way.
10:52:29 Another important piece of the background for this project is that the timing of the exhibition coincided with the University of Virginia is bicentennial celebration, which was a multi year events, whole series of events, commemorating the university's
10:52:44 200 year history. And so because of this, it made sense to incorporate the Bicentennial theme into our exhibition and conveniently this also, you know, matched the nature of our collections that we wanted to highlight, which include institutional records
10:53:00 of various branches of the UK health system including the School of Medicine Medical Center, and the Health Sciences Library.
10:53:08 So the project was centered around documenting 200 years of healthcare history in VA, including things like the history of medical and nursing education, research and Health Sciences and patient care at the VA hospital.
10:53:23 Also because of this connection to the UTA Bicentennial, we were able to apply for and receive generous funding from the Bicentennial commission, without which the project would simply not have been possible.
10:53:36 And we use this funding to provide money for signage and graphics and display materials, as well as the transport of artifacts from the Health Sciences Library to the exhibition gallery.
10:53:51 So once we had signed on to this extensive project. We had a short time to pull it off as I, as I mentioned before.
10:54:01 So I'm going to offer a brief summary of some of the work that that we went about mostly focusing on the work done by Health Sciences Library staff. Though I would be remiss not to mention our project partners on the screen right now.
10:54:19 At the Health Sciences Library both full time staff members contributed a portion of their time to the project.
10:54:28 And our two part time staff did as well. They're also three faculty members from the School of Nursing who devoted time, as did a university library exhibitions coordinator and several other supporting staff and outside individuals who worked on aspects
10:54:39 of the project like or design and space planning to help meet technical needs to get the exhibition up and installed
10:54:51 in one of the first stages of the project, the Health Sciences Library staff was responsible for a large portion of the research done for the exhibition, as well as early curation work including artifact photograph and documents selection, and later writing
10:55:07 the content for captions and display panels. We also worked closely on exhibit design and development to create the overall look and experience of the exhibition, and this time we're closer to the launch, we worked on aspects of the project like marketing
10:55:22 and event planning efforts, preparing for and carrying out the actual installation of the exhibition. And of course, scrambling to take care of last minute details and revisions that that always come up with projects like this, as sort of an aside, in
10:55:39 some ways, thinking back to all this work that we did the the big shift, that, that, that we saw last year that many of us experienced with the coven 19 pandemic which send us all home and sort of caused this overnight shift, new priorities and projects,
10:55:58 and really revised the typical archivist or library and workday from neighbors It reminds me of, of how this project, very quickly, led to an unusual many months where our jobs shifted into these new roles and responsibilities, though at the same time
10:56:15 we were still trying to fulfill usual duties like maintaining collections and providing reference services. so it's a very, very interesting time.
10:56:26 And personally working as an archivist in a small repository I'm fairly used to the reality of wearing many different hats.
10:56:34 A familiar expression which I think I've already heard use at least twice during this virtual conference, it seems to be one of our favorites.
10:56:40 But being involved with a large project like the UK health 200 years exhibition, which really required extended focused work to build this three dimensional experience for a wide unknown audience.
10:56:54 It definitely gave me a different perspective on some of these new roles that I was inhabiting, and on the overlap between archivist and researcher curator educator story and particularly when taking on more active role in the interpretation of collection
10:57:10 materials or the selection of particular objects and sources to represent this big complicated history that we were trying to tell, taking on more subjective, or objective approach towards history and archival materials is something that has been discussed
10:57:29 a lot over the last 10 plus years and archives field.
10:57:34 And I definitely found it to be true that accepting the role of an exhibition curator causes you to look at collections, particularly your own and archives in general.
10:57:45 Again, especially your own archives on your own work a little differently.
10:57:53 So, the process of creating an exhibition is presenting history and so naturally part of that work is deciding what history it is that you're going to present.
10:58:04 And so from the initial development of the UVA health 200 years project, we aspire to present an honest and if not fully comprehensive a more complete, if you will, view of the history, which like any history, particularly any American history going back
10:58:21 to the 19th century is going to contain a sizable share of difficult topics awful episodes and tragic realities, working towards that more complete view of history requires research.
10:58:37 Lots of it, and much of the research that's required for piecing together previously underrepresented stories is very difficult and time consuming.
10:58:46 So from the beginning of the VA Health 200 years project, there was the possibility of conflict between the history we hoped present, and the expectations of university stakeholders, or community members.
10:59:00 We had framed this exhibition as a Bicentennial project and UVA is multi year Bicentennial was often presented as a celebratory event, complete in some instances with light shows and rock concerts on the lawn.
10:59:15 So how do you incorporate a retelling of a difficult sometimes disturbing history into that not all history can be celebrated.
10:59:26 Among the archivist and staff members working on this project, there were certainly some ongoing discussions and questions about managing these sorts of expectations, including sometimes our own expectations for the scope and capacity of the project and
10:59:39 finding a balance to that complicated history of the Health Sciences at UVA that we were documenting, and this was a story that previously had not been told in this sort of format or on this sort of scale.
10:59:52 And it was made all the more challenging, that we were attempting to accomplish this in a limited time frame, and within a limited word count, when you're working on exhibitions, you can't just write chapter after chapter, We have to fit everything onto
11:00:07 that display board or panel.
11:00:13 And then of course at the same time, we were also trying to maintain some semblance of our normal library operations over at the Health Sciences Library.
11:00:24 Fortunately for us and for this project, there had a UVA been interested in taking a hard look at our history, efforts like the President's Commission on slavery and the university formed in 2013 which Randy mentioned and spoke about a little bit
11:00:41 existed and had been involved with a number of different projects and initiatives. The 2018 Report to President Teresa Sullivan that Randy had shown on the screen.
11:00:53 Coincidentally that came out the same month that are UVA health 200 years exhibition opened. So this was the environment or the climate that we were working in.
11:01:04 And I think we really benefited from that atmosphere encouraged by work like that at the condition, and for the most part, we did not face pushback on the direction and the content chosen for the VA Health 200 years exhibition.
11:01:20 And I think we really were kind of serendipitously fortunate, if you will, that we were able to capitalize on an interest in local history. That was fueled by both the university's Bicentennial, and by work of the commission and other similar ongoing
11:01:36 initiatives.
11:01:40 And and I hope that with with our exhibition, the UT Health System 200 years of learning research and care, we were able to contribute a little bit to this larger effort of reexamining traditional historical narratives and highlighting some of the lesser
11:01:56 known stories.
11:02:02 So just a real quick overview of what the exhibit was that the the thing that we produced.
11:02:09 The UPA health, 200 years exhibition was divided into three emetic sections, a chronological history of the Health Sciences at UVA, which was made up of eight display cases, each dedicated to a span of time, ranging from the foundation.
11:02:25 1817 to 1833 to the Information Age 1989 to 2017.
11:02:32 There's also a section of major standalone topics highlighting different subjects. Some of them were things like the anatomical theatre, medical and nursing education, community and global health eugenics Nobel laureates at UVA, and a section on that
11:03:00 titled from inequality to inclusion, which was a sort of snapshot of some of the disadvantages and discrimination faced by women and people of color. With each of these topics we described the, the topic through photographs documents artifacts and narrative
11:03:08 text, as well as in some cases, digital components. And then the final section was a set of panels describing the health system, sort of up today, circa 2017 or 2018.
11:03:22 And if you're if you find any of that diggity that sounds interesting.
11:03:26 Hopefully, you will be able to experience more of the exhibition.
11:03:31 Eventually, and I'm going to talk a little bit more about that, a few a few slides later.
11:03:38 So, to offer some reflections on this project.
11:03:43 As I've said before it was an unusual project for the Health Sciences Library, but it also truly offered us a number of unique opportunities. One of those was the chance to step into new roles and learn new skills for our staff members.
11:03:58 We also had this chance to promote public awareness of the history of UVA health and of our archives.
11:04:15 Overall Sciences Library. And, you know, we hope that we, we had the opportunity to contribute to a more accurate and hopefully more complete version of the historical narrative.
11:04:19 And we also had the chance to network and collaborate with library colleagues at UVA and build ties with faculty at UVA nursing History Center, which may seem like kind of a outlier in that.
11:04:32 but we certainly couldn't have pulled off a project like this without all of the people who, who contributed to it, and so building those connections for future projects and future work is really important.
11:04:44 Of course there were some not insignificant challenges faced during the project as well.
11:04:50 For a small archive seizing an opportunity like this to put on a large scale exhibition minute temporarily, we had to revise priorities. We had to cut back on other areas of work due to limited time resources.
11:05:06 I mentioned previously, managing the balance of potential Bicentennial motivations with archival or historical objectives that was kind of ever present concern.
11:05:18 And in some ways, I think that contributed to our, our perspective when it came to ultimately kind of assessing we're measuring the success of the exhibit itself.
11:05:31 And it was really great to have this physical, tangible gallery sized final product at the end of the project. However, it was only on display for a limited time the six months from July 2018 to January 2019.
11:05:47 During that time we had approximately 5000 visitors to the gallery space, and we hosted 10 Plus, mostly small outreach events.
11:05:56 So when you look at that, the quantitative data is fairly modest, though it does represent an audience that is many times larger what we, many times larger than what we might see in our home space of Health Sciences Library qualitatively or anecdotally,
11:06:13 the UVA health 200 years exhibition received alerts really positive feedback from visitors, which seemed to show some genuine engagement of the sort that we had really hope for.
11:06:24 Perhaps indicative that the exhibition did indeed help bring about greater awareness of the history of the VA Health, at least to some members of the community, but truly measuring measuring those kinds of results is not something that we that we really
11:06:39 attempted to do, to, to seriously.
11:06:45 Also, thinking about success just in terms of what the Health Sciences Library gained through the project, I would say we truly gained a unique opportunity to reflect on our own institutional archives and our work as archivists through this chance to
11:07:10 collections closely, and perhaps come to them with a different perspective than usual. So, moving forward, the UV health 200 years exhibition is over and has been for some time now, at this point, but we are in the process of repurposing content created
11:07:32 for the exhibition for the web. And we're planning to launch an online version of the exhibition, though not an exact digital replica of it. The hope is to create a dynamic website that can be a place for continually updated content that will feature
11:07:40 new research and findings and share networked and accessible digital resources.
11:07:45 So I'll say I really admire all the work that Randy and her team have done on those slavery in School of Law website.
11:07:54 We think we aspire to, you know, wanting wanting something that will be just as engaging and interesting, a resource.
11:08:06 We are running behind schedule on launching this new website, which, in a way, became part of a larger project last year to re examine and update some other elements of our overall web presence.
11:08:20 And also, as I alluded to earlier last year kind of brought a big unexpected pivot to our daily work again. But even prior to that after the exhibition closed in January 2019, we needed to
11:08:35 reallocate time back to other work that had sort of been neglected, though that may be too strong of a word.
11:08:45 And while our focus has been on on creating the exhibit, but hopefully work on bringing the website to life will produce results soon sooner than later.
11:08:56 That's my hope.
11:09:01 So in the time that the Bicentennial exhibition.
11:09:20 Unsurprisingly, been done. And ideally, some of that will be incorporated into the new website. and I think it's interesting and informative to realize that our exhibition of three years ago is already in some ways, outdated.
11:09:28 We also brought back lessons from that experience of developing the exhibition, which in some cases, suggested changes to our regular archival work such as revised clicking priorities or descriptive practices.
11:09:42 So in some ways the the work of the, of the exhibit continues.
11:09:48 And so just as kind of a final takeaway moving forward and speaking for myself.
11:09:54 I think that I could say I have a somewhat different perspective on the work of archivists the roles we play, and how we approach history, even in just the past couple years, it seems like some commonly held perspectives or expectations towards history
11:10:09 have been evolving.
11:10:11 That may be a little bit of a commentary on some of our local situation here in Charlottesville.
11:10:17 And that is in itself I think recent for us to continue thinking about and engaging in special projects like this one, when the opportunity for them, comes up.
11:10:30 So that's my short reflection on our Bicentennial exhibition project. And now I'm going to turn the presentation over to Dan.
11:11:09 Just hold on a second getting that setup.
11:11:13 Yeah. Alright.
11:11:14 Thanks. Alright, so as Emily noted, I am her colleague at the University of Virginia. Health Sciences Library, and he has all his home to a small collection of manuscripts institutional records artifacts and read books that document the history of the
11:11:29 health sciences, particularly the history of the VA Health System.
11:11:34 For over 40 years. Special Collections staff at our library have on and off examined silences in our institutional collections and have tried to bring to light stories kept out of the popular narratives of the University of Virginia.
11:11:49 For example, in the 1970s, Todd savage and will home mall, analyze the VA hospitals early patient records helps tell the story of patient experience at the hospital policeman's discussion about early racial health disparities in 1990s.
11:12:05 Don't act and Pam Klein played an important role in the examination of UVA connections to the Tuskegee syphilis experiments and the campaign to persuade us government to apologize for those experiments, significant work had been done, but it's still clear
11:12:17 that our repositories institutional History Collections, like so many others are clearly biased to favor the perspectives and narratives of the white man who have historically dominated leadership or institution.
11:12:30 And the over the past six years of particular intense effort in the past two years, really part of this those intense effort started with the exhibit that Emily, just talked about.
11:12:41 We are trying to identify silences and biases in our collection so that we can address them.
11:12:46 When exercises prove most helpful for me in this process was to actually conduct research in our own repository.
11:12:54 So in early 2019 representatives from the UVA President's Commission on the university in the age of segregation asked me to contribute an essay to a series they were working on called UVA and the history of race
11:13:09 condition, a continuation of the early one that Randy talked about dedicated the history of slavery at the institution is a part charged with bringing to light the historical experiences of underrepresented groups at the university between 1865 and 1965.
11:13:27 That was right something related to the history of racial discrimination at UV hospital.
11:13:32 In the period between the hospitals founded in 1901 to the end date of the Commission's 1965.
11:13:37 When I began my work on the essay I thought I would specifically write about the racial segregation of patients at the hospital, but by the end of my research I instead decided to focus on the experiences of the black men and women who are employed at
11:13:49 the hospital during the middle of the 20th century.
11:13:52 By that time, up hospitals personnel.
11:14:06 By the middle of the 20th century UV hospital was the largest employer of black men and women in the local Charlottesville community is back means that the hospital's personnel decisions at the time of likely has significant effect on the economic well
11:14:10 being of Charleston is black community, and turn since it was widely agreed.
11:14:14 This much talk about this and Health Sciences called social determinants of health, that there's a high correlation United States between wealth and health outcomes.
11:14:22 Labor discrimination at the hospital may have had a greater impact on the widening of racial health disparities in Charlottesville, then Patient Centered segregation, at that time.
11:14:32 At the start of my research, I searched for resources and archives with the typical search strategies using finding aids to pack databases and online collections and nothing seemed to be coming up that was relevant to the experiences of black employees
11:14:47 at UVA hospital, with the exception of one oral history from the early 1990s, all the institutional collections in the UVA HL archives appear to center on the experiences of doctors, nurses, and students generally the people who built our collections,
11:15:01 including for several years myself did not consider the experience as a support staff to be significant enough or as significant as these other groups to document this lack of staff perspectives in the archives contributes greatly to racial bias in our
11:15:16 institutional records, because for much of the hospital's history, black men and women can only find employment at the hospital. as a member of the support staff.
11:15:26 So let's to illustrate how problematic or collection practices have been, we just need to take a look at some employment data from 1965 which I have up here, that you Your, your VA hospital employed a little over 1300 people.
11:15:40 26% of these employees are physicians and they were all white 21% were nurses. Now those nurses 200 were graduate nurses.
11:15:49 These are nurses with usually 40 year degrees or university education. Only 5% of the scripts are black and of the 90 lower played practical nurses are usually went through a two year program or so to get certified as a practical nurse.
11:16:06 95% were black.
11:16:08 Just as a side note Tori Tucker a PhD student in the UK School of Nursing. In recent years, led an effort to research the rich history of black nurses working at your VA hospital in this period, including oral histories, and I'll just amazing work really.
11:16:23 Finally, go to the bottom part.
11:16:26 The rest of the staff about 700 people, or 51% of the total were administrative and support staff.
11:16:33 400 of those staff are black, the administrative support staff included a wide range of Central personnel. This included clerical workers housekeepers technicians and cooks.
11:16:46 And by focusing on the perspectives of the doctors and nurses.
11:16:50 We were failing to document the experiences of over half the people at the top working at the hospital.
11:16:55 In recent decades, I believe we are doing this because in the field of the history the Health Sciences professional historians rarely examine the experiences of support staff and the hospital's taking cues from this community about what we should consider
11:17:07 to be historically significant. We do not document the experiences of support stuff.
11:17:12 And because at UVA hospital the vast majority of black employees have served in these roles, we were in turn creating significant racial biases in our collections and our department and perpetuating systematic systemic racism that is historically pervaded,
11:17:25 the University of Virginia, through our archives.
11:17:30 All those searches of our finding aids and databases yielded few useful results, I was not convinced that the experiences of thousands of men and women who worked at UVA hospital were completely missing from our institutional records.
11:17:42 So, be honest exasperated. At one point I just started pulling boxes out of our stacks, and I went page to page through administrative documents that a lot of people don't go through meeting minutes.
11:17:58 Reports, and then newsletters and executive correspondence files and pretty quickly somewhat To my surprise here and they're scattered and these records, I found a lot of information about the black men and women who worked in the hospital between 1901
11:18:09 and 1965.
11:18:10 There were short biographies buried in the staff newsletter. There was reports of staff walkouts and work stoppages during World War Two, and other information that we could gather together to show how people we long overlooked made a vital contributions
11:18:23 to the development of the VA hospital.
11:18:39 By relied on our metadata, I would have not seen any of this. So in addition to our collecting practices or description practices also serve behind the experiences of the black men and women employed at UVA hospital. Let me show you a specific example
11:18:41 of how our meditative practices contribute to silences in our archives, shown here to photograph and the UVA visual history collection.
11:18:48 This is an online collection of over 20,000 photographs a document the history of UVA about 15 to 20 years ago, before my time so on exact date, the collection was built by three Special Collections units at UVA, often using minimal description practices
11:19:03 and this includes the law library which Randy represents, he sells Emily and I represent, and the small, I would surely small Special Collections delivering the two photographs.
11:19:14 So what were segregated cafeterias and you VA hospital, and 1954.
11:19:33 often we would have discussions with researchers and colleagues that we only have new maybe one or two photographs of black workers during this period or a segregated space in the hospital.
11:19:41 Actually, there was much more.
11:19:44 So last year, I found these images not in our online database, but in a poorly described scrapbook and our collections. here images of two clips into the scrapbook that show the same photographs and then published in the Roanoke Tribune, the photo caption
11:19:57 subscribe what they are and even identify the men and women picture.
11:20:01 I can also determine from the photo caption and the trivia, that the photographs that were taken by were taken by Randall white.
11:20:11 The VA hospital employee and important figure in Charlottesville civil rights movement.
11:20:12 So why did not. I did not recognize or find these photographs in the UVA visual history collection, where they have been online online for so long, here's a screenshot of the catalog record for one of these images, and now we zoom in on the metadata attached
11:20:28 the photograph.
11:20:29 We will see that the photograph is titled simply UVA cat hospital cafeteria, without any additional description.
11:20:36 When he sells contributions to the visual history collection were digitized usually no additional description was added to the accompanying meta data, beyond what might have been written on the back of the print or is written on an accompanying folder.
11:20:48 And even then, the people doing to size made quite a few mistakes.
11:20:54 So, there are many images in the collection with no description that are difficult to identify.
11:21:00 However, General images from he saw that showed the history of underrepresented groups had less description on the Princeton folders and those showing white subjects.
11:21:10 Here's a portrait photograph of the UVA school medicines class in 1950 that can be found in the UVA visual history collection.
11:21:17 As you will see there is a clear date. Well, it's kind of small look down their original date, 1950, there's a clear date, there are multiple more subject headings than just simply UVA or Charlottesville.
11:21:29 And, and each individual in the photograph is identified.
11:21:34 We can conduct a simple keyword search for the entire library online catalog, with one name of a member of the class of 1950, and our search results would quickly return this image.
11:21:43 Because of our metadata many images depicting underrepresented groups are very deep in our databases and difficult to find.
11:21:50 Well, many images depicting the experiences of white students and faculty are easy to access some images of black workers at UVA Hospital in the mid 20th century, can be found online, but it takes far more time and work to identify and retrieve them.
11:22:03 I found throughout my research that there were sources that provided information about the experiences of underrepresented groups, but it took far more time to uncover and access ultimately our archive requires researchers who want to examine the lives
11:22:18 of underrepresented groups including black workers at the hospital during the 20th century to expend far more time and energy to do their work, the researchers who want to examine the lives of the white doctors and students.
11:22:32 So, what stories or archive suppress due to our collection of meditative practices. We have poorly documented, or in some cases hidden sources that could tell us something about the experiences of black workers at UVA hospital during the early and middle
11:22:46 parts of the 20th century.
11:22:48 So what stories have you ignoring, or suppressing.
11:22:52 After almost two years of research.
11:22:54 We found quite a lot actually and it's it's been very eye opening, and it's really kind of changed views of UVA history, at least my perspectives of it.
11:23:08 For example, black men and women for collectively for equal opportunities in employment opportunities and fair compensation the hospital during 1940s during World War Two.
11:23:18 They essentially stage walkouts, they formed a union and wildly wildly successful union and all that is basically back and forth letters, you'll find in the President's executive correspondence you'll find little reports in the meeting minutes, and come
11:23:36 together this massive campaign that employees waged, and one in the 1940s and this is really important were thinking the larger history of our University, University of Virginia because there's been lots of talks recently about unionization among workers
11:23:54 and employment opportunities and fair compensation, and usually the line has always been that these things have never worked because the story of this work in 1940s, and wasn't well known in the collective memory of the university.
11:24:08 Also we found during the 1940s 1950s black men and women working at UT hospital were prominent leaders and trustful civil rights movement presidents of the Union were also at the same time presidents of local chapter of the NAACP, and we're involved with
11:24:24 with other campaigns, essentially, the union and organizations formed within the hospital by hospital employees were part of a larger wider network of organizations in Charlottesville, that advanced civil rights.
11:24:38 Finally, black men and women working in the hospital during 1950s played a significant role in a successful campaign against the danger segregation of patients at UVA.
11:24:50 So, when I was looking doing the research of employees the hospital and research of how the hospital became desegregated, a lot of the same name started coming up, as this goes back to the earlier point about a lot of the same leaders to multiple roles.
11:25:04 roles. And what we found is that maybe that black workers were leveraging their role within the hospital to push forward, desegregation of the patient areas within the hospital during the 1950s.
11:25:20 So these are some stories we've lost. So, how does this continue happen or why is this happening recently there's been lots of works, about biases in the archives.
11:25:32 For years now.
11:25:48 study of these professions that devalues the experiences and contributions have a central support staff.
11:25:54 Historically, there have been over representation of black men, men and women and support roles at UVA hospital, and under representation in the medical and nursing professions, so we create racial biases in our collections, we do not value the experiences
11:26:05 of the essential support step or description practices preserved the biases of the white men and women who created the questions records that might shed light on black experiences are difficult find collections of white creators if we're using original
11:26:18 folder titles. Often, the, you know what they're prioritizing with their folder titles, is not going to be the experiences of staff members, you're going to find a letter to, for example, negotiating between leadership and the union, but the leadership
11:26:36 really didn't want to create a union folder so they kind of buried and their general correspondence these kinds of things happened right.
11:26:42 And so, this is especially true as I said, the original arrangements and another example we have the Dean of the School of Medicine at UVA, he. The time of desegregation the hospital, and the first instance of black students the School of Medicine.
11:26:58 We have 24 hours of tape of oral histories with this man.
11:27:03 And to give you a sense of how the kind of lens of the white creators, kind of berries these histories of those 24 hours despite these momentous things he did.
11:27:10 I think he talks about desegregation for about two minutes.
11:27:14 More concentrating on research studies and kind of the professional work he has done for 4050 years.
11:27:21 So occasionally we have taken extra effort scraped metadata and highlight collections that stakeholders one, and this I'm gonna go back to that kind of alumni photo.
11:27:30 We didn't have to put into the metadata catalog folder, every individual name of the people in that photograph in fact, on the original photograph, we just have first name so somebody went and did research to find the last names, possibly through a course
11:27:42 a course catalog. So extra metadata work was done in that case i'm guessing it was because essentially of an ask from alumni or some kind of thing like that.
11:27:54 So occasionally we do this, but it's been clear that it's been two for the most powerful stakeholders so essentially the faculty, alumni and students.
11:28:06 So what are we doing now and what did we learn.
11:28:09 So, there's no additional money available to increase our departments capacity and a meaningful way to do repetitive work unless we first and we'll make projects and change our long standing priorities.
11:28:19 So, before the pandemic. Emily. Emily and I went through the department and we started D prioritizing some things D prioritizing our development of a rare book collection, which had been mainly focused on kind of a history of Western medicine.
11:28:35 We also reduced our hours we had been kind of open, almost 40 hours a week to researchers they just walk in at a time and we're looking at stats and we didn't get that many researchers doing walk ins everybody always called us for an appointment anyway
11:28:48 so we might as well go to shorter hours with appointments they gave us some more kind of heads downtime to make sure we could do what we do instead of being ready to be an interrupted in a time.
11:29:00 And we also, we were filming, doing some filming for election series we ended that project, we ended our photographing of the medical artifacts for photograph Hold on, we stopped those.
11:29:11 And then reallocated that time towards work that would kind of address address the biases in our collections and the description problems.
11:29:24 So, also we are working to develop oral history initiatives with partners, outside of our library that prioritize experience of historical underrepresented groups, we had were right now.
11:29:34 Working with medical Alumni Association on this project we originally were going to start well histories last spring but pandemic occurred so it's now reviving now.
11:29:44 And I'll say that we actually got a lot of assistance from Randy and the law school from documentation to us from network on oral history project they didn't, very grateful for that.
11:29:54 In addition to the work we're doing with the President's Commission on the University of the age of segregation, you're starting to share research with interested faculty, administrators, and community groups, as more and more people become interested
11:30:04 in these kind of partially Hidden History sounds, they're not hidden people remember them but just not within the kind of powerful kind of tools that the university uses for memory, the archives.
11:30:19 essentially, more interest we've been able to share our raw research notes whatever we can. So faculty want to start research projects administrators who are trying to think about building trust between the health system and the local community and also
11:30:36 community, community groups including the Charlottesville branch of the NAACP, which has begun to ask for something information.
11:30:44 We're conducting an audit of our collections as part of a wider inclusive inclusion and diversity initiative at the club more Health Sciences Library.
11:30:53 And so this was some things we're doing. We also learned that we need to find a balance somewhere between demands to make connections accessible to researchers, as quickly as possible and the need to repair biases in the archives.
11:31:04 The visual history collection was based on a philosophy of okay minimal description will get out as much as we can, which is great. It will get all these photographs, all these materials out there accessible, but because of the history of UVA and how
11:31:17 these collections are created and are systemic problems here at the university.
11:31:23 We were carrying through that approach.
11:31:27 Racial biases into our collections and. And really we need to consider whenever we do a project moving forward is essentially is, what do we need to do to consider.
11:31:40 You know, what is what is we doing with our project is, if it's going to continue to bring these biases forward and what do we need to do to repair that and kind of counter it.
11:31:51 So, and one last thing in our archives, my own experience patrons most expend far more effort to receive research the experiences of historically underrepresented groups than research the experiences of white men archives create an equal burden for researchers
11:32:03 and. For example, if I were doing a different subject let's see that School of Medicine being I talked about before.
11:32:11 And I've seen students who've come to archives to do student papers and things like that, and it's easier for them to do something like the overseas work of this do school medicine because of the copious amounts of metadata the copious amounts of materials,
11:32:24 versus something like black workers at UVA hospital, and so we can see the the burden that we've created.
11:32:34 And that is it.
11:32:47 Thanks, Dan.
11:32:51 So I'm gonna I'm
11:33:04 great.
11:33:01 So thank you so much to Dan and Randy for joining me on this presentation today.
11:33:06 I want to invite any and all participants to continue to submit to questions that you might have. for us through the q amp a feature.
11:33:17 Got a couple of questions and I'll see if some more come in to get it started. I've got a question or two for Randy and Dan.
11:33:26 So, first Randy.
11:33:31 You talked, you know a bit about the origin of the slavery and the VA School of Law Project, sort of how how the idea evolved.
11:33:39 I wondered if you might talk a little bit about how you went about obtaining institutional buy in, or commitment for the time and resources to the project and if if that was an issue or if that really wasn't.
11:33:56 Yeah, that's a great question yeah we were super nervous about it. For all the obvious reasons.
11:34:03 We have a very good situation here at the law school, where we have a great Dean who's a legal historian and supports this kind of work That said, Of course there are there's like an institutional nervousness that we felt.
11:34:21 I don't think I don't think we ever. No one said, you know, no one really deeply questioned us about why why why but we had to regularly sort of talk about.
11:34:33 The goal of this which was sort of joining a conversation can like continuing a conversation pointing to what's going on already pointing to the really positive response I think like the universe doesn't crumble when you talk about this stuff it's, you
11:34:50 know, talking about reaching more people answering questions you know MIT, you know, constantly you know reminding that there is a broader audience than our traditional audience that is curious that is asking about this stuff.
11:35:06 So, it was, that was just like this constant talking points and and we're really, really useful.
11:35:15 And in terms of institutional support you know we are, we're a little bit.
11:35:19 We were sort of set up to do this just because I come in with a heavy interpretive mission to my job description so we didn't have to bring in a lot more support for that but we do.
11:35:32 We were able to draw on some UVA resources to sort of continue this project as a learning tool for UVA students. So we, we, we had an intern for UVA Institute for Public history as a summer intern who really helped us kick off this project, and sort of
11:35:52 think about questions that this project could help answer research opportunities, this project could help promote. So again, making sure that we're tying it back to sort of a learning.
11:36:14 Learning was also really critical to sort of, you know, continuing institutional support for it. And also just, you know, keeping the lines of communication open with our communications department was was really helpful and something that we did all the
11:36:25 time you know of course we ran the website by them first.
11:36:28 But luckily, we've been through, you know we've had the anniversary of the first black student here at UVA law so we have sort of this conversation has been ongoing, this wasn't the first time that we were sort of dealing with these issues as institutions,
11:36:41 so there was already some.
11:36:44 We had it sort of good track record with that already.
11:36:47 Yeah, constant conversation.
11:36:53 Great, thank you.
11:36:56 So they're in the, in the chat we've got a couple of comments
11:37:03 complimenting Dan's work, which, yes. Big kudos to Dan is done some really wonderful fascinating research. I feel lucky that I got to kind of witness some of it firsthand, as he was digging through those boxes some days.
11:37:26 And so Dan I wanted to ask you,
11:37:35 based on the research that you've done and all the work that you've put into this. Can you talk a little bit about the reception that you've received or the reception of similar work that you've been involved with going on at UVA.
11:37:53 Yes, this is some ways builds upon Randy's answer so
11:37:58 upon Randy's answer so kind of the first kind of questions we were getting about kind of least since I've been working at EPA about this we have under arrest and groups and these kind of difficult histories actually as far back as 2015, there's questions about
11:38:11 about names of buildings on the VA Health System several buildings are named after you Genesis so we're getting questions about, you know, providing support and getting that information.
11:38:21 And initially as Randy kind of described as a lot of stakeholders, initially in those discussions, and there's a lot of nervousness, and since 2015 stuff.
11:38:45 Yeah, six years. There's a lot more comfort as you continue to put out materials, and as Randy says the university doesn't crumble and people appreciate it and things seem to open up less and less people are nervous and I kind of builds more and more
11:38:50 interest and builds more and more support and gets it out there. So let's say overall like said initially, not necessarily the research discussed earlier research and Emily you've done some this research so you know, so I'm talking to you to,
11:39:05 you know, his nervousness announced generally enthusiasms and us from multiple groups so given talks, sharing this research, the UVA today article or the UVA for the presence commission, it was put through University Communications or marketing platform
11:39:23 put out the article a couple weeks ago. And it's been overwhelmingly positive response week later, professor teaching history BBA put it in our curriculum the next week so we've got it up there pretty quickly.
11:39:36 Given talks the community I gave a talk to the NAACP local branch the NAACP virtual talk during the pandemic.
11:39:42 They didn't remember this history, which was surprising to me.
11:39:50 Basically, the generation that I discussed, most of them are deceased and so it's their children's generation now that our leadership with the local organizations and they didn't know what their parents have done.
11:39:59 So it's been a lot of enthusiasm, but there's also been some disappointment to I gave a talk once where emotions around a little bit high, and the audience, these are members of the community, and what it was, is they're nervous upset this history hadn't
11:40:13 been out there more, and they appreciate it. that was now there and we had some.
11:40:35 Sit down discussions and personal discussions with people after the talk and follow up and kind of trying to build those relationships, so sorry that's a long answer, and I rambled a bit but that's.
11:40:27 Yeah, that's sort of interception.
11:40:30 Thank you.
11:40:32 Um, one of the questions we have in the q amp a kind of tags on that pretty well so the question is, Dan Did you get any pushback from admins or researchers when you started to de emphasize certain projects were collecting areas such as we're books.
11:40:54 No, because let's say, you know, we weren't, we didn't go into kind of reprivatisation until those right after the exhibit was on so about 2018 so it was early 2015 and people have gotten more comfortable with this stuff, and went through the Asterix
11:41:09 so I really didn't have any pushback from stakeholders I knew that there's a few faculty members who are really interested in a real book collection, and I had lunch with them, and I talked to them and I said, Look, this is what the deal is and, you know,
11:41:22 we're a small staff and unless we get more I can add more work we have to take away, and they were enthusiastic they're on board so actually no no pushback and their hours change.
11:41:33 What I did was preemptively, I did a. I basically went through about 50 of our peers their websites for the health sciences Special Collections saw staffing numbers, hours and basically did a full kind of, you know, matrix or whatever it took to my boss
11:41:46 and said look we're, we have the highest number of hours open for a small staff, we can change this more fine and then brought the stats everything and within five minutes she was on board with us changing our hours and everything else so not really push
11:41:59 back, not a lot.
11:42:03 Thanks.
11:42:03 So I'm going to give you another question Dan that's coming to the q amp a, Dan, do you find evidence that white historical figures who were collecting their own papers also filtered out documentation of the role of African Americans in the university
11:42:18 hospital. I found this had happened in a large collection in the small library. When I triangulate information there with the papers of African Americans archived elsewhere.
11:42:29 Fascinating presentation.
11:42:31 I don't know but probably.
11:42:33 I'll say that because for example we have a large very large keynote collection, and they'll sign celebrities called the hospital executive directors office collections, the current version of the CEO of the Hospital Medical Center, the administrators
11:42:43 right.
11:42:45 And we know from other sources so collections like the President's papers over across its small and other things that there's these union negotiations these kinds of things going on but in this copious executive directors office.
11:42:57 You know papers.
11:42:58 There's one slim folder called civil rights, and as a couple of clippings and a federal investigation instituted on the Civil Rights Act 1965 the hospital for discriminatory practices and that's it.
11:43:10 And and but he kept folders upon folders of these arcane kind of sub department budget reports and things, so I've got to know I know that these communications between community and this individual, I gotta think they have to be thrown away and I also
11:43:24 I also know from the history at least the hospital that after the 19 min 1950s, the number of sources that you can find. even with approach where I did we're just kind of go through everything declines, a lot, and what's going on, I think, is in the 1965
11:43:47 And the hospital administrators, literally had to tell the investigators yeah we kept it quiet and kept it out of no not telling anybody not announcing it because we didn't want to shake the local community because massive resistance is going on in Virginia,
11:43:59 Virginia, against desegregation of schools that's what they were saying, so they desegregated rooms, but they didn't announce anybody. And my guess is since they were announcing it to anybody either they were kind of keeping their own records and the
11:44:10 weirdest thing, sorry around a little bit too.
11:44:12 We just think I found was, when I looked at the roadmap Tribune on the show Star Tribune, which were newspapers that serves the predominant serves the black community in Charlottesville.
11:44:22 There are newspaper articles all in there about the communities campaign to desegregate the hospital there's talks about mass meetings there's talks about a fun to bring in the NAACP in fact there's talks of the double acp coming and saying, look, we
11:44:36 don't have a plan for desegregation hospitals yet you're one of the first so let's. We'll figure this out.
11:44:42 And then I go to the daily progress, which is the our areas, kind of like main local newspaper, which is kind of the white narrative right least turns mid 20th century period.
11:44:51 And there's nothing in there about mass meetings, there's nothing in there about any of this stuff. And in fact, when they finally closed the basement Ward's of the hospital where these kind of important boards in the hospital.
11:45:03 The daily practice announcing the attributes, but it's not in daily progress in fact they only have a short thing saying well pediatrics patients were moved to Florida F or concerns about fire safety.
11:45:19 Something's going on. I mean, there's mass meetings going on and the leaders of the university administration of President of time was, we know was reading these papers attributes because he had clippings all in his presence papers and he was responding
11:45:30 to him letters to the governor saying I just read about this mass meeting we got to do something, these kinds of things going on.
11:45:35 So I don't know but it's just, it's very suspicious that this stuff is missing, and maybe it isn't you know how boxes get lost things on the caps biases of Sam's Club conscious but I don't know.
11:45:47 So sorry it was a long way of saying I don't know. So, thanks.
11:45:51 Thanks.
11:45:52 I'm going to give you one more question, because there are actually three questions that are all about metadata, they're they're pretty similar I think they have a lot of overlap.
11:46:03 So that just is kind of how are you addressing the poor metadata that you talked about any type of training for archivist librarians kind of loggers, are you changing description practices as a result of your research.
11:46:20 What are you changing If so, and just kind of any additional insight that you might want to provide into, into that.
11:46:29 That's a good question. So, ultimately, we need to change those records and disappointed myself say we haven't done that yet. And what it comes down to is again small staff can have to just determine what to prioritize and right now I'm prioritizing oral
11:46:43 histories because some of the people we want to interview are pretty old.
11:46:50 To be honest, so are my plan, and hopefully Emily you can chime in, too.
11:46:55 It's too.
11:46:57 We need to first the directors we've identified, like the cafeteria photos they need to be changed immediately we have enough information we need to change those and and change the description with the research that we know.
11:47:08 And then we need to do a full systematic review of that visual history collection because it's actually a very heavily used collection, a lot of people use the photographs in there and the metadata, and only the things that I, there's a lot of wrong metadata
11:47:18 sometimes we send photos to alumni know like the kind of like portrait photos I showed in there like, this is the wrong class. It's kind of embarrassing some respects.
11:47:27 So we do need to do a systematic review but it's a matter of prioritizing, even if we've shifted our operations towards prioritizing underrepresented groups where do we start.
11:47:38 And so, I want to just immediately get about 20 or 30 Records I'd like to change. When you do a systematic review.
11:47:45 and for, you know, for other archivists students work. It's a good question what what do we do about it because this is the question of balancing, you know resources versus, because you know, to find that extra metadata requires research.
11:47:58 And it means resources time to do the research.
11:48:02 So, I don't have any like like guidance or thoughts about it and I'd love to hear other people's thoughts about this because it's the difficulty of what can we do with resources we have.
11:48:12 And do justice by these collections so sorry I, I guess my, I don't have any good advice I think it's a conversation we need to have. So,
11:48:22 Yeah, definitely.
11:48:24 If anybody has has advice for us.
11:48:27 We would love to hear it. Anybody has done similar work in their own collections.
11:48:32 So I'm going to get down a little break. There was a question about wondering about limitations that the Bicentennial exhibition project might have experienced with opening the exhibit during coordinating restrictions.
11:48:49 So, the dates may have been a little bit confusing that exhibit was closed before the pandemic.
11:48:56 So the exhibit was open from July, 2018 to January 2019.
11:49:02 So, the the pandemic didn't interrupt the, the visitation at all of the exhibit, though, that is it a little bit of an interesting question because we definitely visitation was maybe not as high as we would have liked and so that is another issue that
11:49:22 we've, we've thought and talked about kind of looking back record doing retrospective of the exhibition, we had at least two outreach events or related outreach events to the exhibition that wound up being cancelled because of a lack of interest, and
11:49:38 we did at some time struggle to kind of market, our exhibit, or really catch the interest of the audience that we were sometimes looking for. And I think some of that came down to just our inexperience we hadn't done a big exhibit like that before.
11:49:57 So we didn't have necessarily the marketing connections or the experience to know you know what to do to make sure we got highlighted and featured and, and all of that.
11:50:10 So that was definitely part of the the learning curve or learning experience of, you know, considering how to analyze or assess the, the audience attendance.
11:50:32 There's another question here. I'm very interested in the slavery and history of medicine online projects for someone doing archival research how complete is the digitally available archive and other words would a scholar need to come to Charlottesville
11:50:48 In other words, what a scholar need to come to Charlottesville to see the full collections in order to be confident that the review of archives had been complete.
11:50:55 The short answer to that is yes, we have some materials available online. Like the photographs that Dan showed, but as he showed, if you're trying to research using those, You may face some pretty significant challenges.
11:51:15 Some digital materials may be available online through the Bicentennial exhibitions spin off website that is still.
11:51:27 Hopefully coming soon.
11:51:29 But certainly, we don't have the kind of the manpower, or resources in our small repository to do kind of a massive large scale digitization project with the goal of putting all of our records up online that you know is appealing, but it's really not
11:51:49 feasible for us.
11:51:51 But we do hope that we can continue to improve accessibility and maybe make key documents or materials available to to people in a in a way that's easier and can can give them some information without necessarily having to come to the archive.
11:52:12 I just want to add to that and I completely agree with everything you're saying, Yes, visit is probably useful especially I mean we use stevia small Special Collections which is now currently open to UVA researchers only but.
11:52:23 But we use it all the time and one thing we always think about with these digital project is sort of the giving the appearance of completely completeness, to an archive, giving the completeness, sense it everything's been digitized and making sure that
11:52:37 that you know making people aware there's there's more elsewhere that this is not a complete record but yes visit to Charlotte I would recommend it if you can, if you can do it.
11:52:49 Yes, and I should note that we at the clinical sciences library are also close to outside researchers at this time so if you're interested in visiting wait a little while and then we will be glad to welcome you to Charlottesville.
11:53:10 Don't have any other questions in the queue right now but if anybody can think of one, feel free to submit it through the q amp a really I did have one other question for you that that this actually kind of leads nicely into you.
11:53:26 You know you talked a little bit about the your projects focus on teaching and learning opportunities.
11:53:33 And I was curious if you knew the project is very new. So, but I was curious if you've seen any like concrete interest in that or if you have any use cases yet among researchers using your website, or if not, do you have kind of imagining of, of how that
11:53:57 will happen in the future. Yeah, I don't have anything, you know, there's no one who's who's absolutely used it for the research, yet, so it's more sort of individual conversations with some faculty members here who are who are interested in it.
11:54:09 We are our department is currently editing a book project on the curriculum history of the law school so a lot of the student notebooks will be used for that there will be a chapter dedicated to looking at, at slavery as part of the curriculum.
11:54:26 Again, we're trying to talk about the curriculum and not a Suzy way, and also be inclusive and think about, again, sort of, how teaching on subjects like enslaved people and women, you know, you know has reverberation through society.
11:54:41 So, that is a, that will be the site will be directly use for that project.
11:54:47 One thing I you know, I mentioned that we're also looking at the history of our site as part of this, and the communities enslaved people who lived here and labored here, which was a sunny side plantation.
11:55:01 We had, you know, the our faculty members at UVA who are looking at this site mainly because it was photographed for some of the barbecue events that happened here this was the Charlottesville BBQ grounds for a number of decades.
11:55:12 And for those events, you know, these were often community groups, social organizations, you know the Confederate Veterans organizations with here.
11:55:21 There'll be black chefs there will be black musicians.
11:55:24 So it's just an interesting, very interesting history here and and sort of studying that site I think has getting to take some purchase in terms of, you know, some interdisciplinary learning experiential learning just studying the site in historic preservation
11:55:40 all that stuff so that's one thing I'm particularly excited about maybe exploring that a little bit more.
11:55:45 So actually just sort of outside of the you know the archival record how that's used, thinking about other ways of studying this interdisciplinary.
11:55:58 Great, thank you.
11:56:02 have a couple minutes left.
11:56:05 Or we can go ahead and wrap up.
11:56:09 I guess I just wanted to give either Dan or Randy, the opportunity if you had any final comments or remarks about any of any of the topics or questions that have come up.
11:56:23 And if not, that's fine.
11:56:28 Get.
11:56:30 We had one request for Dan's contact information that I entered into the q amp a. I'm going to
11:56:42 butt up.
11:56:49 But, choosing the right thing.
11:56:52 And I just want to thank everybody who has joined us here today.
11:57:01 And special thanks to Dan and Randy for being on this panel.
11:57:05 If anyone has questions that were not answered during during the q amp a, please feel free to reach out to any of our speakers, I see a question about a recording.
11:57:15 Yes, there will be a recording of this, of this program.
11:57:20 And, and yeah so please feel free to reach out to any of us if you have additional comments, thoughts or questions.