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Announcing the Civil Rights Digital Library

Photo of Selma to Montgomery March

Photo of Selma to Montgomery March from WikiCommons

By Susan Turkel

Lunch counter sit-ins, the Montgomery bus boycott, church and temple bombings, the murders of Emmett Till and Martin Luther King Jr., school integration, the March on Washington…. The events surrounding the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s forever changed American society.

Falvey Memorial Library offers 400 books on the Civil Rights Movement and hundreds more on race relations over the course of American history. Scholars continue to produce books, articles, and documentaries on this important era.

Research on history requires access to primary source materials. The Civil Rights Digital Library (CRDL) provides free access to a wide variety of primary source documents, photographic images, television news archives, and instructional materials held by hundreds of libraries, archives, and other organizations.

Funded by a National Leadership Grant for Libraries awarded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services, CRDL began as a partnership between libraries, archives, and educational institutions. The list of organizations whose materials are accessible via CRDL is lengthy and impressive; it includes the Library of Congress, universities and law schools from all over the country, PBS, the FBI, city and state archives from all over the South, and the Carnegie Museum of Art. CRDL was unveiled to the public in 2008.

In addition to the primary source resources, CRDL offers a wide variety of teaching materials on the Civil Rights Movement, including learning modules, bibliographies, lesson plans, timelines, quizzes, and worksheets.

If you’d like to investigate additional library resources for studying the Civil Rights Movement, please visit the U.S. Black Freedom Movement course guide, developed by our history librarian Jutta Seibert.

Happy searching!


Susan Turkel, MA, MLS, is a Social Sciences Librarian at Falvey Memorial Library.

 

 


 


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Aids for Teaching and Learning about Slavery and its Abolition

By Darren Poley

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Image: engraving of Toussaint L’Ouverture during the rebellion which led to the independence of Haiti.

Slavery, Abolition & Social Justice (Adam Matthew Digital) is a collection of primary and secondary sources on the topic from 1490 to 2007. It provides access to high quality images of many thousands of original manuscripts, court documents, pamphlets, books, paintings, and maps. All printed items are fully text-searchable and manuscripts have document-level indexing.

The collection also includes a variety of essays contributed by noted scholars, a chronology, a bibliography, and a visual sources gallery. It offers in-depth case studies of slavery and abolition in America, the Caribbean, Brazil, and Cuba, along with important material examining European, Islamic, and African involvement in the slave trade.

It is designed for both teaching and research on themes, such as slave testimony and the varieties of slave experience (urban, domestic, industrial, farm, ranch, and plantation), resistance and revolts, the abolition movement and the slavery debate, legislation and politics, and the legacy of slavery and slavery today.

Warning: Given the subject matter some content and images may be considered disturbing.

The Villanova University community can access Slavery, Abolition & Social Justice (Adam Matthew Digital) remotely be means of the Databases A-Z list.


Darren G. Poley is Associate Director of Research Services and Scholarly Engagement, and Theology, Humanities, and Classical Studies Librarian at Falvey Memorial Library. 

 

 



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Falvey Staff Members Work Together to ‘Change the Subject’ on the Term ‘Illegal Aliens’  

student at computer

By Deborah Bishov and Shawn Proctor  

Imagine searching the library catalog for books such as Migrant Deaths in the Arizona Desert and Whose Child am I?: Unaccompanied, Undocumented Children in U.S. Immigration Custody—and seeing the term “illegal aliens” appear on the results screen. Library users everywhere have encountered that term for many years, as it has long been the official Library of Congress subject heading assigned to books and other materials on the topic of immigrants who are undocumented. 

Users of Falvey Memorial Library’s catalog no longer encounter this pejorative subject heading in the public display, due to changes made by Falvey staff this past fall. Instead of the term “illegal aliens,” the Falvey catalog now displays “undocumented immigrants” as a subject heading term.

The changes affect variations on the subject heading as well; for example, “children of undocumented immigrants” now appears instead of “children of illegal aliens.” All instances when “alien” referred to a human being have been changed. 

Falvey staff members recognize that terms like “illegal alien” are not in alignment with Falvey’s or Villanova’s support of diversity as an integral component of our shared mission and values. This change to the library catalog is a reflection of Villanova as a welcoming community. We hope that it is also a step toward a respectful, globally-minded society. 

How do subject headings work? 

Falvey Memorial Library, like most academic and public libraries, uses Library of Congress subject headings to organize materials and make them discoverable to users. This cooperative system allows libraries to share resources. Subject headings are set by the Library of Congress, and, in general, changes to subject headings go through a process of approval there.   

Librarians and college students lobbied several years ago to have the “illegal aliens” subject heading replaced with other terms in all library catalogs, and the change was approved by the Library of Congress in 2016. This decision was widely supported by the library community. The 114th Congress intervened and overturned the decision before it could be implemented.

Why change the catalog, and why now?   

The timing was inspired in part by the 2019 documentary Change the Subject. This film shares the story of a group of student activists at Dartmouth College who began the movement for change. The Villanova community had the opportunity to view the film at a screening this fall, organized by Deborah Bishov, Social Sciences & Instructional Design Librarian, and Raúl Diego Rivera Hernández, PhD, Assistant Professor in the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures. The event featured a discussion with two of the filmmakers behind Change the Subject, Jill Baron and Óscar Rubén Cornejo Cásares.   

During conversations leading up to the screening, Falvey librarians—with the approval of Millicent Gaskell, University Librarian, and Jee Davis, Associate University Librarian for Collections & Stewardship—made the decision to change the subject in Falvey’s catalog.  

“Libraries use the subject headings established by the Library of Congress. The process for requesting a subject heading change was followed and the Library of Congress approved. In an unprecedented move, Congress overrode that decision. It’s been almost four years since the Library of Congress gave its approval. We believe now is the time for individual libraries to take the lead,” Davis says.

How did Falvey’s information technology infrastructure enable this change?    

Since the Library of Congress is still using “illegal aliens” in its shared catalogue, Falvey staff created code to display “undocumented immigrants” instead. Demian Katz, Director of Library Technology, worked with librarians at Falvey to alter the subject headings in VuFind, an open-source software for displaying the information in library catalogs. It was developed at Villanova University and is used by libraries around the world.  

One of the advantages of using open source software at Falvey is that staff can make customizations more easily than if they had to negotiate with a vendor to achieve the same results. Katz says, “In this instance, it only took a few hours of work spread across a few days to fully solve the technical problems involved.” While only the new subject headings appear in our public catalog, the old subject headings are still searchable.   

Libraries using VuFind can implement the same solution using the documentation on the Library’s technology blog. The Villanova University Charles Widger School of Law has already implemented this update into their catalog.   

“This change is about upholding our professional values to connect people to information and recognizing the power of the language we use as we do that,” Bishov says. “Making this change means that people who use our public catalog will not encounter this dehumanizing term in subject headings in the course of doing their research. And we’ll also be using terminology that matches language widely accepted by the people to whom it refers, by journalists, and by scholars.”


headshot of Deborah Bishov

Shawn Proctor

Deborah Bishov is Social Sciences & Instructional Design Librarian and Shawn Proctor is Communication & Marketing Program Manager at Falvey Memorial Library.



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Banned Books Everyone Should Read: To Kill a Mockingbird

In honor of the American Library Association’s annual Banned Books Week, which condemns censorship and urges free access to information, we asked Falvey librarians and staff to pick a book from the list of the most frequently banned and challenged books and tell us why it’s a must read.

Robert LeBlanc reads To Kill a Mockingbird

“It is a brilliant book that, even though it is problematic because of the white perspective of the narrator, is indicative of the inherent racial disparity in the American justice system and a still relevant lesson in civics.” —Robert LeBlanc, First Year Experience & Humanities Librarian

 


Shawn Proctor Head shot

Shawn Proctor, MFA, is Communication and Marketing Program Manager at Falvey Memorial Library. One of his favorite banned books is The Hate U Give.


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W.E.B. DU BOIS FELLOWSHIPS UMASS AMHERST (4/20/12)

Amherst, MA – The UMass Amherst Libraries will offer short-term residential fellowships to assist younger scholars in conducting research in Special Collections and University Archives (SCUA) in the Du Bois Library.  Full-time graduate students, faculty, or independent scholars (with a PhD) are eligible to apply.  Fellows will receive a stipend of $2,500 for a four-week residency.  The deadline for applications is April 20, 2012.  For more information:  http://bit.ly/dubois_fellowship.
Among the approximately 15,000 linear feet of manuscripts held by SCUA are many valuable collections for the study of social change in the United States, including the papers of the most important exponent of the politics and culture of the twentieth century, W.E.B. Du Bois.  Fellows may come from any field and any perspective, and they may work on any topic, but their research should explore the major themes that characterize Du Bois’s scholarship and activism. This includes the history and meaning of racial, social, and economic justice; the problems of democracy and political inclusion; the role of capitalism in world affairs; and the global influence of African cultures.
In addition to the Du Bois Papers, the UMass Amherst Libraries house over three million volumes and a rich suite of electronic resources to support advanced research in the humanities.  Comprehensive, searchable guides and finding aids to SCUA’s collections are available online at http://www.library.umass.edu/spcoll/.
Fellows will be selected on a competitive basis from applicants interested in conducting original research in the Du Bois Papers and other SCUA collections. The criteria for selection will include the potential of the proposal to contribute to scholarship; its fit with Du Boisian themes; the need for the use of SCUA’s collections; and a letter of support.  The application will consist of a brief (up to three pages) description of the research project, curriculum vitae, and the letter of support.  At the end of their consecutive four-week residency, fellows will deliver a public talk on their research.
For more information, contact Rob Cox, head of Special Collections and University Archives, at rscox@library.umass.edu, or (413) 545-6842.


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Last Modified: March 10, 2012

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