WGBH on behalf of the American Archive of Public Broadcasting is pleased to introduce our second cohort of fellows for the Public Broadcasting Preservation Fellowship (PBPF), a project funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS).
The PBPF supports students enrolled in non-specialized graduate programs to pursue digital preservation projects at public broadcasting organizations around the country. The Fellowship is designed to provide graduate students with the opportunity to gain hands-on experiences in the practices of audiovisual preservation; address the need for digitization of at-risk public media materials in underserved areas; and increase audiovisual preservation education capacity in Library and Information Science graduate programs around the country.
Over the summer semester of this year, each fellow will inventory, digitize, and catalog a small collection of audiovisual media; generate technical and preservation metadata; and process the digital files for ingest into the American Archive of Public Broadcasting. The fellows will collaborate with a faculty advisor at their university to complete a handbook which was drafted by the first Fellows, and develop a training workshop for fellow students in the autumn semester. The fellowship will also support a digitization station at each university for the use by the fellows and future students enrolled at the universities.
Please welcome the members of our Summer 2018 PBPF cohort:
Fellow: Laura Haygood
Program: University of Oklahoma
Host Organization: Oklahoma Educational Television Authority
Host Mentor: Janette Thornbrue, Vice President of Operations, Oklahoma Educational Television Authority
Faculty Advisor:Susan Burke, Interim Director and Associate Professor, School of Library and Information Studies
Local Mentor: Lisa Henry, Curator/Archivist, Political Communication Center, Julian P. Kantor Political Commercial Archive
Laura Haygood is a graduate student in the University of Oklahoma’s Master of Library and Information Studies Program. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in History, and she has a background in instrumental music. She works as a Graduate Research Assistant in the Government Documents collection at OU’s Bizzell Library. Laura has volunteered her time at the Moore-Lindsay Historical House Museum, where she wrote an NEH Preservation Grant, as well as at her local public library and local school library. She will complete her MLIS in May 2019. Laura hopes to use this experience digitizing and preserving audiovisual materials to preserve oral histories in the future. Upon completion of her degree, she plans to seek employment in an archive or academic library. Wherever she ends up, Laura’s overarching professional goal is to connect people with the resources they need.
Fellow: Riley Eren Cox
Program: Clayton State University
Host Organization: Georgia Public Broadcasting
Host Mentor: Ellen Reinhardt, Radio Program Director, Georgia Public Broadcasting
Faculty Advisor: Josh Kitchens, Director, Master of Archival Studies Program
Local Mentor: Kathy Christensen, former VP of News, Archives and Research at CNN
Riley graduated from SUNY Fredonia in May 2017 with xir bachelor’s in History, minors in Anthropology and Museum Studies. After interning at the Chautauqua Institution for a season in 2015, xe decided to pursue a career in archives. Riley is currently enrolled in Clayton State University’s Master of Archival Studies program. Xe will be ending xir time of employment at the Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archive, and Rare Book Library at Emory University this summer and is excited to see where this fellowship takes xir.
Fellow: Steve Wilcer
Program: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Host Organization: WUNC
Host Mentor: Keith Weston, Web Producer and Back Porch Music Host, WUNC
Faculty Advisor: Helen Tibbo, Alumni Distinguished Professor, SILS
Local Mentor: Erica Titkemeyer, Project Director/AV Conservator, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Steve Wilcer is a graduate student in the School of Information and Library Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with a current focus in academic libraries and archives. He obtained his undergraduate degree in Music Performance and Composition at Western Illinois University in Macomb, Illinois and his first master’s degree in Musicology from the Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio. His multifaceted background in music, research, and archival resources led him to explore and pursue library science and preservation, especially regarding audiovisual materials. In addition to music, he is also interested in history, literature, film, and electronic gaming.
Fellow: Tanya Yule
Program: San Jose State University
Host Organization: Center for Asian American Media in collaboration with the Bay Area Video Coalition
Host Mentor: James Ott, Director of Finance and Administration, Center for Asian-American Media
Faculty Advisor: Alyce Scott, Lecturer, School of Information
Local Mentor: Jackie Jay, Preservation Technician, Bay Area Video Coalition
Tanya Yule is a current MLIS candidate at San José State University, focusing on archives and photography preservation; she received her BFA in photography from the San Francisco Art Institute, with a background in traditional darkroom methods, and photomechanical printing. Tanya is an intern at the Hoover Institution Archives at Stanford University, and resides in San Francisco with her husband and adorable dog Otto.
Fellow: Eric Saxon
Program: University of Missouri
Host Organization: KOPN Community Radio
Host Mentor: Jacqueline Casteel, KOPN Community Radio
Faculty Advisor: Sarah Buchanan, Assistant Professor, Library and Information Science
Local Mentor: James Hone, Digital Archivist, University Libraries, Washington University in St. Louis
Eric Saxon is a graduate student in the School of Information Science and Learning Technologies at the University of Missouri – Columbia, where he is specializing in archives. His archival research/building interests include anything in danger of being forgotten by the collective memory, a predilection that has led to digital preservation efforts focusing on community centers, an outsider artist, and a WWII Monuments Man. Eric holds a master’s degree in art history and graduate certificate in digital humanities from the University of Nebraska, and a bachelor’s degree in American studies from Stanford University.
Follow along on their digitization journeys by searching #aapbpf!
The Freedom Riders Interview Collection contains 124 raw interviews from the American Experience documentary of the same name. The film documents the six-month period from May to November 1961, when white and black activists rode together on buses across the American South to protest the continued segregation of public buses and transportation facilities. Risking attack from white mobs and arrest by local police, the documentary chronicles the reality of the Freedom Riders’ experiences and success at calling attention to southern indifference to federal law and demanding enforcement of integrated interstate bus travel. The Freedom Riders interviews were conducted with activists and journalists who took part in the Freedom Rides, including John Lewis, a key player in the Civil Rights Movement and a member of the House of Representatives; Diane Nash, a coordinator for Freedom Riders in Nashville; Moses Newson, a journalist who covered the first Freedom Ride; John Seigenthaler, a Special Assistant to Robert F. Kennedy; and Genevieve Hughes Houghton, Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) field secretary on their Freedom Ride. Subjects discussed include the Supreme Court, the American South, Jim Crow, the Ku Klux Klan, violence, racism, segregation, CORE, and the Civil Rights Movement.
The Murder of Emmett Till Interviews Collection is made up of 40 raw interviews from the award-winning 2003 American Experience documentary, The Murder of Emmett Till. The film, which chronicles the story of Emmett Till, a 14-year-old who was murdered in 1955 after being accused of whistling at a white woman, follows Till’s life and transformation into an icon of the Civil Rights Movement. The Murder of Emmett Till interviews paint a picture of the Jim Crow South, the Mississippi community in which the murder took place, and contain intimate recollections by those who knew Emmett Till. Guests include family and friends of Emmett Till, including Mamie Till Mobley, Emmett Till’s mother and Civil Rights activist; and Wheeler Parker, Emmett Till’s cousin; as well as journalists, politicians, and witnesses, like Ernest Withers, a photographer known for his photos of the segregated South; Willie Reed, a witness who testified against Emmett Till’s murderers; and David Jordan, a Senator from Mississippi. Topics include segregation, Jim Crow, lynching and violence, the American judicial system, journalism, the American South, and the Civil Rights Movement.
The John Brown’s Holy War Interview Collection is comprised of 41 raw interviews conducted in 2000 for the American Experience film of the same name. The interviews examined the enigmatic life, history, myth, and legacy of abolitionist John Brown, one of the most controversial figures in American history. John Brown’s Holy War outlines John Brown’s life, role in the abolition movement, unsuccessful raid on the Harpers Ferry federal armory, death, and subsequent entry into American lore as both villain and martyr during the American Civil War. Interviews were conducted with historians, authors, and educators, including James Horton, Professor of American Studies and History at George Washington University; Paul Finkelman, historian of American law; Margaret Washington, historian and Professor of History at Cornell University; and Russell Banks, novelist. Interviews feature a range of topics, including abolition, philosophy, enslavement, race, Christianity, economics, mental health, journalism, the Dred Scott Decision, Frederick Douglass, Pre-Civil War American politics, the Harpers Ferry attack, and the American Civil War.
The Jubilee Singers Interviews Collection includes 19 raw interviews conducted in 2000 for the American Experience documentary Jubilee Singers: Sacrifice and Glory. The film focused on the early years of the Fisk Jubilee Singers, an ensemble of students from Fisk University in Tennessee who created the a cappella group in 1871 in an effort to raise funds for the financially-struggling school. The original Fisk Jubilee Singers, largely made up of former slaves, toured around the United States, and, later, Europe, and were known for their performances of spirituals, which they are partially credited with preserving and introducing to a wider audience. Interviews were conducted with musicologists and historians, including John Hope Franklin, historian and recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom; Toni Anderson, Music Historian; Horace Clarence Boyer, musicologist and noted scholar of African-American gospel music; and Reavis L. Mitchell, Professor of History at Fisk University. Topics include spirituals and music, slavery, racism, religion, segregation, the American Civil War, and higher education, particularly historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs), and Fisk University.
The Africans in America Interviews Collection is made up of 53 raw interviews from the award-winning, four-part documentary of the same name, which aired on PBS in 1998. The documentary, the first to fully examine the history of slavery in the United States, focused on the experiences of African people and their transformation of America, beginning with 16th-century enslavement on Africa’s Gold Coast and ending on the eve of the American Civil War in 1861. The interviews offer an in-depth examination of the social, economic, and intellectual foundations of slavery and the ways in which African people changed the United States. Guests include descendants of slaves and slave-owners, authors, professors, historians, and statesmen, including Colin Powell, retired four-star general and the first African American on the Joint Chiefs of Staff; Karen Hughes White, a descendant of Thomas Jefferson and founder of the Afro-American Historical Association of Fauquier County; Catherine Acholonu, a Nigerian author and Associate Professor of English Literature, Awuku College of Education; and Jeffrey Leath, Pastor of Mother Bethel A.M.E. Church, Philadelphia. Topics covered include Christianity and English Protestantism, George Washington, Toussaint Louverture, the American Revolution, Nat Turner’s Rebellion, gender conventions, racism, violence, economics, family, and enslavement.
