Project Grant Proposal
Digitization, Identification, Description, and Access to the Jackson Davis Collection in the Special Collections Department of the University of Virginia Library
Proposal | Significance | Impact | Plan of Work | Project Staff
Project Director:
Michael Plunkett
Director of Special Collections
University of Virginia Library
Alderman Library
University of Virginia
Charlottesville, Virginia 22903-2498
(804) 924-3025
Requested Funding:
$241,306
Project Period:
December 1, 1998 – November 31, 2000
Project Summary
The Special Collections Department of the University of Virginia Library proposes to digitize, identify, arrange, describe and conserve the ca. 4,500 photographs of African-American educational scenes in the southern United States taken by Jackson Davis during the period 1915-1930 when he was affiliated with the General Education Board in New York, New York. Davis served as a field agent, as the board’s general field agent, as associate director in 1933 and as vice-president and director in 1946.
The Jackson Davis project will provide a model for the integration of state-of-the-art, standards compliant information technology and scholarly research to make unique library resources more widely available and comprehensible, while at the same time preserving rare and fragile physical artifacts. The original photographic negatives (glass and celluloid) will be digitized and presented in a searchable database that will be freely accessible through the World Wide Web. In addition, each image will be researched to identify, where possible, individuals, locations, events and relevant historical and contextual information; this data will be incorporated into the Web-accessible database. The original photographs (negatives and positive prints) will be professionally repaired when needed and housed in appropriate conservation enclosures. Finally, the collection will be described in detail and the descriptive guide tagged according to Encoded Archival Description standards and added to the Library’s existing database of full-text searchable finding aids on the World Wide Web.
The work of the project will be done in-house by two grant-funded staff members and student assistants, under the guidance of the Director of Special Collections and with day to day supervision by the Associate Director of Special Collections. Coordination and advice will be provided by the Assistant Director of the Special Collections Digital Center and the Technical Services Assistant for manuscripts processing . Research will be coordinated by the director and assistant director of the Carter G. Woodson Institute of Afro-American and African Studies.
Significance of the Materials
Jackson Davis was born in Cumberland County, Virginia, on September 25, 1882, the son of William Anderson and Sally Wyatt (Guy) Davis. He attended the public schools of Richmond, Virginia, and received his B. A. from the College of William and Mary in 1902 and his M. A. from Columbia University in 1908. Following graduation from William and Mary he was the principal of the public schools of Williamsburg, Virginia. He was assistant secretary of the Roanoke, Virginia YMCA from 1903-1904, was principal of the public schools of Marion, Virginia from 1904-1905, and was superintendent of schools in Henrico County, Virginia from 1905-1909. From 1909-1910 he was a member of the state board of examiners and inspectors of the Virginia State Board of Education, and from 1910-1915 he was state agent for African-American rural schools for the Virginia State Department of Education. In 1915 he became a field agent for the General Education Board in New York, which was incorporated in 1903 to administer the gifts of John D. Rockefeller for the advancement of white and African-American education. In 1917 Davis was transferred to New York City as the board’s general field agent, in which capacity he remained until 1929 when he was made assistant director. He became associate director in 1933 and vice-president and director in 1946.
Throughout his career Davis specialized in Southern education, interracial problems, and education in the Belgian Congo and Liberia. In 1935 he went to Africa as a Carnegie visitor, and in 1944 went again as head of a group sent by the Foreign Missions Conference of North America, the British Conference of Missions, and the Phelps-Stokes Fund. Davis was also a trustee of the Phelps-Stokes Fund, an organization devoted to African-American education and race relations both in America and in Africa. He became vice-president of the fund in 1940, and succeeded Anson Phelps Stokes as president in 1946. At the time of his death he was president of the board of trustees of Booker T. Washington Institute in Liberia, president of the New York State Colonization Society, and a member of the Commission on Interracial Cooperation and of the Advisory Committee on Education in Liberia. He served as a member of the board of visitors of the College of William and Mary during 1913-1920 and as secretary of the International Education Board from 1923-1938. Davis and Margaret Wrong co-authored Africa Advancing in 1946, a book providing the results of the survey made in 1944.
During the years of Davis’s association with the General Education Board, its work was concentrated on education in the Southern states. His influence on behalf of better relations and understanding between whites and African-Americans and his pioneer work in promoting regional centers of education in the South were of immense significance. Davis made numerous trips throughout the South in his capacity as field agent for the Board to study educational issues. He frequently documented these trips by taking photographs of individuals, groups, buildings, and scenes relating to the education of African-Americans. During the early twentieth century education became the primary focus of Jim Crow laws throughout the South. Schooling increasingly became a measure of social advancement as more students progressed beyond the eighth grade. White politicians and educators espoused the belief that African-Americans did not need education beyond primary school. These photographs and papers present stark evidence of that belief. The surviving photographic prints and negatives in the Special Collections Department are a unique visual record of a wide cross-section of African-American life during the early Jim Crow years. In many instances these photographs are the only surviving visual record of some African-American educational institutions. The Jackson Davis Project will make these unique photographs freely available to scholars and students throughout the world; the database will be a valuable research tool for university and college faculty members and students, advanced high school students studying African-American history, genealogists preparing family research, and other independent researchers interested in the historical era. Examples of these photographs are included as Appendix A. A folder listing of the collection is attached as Appendix B.
National Impact of the Project
The University of Virginia Library is one of the major research libraries in the United States and is a world leader in developing and delivering digital library collections through its four electronic centers. The Library is ranked 23rd in the Association of Research Libraries. The Special Collections Department of the University of Virginia Library administers over 237,000 rare books, 3,500 maps, 4,000 broadsides, 133,960 photographs and prints, 9,600 reels of microfilm, nearly 90,000 microfiche, and substantial holdings of audio recordings, motion picture films, and ephemera in addition to the manuscripts holdings of over 10.2 million items (filling nearly 17,000 linear feet) and the University Archives of over 2.5 million items. Foremost among its collections of international repute are the Tracy W. McGregor Library of American History, the Clifton Waller Barrett Library of American Literature, the William Faulkner Collections, the Douglas H. Gordon Collection of French Books of the sixteenth to nineteenth century, the Jorge Luis Borges Collection, and the Virginiana collections, including the papers and architectural drawings of Thomas Jefferson.
The Special Collections Department has long emphasized the collecting of African-American materials and is represented by 478 collections in Afro-American Sources in Virginia: A Guide to Manuscripts by Michael Plunkett published in 1990 by the University Press of Virginia. Many of the Department’s manuscripts collections with significant African-American content have been reproduced in the microfilm publication Records of Ante-bellum Southern Plantations from the Revolution Through the Civil War. Series E, Selections from the University of Virginia Library. Among more recent acquisitions relating to African-American history are the papers of the Southern Elections Fund, ca. 1968-75, including professional and personal correspondence of Julian Bond, the Fund’s chairman. Increasingly, faculty and graduate students in Southern History, Afro-American Studies and American Studies assign specific manuscripts collections for use by their classes. Faculty and Special Collections staff jointly select collections that students use in the Special Collections Department, interpreting them according to class assignments. Further evidence of the collections’ contribution to scholarship is represented by the list of monographs in Appendix D which are based wholly or substantially on materials in the Special Collections Department.
The University of Virginia Library proposes to increase awareness and use of the Jackson Davis Collection, by employing a multi-stage process of digitizing the photographs; identifying the photographs through original research; building a searchable World Wide Web-accessible database that incorporates the digital images and data from original research; preserving and organizing the original physical artifacts; constructing a detailed finding aid using the accepted national standard of Encoded Archival Description (EAD); and, finally, cataloging the photographs as a collection using USMARC. This project will continue the effort toward the Department’s goal of making its unique primary materials available to the widest possible audience. At the conclusion of the project, the image database will be freely available on the World Wide Web. Thus, students and faculty both at the University of Virginia and other universities and colleges throughout the United States and the world will be able to use the images in research and course work from their homes and offices. Indeed, the database will be a valuable research tool for advanced high school students studying African-American history, genealogists preparing family research, and other independent researchers interested in the historical era. The Jackson Davis Project will provide a model for other research libraries to make unique materials widely accessible by integrating primary resources with scholarly research in a use-neutral format constructed with state-of-the-art library and information technology. This proposal builds on expertise acquired by the Special Collections Department in three recent grant-funded projects.
The recently-completed American Heritage Project involved the University of California, Berkeley, Stanford University, Duke University, and the University of Virginia in a project funded in part by the National Endowment for the Humanities. The American Heritage Project built a shared database of Encoded Archival Description (EAD) tagged finding aids describing and providing access to collections documenting American history and culture. The primary goal of this project was the development of a demonstration system, which provided a test bed to evaluate both the effectiveness of the prototype’s “virtual archive” in providing access to distributed digital library resources, and the feasibility of the decentralized “real world” production methods that the project used to create it. The Project also developed effective mechanisms to link and to integrate related collections contributed by different institutions so that they can be navigated as if they were part of a single, virtual collection. As its contribution to the Project, the University of Virginia’s Special Collection Department tagged and delivered over 1,200 of its manuscripts finding aids to the union database. This project is accessible online at http://vaheritage.org/. A sample finding aid is attached as ee Appendix E.
The ongoing Early American Fiction Project began in 1996 when the University of Virginia Library received a grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to digitize and make available on the World Wide Web 560 volumes (440 titles) of early American fiction (1789-1850) by 81 authors, and to study the economic aspects of creating and disseminating electronic versions of rare books. The texts chosen for the project include works by James Fenimore Cooper, Edgar Allan Poe, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Charles Brockden Brown, and Lydia Maria Child, but also by lesser-read novelists such as Delia Salter Bacon, Susan Fenimore Cooper, Nathaniel Parker Willis, and Timothy Flint. Two versions of each text will be made available: a TEI-conformant SGML-tagged text and color images of the pages of the first editions–a total of 125,000 pages. The project will conclude in 1999 with an economic study of usage of the electronic texts compared with usage of the original rare books.
The Special Collections Department recently completed a project funded by local and regional granting agencies to digitize the photographic archive of the Charlottesville, Virginia area photographer Rufus W. Holsinger. The Holsinger Studio Collection constitutes a unique photographic record of life in Charlottesville and Albemarle County, Virginia, from before the turn of the century through World War I. The collection consists of 9,000 dry-plate glass negatives and 500 celluloid negatives. Approximately two-thirds of the collection are studio portraits, and among these are over 500 photographs of African American citizens of Charlottesville and the surrounding area. The complete project is available online at http://small.library.virginia.edu/collections/featured/the-holsinger-studio-collection/. Sample images and data records are attached as Appendix F. The Holsinger Studio Collection project has received national and international attention and has served as a model for other developing image database projects. The Carter G. Woodson Institute of Afro-American and African Studies at the University of Virginia has integrated the database into its course structure and is actively working on a project to identify individual African Americans represented in the database and provide a social and historical context for the images. The Institute has received a grant from the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities to mount an interactive exhibit and develop an interpretive catalog of African American images from the database.
The commitment of the University of Virginia to the growth, support and use of the Library’s collections of rare books and manuscripts is indicated in its major planning document for the decade (Plan for the Year 2000). The goal states: “The University endeavors to construct a special collections library that will enhance the institution’s role as a preeminent national center for the study of history and literature.” The University of Virginia has committed to the construction of the Albert H. Small Special Collections Library, combining climate-controlled storage, cutting-edge electronic technologies, and well-designed space for reading, teaching, and exhibits. Preliminary plans for the new building also call for state-of-the-art security systems, compact shelving, and a conservation laboratory. This commitment guarantees that the Special Collections Department will be able to maintain and expand its unique and world-renowned collections.
The Project’s Plan of Work
A. Preparation for the Project
Work areas and furnishings from previous projects are available and will be ready for immediate use upon the start of this grant. The scope of this project prescribes a need for additional equipment not already in place: 2 flatbed scanners with transparency adapters; 2 Macintosh workstations and monitors; 1 4X CD recordable drive and Adobe Photoshop and Debabelizer software.
The project supervisor will hire the project staff (project coordinator, researcher and student assistants) and have them ready to start at the beginning of the grant period. The project coordinator and student assistants will be hired for the full two years of the grant. The researcher will be hired for the first year of the grant only. Tools such as written procedures, training plans, and database structures can be adapted from previous similar project for this project by the project director and supervisor.
The project supervisor will provide orientation for the project coordinator who will train the student assistants. The researcher will work with staff from the Carter G. Woodson Institute of Afro American and African Studies to develop the methodology and outline of the research. Training will be accomplished rapidly and the project staff will be able to reach a high level of productivity early in the grant period. Evaluation of the project will take place at least monthly during the grant period, and more often if so determined by the project supervisor. The project supervisor and project coordinator will provide general supervision for the duration of the grant.
B. Workflow
1. Photographic prints.
The project supervisor will ensure that student assistants start immediately to identify the project photographic negatives and arrange to have positive copies made so that the researcher can begin work on identification immediately.
1. Digital imaging
The procedure for capturing and labeling the images will follow closely the procedure established with our Holsinger project. First generation digital images will be captured directly from the original photographic negatives. Each negative will be assigned a unique number that will serve as its identifier throughout the process. The celluloid negatives will be scanned on a flatbed scanner with a transparency adapter; the glass-plate negatives will be scanned using the Special Collections Digital Center’s Kontron Ultra High Resolution Digital Color Camera, model ProgRes 3012. In order to capture as much digital information as possible, the negatives will be scanned in full color at a resolution of 600 dots per inch (dpi) and saved as uncompressed Tagged Image File Format images (TIFF). These large TIFF files will then be written to recordable CD. Saving the images to CD allows us to maintain high resolution files offline for later patron use; the images on CD will be batch-processed using Debabelizer to create two sets of presentation images. In the first batch process, the images will be inverted from negative to positive and converted from color to grayscale. File resolution will be reduced to 72 dpi. The images will be reduced to standard pixel dimensions and will then be saved using the Joint Photographic Experts Group (JPEG) compression, using maximum quality and minimum data loss settings. When the first batch process is complete, each image will be opened in Adobe Photoshop and the “Adjust Levels” tool will be used to adjust brightness, darkness and contrast on each image. The images will be re-saved. The project coordinator will spot-check each batch to ensure quality standards. The second Debabelizer batch job will reduce the large JPEG images to a smaller standard pixel dimension. These new thumbnail images will be saved as JPEG images, using maximum quality and minimum data loss settings. Both sets of images will be stored on one of the Library’s IBM RS-6000 servers.
2. Textual Data
The textual data will be derived from original sources in Davis’s papers when available and from the research data found as a function of the project. The data will include all available information such as name of individuals, groups or buildings, location of image, date of image, and other important historical and contextual information. The data will be formatted into a structured relational database which will be linked to the online versions of the digital images. All information in the database will be full-text searchable and will be delivered over the World Wide Web using technology and software currently in place in the Library.
3. Research
The Carter G. Woodson Institute for Afro-American and African Studies, an interdisciplinary teaching and research center, will coordinate research on the Jackson Davis Project as part of a larger effort to investigate the social and cultural history of African Americans in the Jim Crow South. The Woodson Institute can provide the scholarly resources necessary to investigate the Jackson Davis collection and interpret its significance for a variety of public audiences. The Institute has worked closely with the Special Collections Department in the development of the Holsinger Studio Collection as an on-line resource for teaching and research. In 1997, the Institute offered an interdisciplinary seminar, “Photoethnography and Archival Research,” which focused on the African American images in the Holsinger Studio Collection. Students visited local archives and learned how to “read” photographs as historical texts and cultural artifacts. In 1998, the Woodson Institute will offer a similar seminar, “Digital History and the Jim Crow South, 1900-1932,” using the Holsinger Studio Collection, the Jackson Davis Collection, and other primary sources from the Special Collections Department. Finally, the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities has awarded the Woodson Institute a $10,600 grant to mount an interactive exhibit and develop an interpretive catalog of selected images from the Holsinger Studio Collection. The theme of the exhibit is “History, Race, and the Value of Place in Central Virginia, 1900 1925.” The Institute will draw upon the technological resources, databases, bibliographies, and research methodologies developed as part of these earlier research projects while expanding the focus geographically, temporally, and thematically.
Staff of the Woodson Institute will work with the researcher to develop a detailed research methodology during the first month of the grant period. This will include identifying potential sources of information about the photographs, lists of characteristics to investigate (e.g. location, institution, personal name, etc.), and a timetable for completing sections of the research. To identify the content and context of the photographs, the research will work with a complete set of photographic prints. The researcher will work with the Woodson Institute’s director and assistant director to identify those institutions–historically black colleges and universities, state departments of archives and history, state libraries, historical societies, museums, churches, etc.–that hold primary sources pertinent to the African American educational scenes in the Davis Collection. For example, to locate detailed information about a school in Middlesex County, Virginia, circa 1913, the researcher might first conduct a keyword search on the World Wide Web-based First Search catalog (which includes manuscript holdings), consult Michael Plunkett’s online guide to Afro-American resources in Virginia, and initiate electronic mail correspondence with local and regional archivists. To provide an interpretive context for the educational scenes, the researcher might consult William A. Link’s A Hard Country and a Lonely Place: Schooling, Society, and Reform in Rural Virginia, 1870-1920; James Leloudis’s Schooling the New South: Pedagogy, Self, and Society in North Carolina, 1880-1920; and John H. Stanfield’s Philanthropy and Jim Crow in American Social Science. There is also an extensive literature on African Americans and photography in the Jim Crow era. After extensive preliminary investigation, the development of a detailed research plan, and study of Davis’s papers in the Special Collections Department, the researcher will visit selected archives throughout the region. The requested travel funding assumes a need for the researcher to travel between 45 and 50 days of the grant period. Funding will cover travel (generally by car), lodging, meals, and any photoduplication of materials from other institutions.
4. Preservation, Housing and Final Description
As the negatives are digitized, they and the original photographic prints will be sent to a professional conservator for long term preservation measures. The final stage of the project will involve a complete rearrangement of the physical artifacts in the collection, based on the improved understanding of the materials gained from the work of the researcher. A detailed finding aid to the collection will be produced. This finding aid will be tagged fully with the expertise developed through our participation in the EAD Project. Finally the collection will be fully cataloged using the Anglo American Cataloging Rules, 2nd ed. (AACR2) revised, Library of Congress Rule Interpretations (LCRI) and Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH). The bibliographic record will be tape loaded into OCLC and RLIN.
C. Schedule of Completion
1. December 1998 through January 1999
Project equipment will be purchased. Student assistants will be hired and trained, and will begin preparing and submitting negatives for photographic reproduction; printing of the negatives will be completed by January 31, 1999. Project coordinator and researcher will be hired and trained. Both will prepare detailed work plans, including measurable monthly progress goals. As original negatives are printed, the project supervisor will begin the process of scanning negatives. The researcher will consult with staff from the Carter G. Woodson Institute of Afro-American and African Studies on the research methodology and begin work to identify content of images using Jackson Davis’s papers at the University of Virginia Library. Project supervisor will evaluate workplans and initial workflow with project coordinator. Project supervisor and project coordinator will prepare and disseminate a request for proposals to selected preservation and conservation agencies.
2. February 1999 through May 1999
Project coordinator and student assistants will continue to scan negatives. Project coordinator will develop standards for batch and individual processing of images and prepare database structure. Researcher will complete research in the U.Va. Jackson Davis papers, enter relevant data in the database, and will identify other institutions that hold relevant materials. Project supervisor will evaluate progress on scanning and research with project coordinator. Project supervisor and project coordinator will review bids for preservation and conservation services, will award contract, and will deliver the first of four shipments of original negatives and photographs to the selected conservator.
3. June 1999 through August 1999
Project coordinator and student assistants will continue to scan negatives and will begin batch and individual processing of images. Project coordinator will consult with project supervisor on issues of web presentation, search engine and feedback mechanisms. Project supervisor and project coordinator will receive the first shipment of materials from the conservator and evaluate. Second shipment will be sent to conservator. Researcher will begin travel to and data collection at other institutions; research data will be entered into a copy of the database on a laptop computer. Project supervisor will evaluate progress on scanning and research with project coordinator.
4. September 1999 through October 1999
Researcher will complete travel and data collection at other institutions. Researcher will begin preparation of final narrative. Project coordinator and student assistants will continue to scan negatives and will continue batch and individual processing of images; by September 30, 1999 half of the photographic negatives (2,250) will be scanned and batch processed. Project coordinator will continue work on issues of web presentation, search engine and feedback mechanisms. Project supervisor will evaluate progress on scanning and research with project coordinator. Project supervisor will consult with project coordinator, researcher and project advisor on the methodology for reprocessing and description of physical artifacts.
5. November 1999 through December 1999
Researcher will complete final narrative about the significance of the collection and will complete review and arrangement of the descriptive data. Project coordinator and student assistants will continue to scan negatives and will continue batch and individual processing of images. Project supervisor and project coordinator will receive the second shipment of materials from the conservator and evaluate. Third shipment will be sent to conservator. Project coordinator and project advisor will begin arrangement and description of physical artifacts. Project coordinator will finalize web presentation and search engine issues. Project supervisor will evaluate progress on scanning and web presentation issues with project coordinator.
6. January 2000 through April 2000
Project coordinator and student assistants will continue scanning of negatives and batch and individual processing of images. Project supervisor and project coordinator will receive the third shipment of materials from the conservator and evaluate. Fourth and final shipment will be sent to conservator. Project coordinator and project advisor will continue arrangement and description of physical artifacts and will begin first draft of a comprehensive guide to the collection.
7. May 2000 through August 2000
Project coordinator and student assistants will complete scanning of negatives and batch and individual processing of images; by May 31, 1999 the photographic negatives will be scanned and batch processed. Project supervisor and project coordinator will receive the fourth and final shipment of materials from the conservator and evaluate. Project coordinator and project advisor will continue arrangement and description of physical artifacts. Project director, project supervisor and project coordinator will begin developing press releases and announcements and will prepare proposals for presentations and papers to scholarly journals and conferences. Project coordinator will begin preparations for final report on the project.
8. September 2000 through November 2000
Project coordinator and project supervisor will complete website and search engine for the project, in consultation with Library UNIX programmer. Project coordinator and project advisor will complete arrangement and description of physical artifacts and will complete written guide to the collection; project supervisor and project coordinator will tag guide following EAD guidelines. Project coordinator and project supervisor will prepare press releases for distribution. Project coordinator and student assistants will test website and search engine, and carry out spot-checking for quality assurance. By November 30, 1999, the complete database will be online and available to the public.
IV. Dissemination and Evaluation
The Jackson Davis Project will be evaluated both as a separate project and as an important component of the University of Virginia Library’s emerging digital library. A detailed report will be submitted to the Institute of Museum and Library Services and will be made publicly available as part of the project’s website.
The prototype Jackson Davis Project will be freely disseminated throughout the world on the Internet. It will be demonstrated at exhibitions and presentations to at least eight major professional conferences and meetings, for example, the American Library Association Annual Meeting (ALA); the Association for the Study of African American Life and History; the Rare Books and Manuscripts Section of the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL RBMS pre-conference); the Organization of American Historians; the Southern Historical Association; the Society of American Archivists Annual Meeting (SAA); the Virginia Library Association Annual Conference (VLA); the Mid-Atlantic Regional Archives Conference (MARAC).
Papers will be submitted to one or more of the following journals: The American Archivist, LITA’s Information Technology and Libraries, Academic and Library Computing, the Journal of Southern History, Visual Anthropology, Smithsonian,Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, and Southern Cultures. The Library and the Carter G. Woodson Institute will publicize the results of the project through news releases, campus publications, electronic bulletin board announcements (for example, Archives, Exlibris, Va-Hist, Diglib listservs) and other announcements targeting researchers outside of Virginia.
The Special Collections Department and the Carter G. Woodson Institute have a considerable stake in making sure the research in this project is successfully carried out and that its results are followed up with further research and development. The Library and the Carter G. Woodson Institute will actively seek classroom and research uses for the Jackson Davis project both within and beyond the University of Virginia; for example, the project will be highlighted at the internationally known Rare Book School held annually at the University of Virginia Library. The Library and the Carter G. Woodson Institute will work towards national acceptance of the Jackson Davis Project as a model for other research libraries to make unique materials widely accessible by integrating primary resources with scholarly research in a use-neutral format constructed with state-of-the-art library and information technology.
The Project’s Staff
A. Library personnel contributing time to the project:
Project Director: Michael Plunkett, Director of Special Collections
Mr. Plunkett will devote 5% of his time for the purpose of ensuring that the policies and procedures established for the project are compatible with other Department activities. Mr. Plunkett has an M.A. degree in History from Old Dominion University and an M.L.S. from the Catholic University of America. He has been Director of Special Collections since January 1994, Curator of Manuscripts and University Archivist since November 1987 and was Associate Curator of Manuscripts from 1984 to 1987. He joined the University of Virginia Library as Public Services Archivist in 1971 and was promoted to Assistant Curator of Manuscripts in 1975. He has been active in the Mid-Atlantic Regional Archivists Conference since 1972.
Project Supervisor: Edward Gaynor, Associate Director of Special Collections and Director of Special Collections Digital Center
Mr. Gaynor will devote 10% of his time for the purpose of hiring and training the grant staff and coordinating the digital and descriptive efforts. Mr. Gaynor has an M.L.S. degree from the University of South Carolina and since January 1996 has served as Associate Director of Special Collections and Director of the Special Collections Digital Center. From January 1989 through December 1995 he served as the Head of Original Cataloging, University of Virginia Library. From June 1984 through December 1988, he served as Principal Cataloger at the Auburn University Libraries.
Project Advisor: Felicia Johnson, Assistant Director, Special Collections Digital Center
Ms. Johnson will devote 10% of her time to the project for coordinating the digital issues involved with the image scanning. Since January 1996 she has served as Assistant Director of the Special Collections Digital Center.
Project Advisor: Robin Wear, Technical Services Assistant
Ms. Wear will devote 10% of her time to the project for the purposes of coordinating the processing of the collection and the production of the finding aid.
Project Advisor: Programmer/Analyst
The programmer/analyst will devote 15% of his time to the project for the purposes of assisting the project coordinator with web design and search engine implementation. This position is currently vacant, but applicants are being interviewed.