GSLIS doctoral student Noah Lenstra will serve on the concluding panel at the Midwest Archives Conference (MAC) Fall Symposium, which will take place September 12 and 13 at the Illini Union. The theme of the symposium is “Oral History, Archives, and Innovation.”
Lenstra will present his work as the project director of eBlack Champaign-Urbana, a collaborative program focused on creating a digital library of historical and cultural material, blogs, videos, and other media of the African-American community in Champaign-Urbana. For two years, Lenstra guided local high school students in implementing oral history projects with local African-American senior citizens. These projects involved partnerships with local businesses, community groups, churches, and community centers. The eBlackCU project worked with local archives, libraries, and museums to aggregate these oral histories into a single website.
Lenstra will focus his MAC comments on these projects, with a particular focus on what it means to develop, implement, and preserve community-based oral history projects in the digital age.
“The audience of 150 archivists from across the Midwest will, I hope, leave the panel with an enriched understanding of the work involved in this type of project, the benefits of moving their archives in this direction, and the collaborations required to bring this type of work to fruition,” says Lenstra.
Joining Lenstra in the panel discussion, titled "Local Oral History Projects Showcase," will be GSLIS alumni Joanne Kaczmarek (MS '00) and Ellen Swain (MS '95). The symposium itself will examine best practices to collect, curate, and disseminate oral histories in a digital age and how technologies and tools can be used to capture and preserve history. The program and link to registration is available on the MAC website.