Activating the Archive Resource List
Compiled by Stephanie Santana for The Design Center at Barnard College July 2021
ORGANIZATIONS
The Archivists Roundtable of Metropolitan New York
Founded in 1979, the Archivists Round Table of Metropolitan New York, Inc. (ART) is a not-for-profit organization representing a diverse group of more than 400 archivists, librarians and records managers in the New York metropolitan area. It is one of the largest local organizations of its kind in the United States with members representing more than 160 repositories.
Association of Black Women Historians
The ABWH constitution outlines four organizational goals: to establish a network among the membership; to promote Black women in the profession; to disseminate information about opportunities in the field; and to make suggestions concerning research topics and repositories.
Letterform Archive was founded by Rob Saunders, a collector of the letter arts for over 40 years, as a place to share his private collection with the public. Letterform Archive opened to visitors in February 2015 and now offers hands-on access to a curated collection of over 75,000 items related to lettering, typography, calligraphy, and graphic design, spanning thousands of years of history.
Founded in 1976, Printed Matter, Inc. is the world’s leading non-profit organization dedicated to the dissemination, understanding and appreciation of artists’ books and related publications.
Society of American Archivists
Founded in 1936, the Society of American Archivists is North America's oldest and largest national professional association dedicated to the needs and interests of archives and archivists. SAA represents more than 6,200 professional archivists employed by governments, universities, businesses, libraries, and historical organizations nationally.
PUBLIC ARCHIVES + COLLECTIONS
The Internet Archive, a 501(c)(3) non-profit, is building a digital library of Internet sites and other cultural artifacts in digital form. Provides free access to researchers, historians, scholars and the general public. Archive.org began in 1996 by archiving the Internet itself, and today they have 25+ years of web history accessible through the Wayback Machine.
Archives on Black Women - A List of Collections
A list of resources on Black women.
The Camille Billops and James V. Hatch Archives
Camille Billops and James V. Hatch donated to Emory University their collection of research materials on African American visual and performing arts. Assembled over the past forty years, this is one of the premier collections of its kind. The Billops-Hatch Archives provides a major resource for research in African American arts and letters of the 20th century.
Cooper Hewitt Design Museum Collection
Explore over 30 centuries of design online, from ancient Roman marble to Pre-Columbian textiles, Renaissance drawings, contemporary 3D-printed chairs, and digital code.
The Freedom Archives is a non-profit educational archive located in San Francisco dedicated to the preservation and dissemination of historical audio, video and print materials documenting progressive movements and culture from the 1960s to the 1990s.
The LGBT Community Center National History Archive
The LGBT Community Center National History Archive is a community-based archive that collects, preserves and makes available to the public the documentation of LGBTQ lives and organizations centered in and around New York.
The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) is the nation's record keeper. Records of legal or historical importance are preserved and made available to the public.
National Museum of African American History and Culture: The Collection
Through The Smithsonian’s Open Access Initiative, images of objects from the NMAAHC collection are now available to view, download, and share through a CC0 license.
The Library of Congress is the largest library in the world, with millions of books, recordings, photographs, newspapers, maps and manuscripts in its collections. The Library is the main research arm of the U.S. Congress and the home of the U.S. Copyright Office.
The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture
The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem, one of The New York Public Library’s renowned research libraries, is a world-leading cultural institution devoted to the research, preservation, and exhibition of materials focused on African American, African Diaspora, and African experiences.
Smithsonian Institution National Collections
The National Collections of the Smithsonian Institution, the world’s largest museum, education and research complex. Many items have been digitized and are available online.
Zora Neale Hurston Digital Archive
Launched in 2006 by Anna Lillios, Mark L. Kamrath, and J.D. Applen, the Zora Neale Hurston Digital Archive has two goals: 1) provide an academic site that will provide a repository of biographical, historical, critical, and other contextual materials related to Hurston's life and work, and 2) make available various teaching resources so that both teachers and students can more fully appreciate the cultural and literary richness of Hurston's numerous writings.
PROJECTS
A Digital Remix of The Rita Keegan Archive Project
An online exhibition highlighting items from the archive of artist, lecturer and archivist Rita Keegan.
www.instagram.com/blackarchives.co
A project founded by Renata Cherlise offering visual curation, archival research and licensing, and creative direction.
A collection of photo booth portraits of Black people from the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s. Compiled by activist, grassroots organizer, and educator Mariame Kaba, with site design by Neta Bomani, a worker who engages in oral history, direct action and social practices.
A project founded by Arianne Edmonds, a descendant of J.L. Edmonds, founder of The Liberator. The Liberator was a Los Angeles-based monthly publication (turned weekly in 1905) that highlighted major local, national and international news, with a special focus on social justice and political advancement within Black communities on the national level.
The People’s Graphic Design Archive
The People’s Graphic Design Archive is a crowd-sourced virtual archive that includes everything from finished projects to process, photos, letters, oral histories, anecdotes, published and unpublished articles, essays, and other supporting material in the form of documents, videos, audio, as well as links to other relevant archives and websites.
Reading Zimbabwe is an independent not-for-profit digital platform founded in 2016. The project was born out of a curiosity for a deeper understanding of the nature and extent of knowledge production, dissemination and use around the subject of 'Zimbabwe.' While this information is available on the internet, it is scattered, as such Reading Zimbabwe is the first archive of its kind, containing book metadata and its derivatives.