Twenty historically Black colleges and universities came together this summer in Atlanta for one unique initiative to bring their histories alive: the Emory Center for Digital Scholarship/HBCU Summer Institute for Digital Scholarship, in collaboration with the HBCU Library Alliance.
“These colleges are a really important part of the educational system of the United States that often gets overlooked,” says Sarah Melton, digital projects coordinator at the Emory Center for Digital Scholarship (ECDS). “It was really a privilege to work with these librarians and learn more of where they were coming from.”
As the capstone project of a multiyear grant by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the initiative was designed as an outward-facing program to finish off a set of internal projects that Emory had already completed on campus.
“We were interested in how digital humanities and digital libraries might come together in certain ways. And we were particularly interested in training librarians to really be able to make use of technologies that we have available on campus,” she says.
“The tools that we’re using can get really complex and aren’t always intuitive, even when you have a background in technology,” explains Melton. “So it was really great to … guide them and … spend a whole week learning all about it. I learned a ton, and I use (the tools) every day.”
The HBCU Library Alliance in Atlanta helped Emory staff identify the key needs schools are facing and craft an application for admittance to the program.
When it came to the application, the alliance was looking at whether the applicants’ proposals linked to the school’s mission and advanced the library’s priorities in digital scholarship, and whether the training could be replicated to a broader audience.
