CLIR Funds Documentation of "Hidden" Collections

14 institutions will catalog and register collections

Lynn Blumenstein -- Library Journal, 12/03/2009

• "Hidden" collections to be processed, registered
• Collections are diverse, multiformatted
• Topics from 18th-century French pamphlets to current-day Los Angeles

CLIR, the Council on Library and Information Resources, has awarded funding to 14 out of 91 proposals to create web-accessible records for "hidden" or uncataloged special collections and archives.

Upon project completion, participants will include their records in the Hidden Collections Registry. The Cataloging Hidden Special Collections and Archives program, funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, was launched in 2008.

The 2009 funded projects
Marquette University Libraries (MUL), Milwaukee, will bring together three collections dealing with 20th century Catholic social activism. They include MUL’s Dorothy Day/Catholic Worker collection; Catholic University of America’s documentation of Catholic Charities, Washington, DC; and the St. Catherine University’s Ade Bethune Collection, which deals with the founding of the Church Community Housing Corporation in Newport County, RI, among many other topics.

The Smithsonian Institution Archives, Washington, DC, will involve cataloging objects dealing with biological field research spanning two centuries. They will focus on several 19th century American expeditions, including the Peary expedition to Greenland (1897) and the Mexican Boundary Survey (1848).

The University of Southern California Libraries will bring together materials dealing with 20th century Los Angeles, including community activism and social movements. Included are materials from the Bunker Hill Redevelopment Project, the Los Angeles Board of Education, the 1939 WPA Household Survey the Gregory Freeman Stone papers relating to the assassination of Robert Kennedy, outtakes from the nightly TV program Ralph Story's L.A. (1964-70), and the Institute for the Study of Homelessness and Poverty archive.

Lehigh University, PA, together with the Moravian Church Archives, will process collections dealing with the Moravian community in Bethlehem, PA, from its founding in 1741 as a religious community to its incorporation as a municipality in 1851. Items range from early architectural drawings to business correspondence.