archives – Lindsay Ann Davis

I have so much to write about, but I’ll have to start with a fascinating JSTOR webinar I attended about a project to digitize American prison newspapers. The project is led by Reveal Digital, which has been part of ITHAKA since 2012. Their mission is to publish Open Access primary sources from historically excluded groups. Currently, the prison newspaper project is about 45 percent funded, and as the collection is being digitized, only those libraries who have contributed to the fund can access the content via JSTOR. Once the project is fully funded, it will be open access!

Merced College offers courses to students who are incarcerated. These classes are taught in person, but, because of COVID-19, they are correspondence courses this semester. I think this will be a particularly exciting collection for our faculty who teach in the surrounding state prisons and those who teach about mass incarceration on campus.

(If you’re an academic librarian, you may also be interested in the Merced College Library’s correspondence reference service for these students. My colleague Karrie Bullock serves as the lead for this service. It was partially modeled after San Francisco Public Library’s prison reference service. Karrie and I attended a presentation led by SFPL librarians Jeanie Austin and Rachel Kinnon and intern Rosa Hall called “What If Patrons Can’t Access the Internet?: Reference by Mail for Patrons Who Are Incarcerated” during the CLA Conference in 2019, and she got lots of great ideas from the session.)

During the JSTOR webinar I attended, which I discovered was the last of a three-part series, I also learned about the Prison Journalism Project (PJP), which provides an online platform and journalism education to help”incarcerated and incarceration-impacted writers tell stories about their communities.” The original vision was to establish journalism education programs in prisons, but when COVID-19 hit, the founders began an online publication on Medium asking for submissions from those in prison. With the help of the American Prison Writing Archive, they received a substantial number of submissions on a variety of topics. In April, the Prison Journalism Project migrated to their own website where they publish writing and artwork by prisoners, formerly incarcerated people, and friends and family who have been impacted by incarceration.

The organization offers submission guidelines, FAQs, writing prompts, and handouts to guide writers. While these are available online, physical copies are also sent to prisons. Submissions can be emailed or sent through JPay or through the US mail. Stories are scanned and then transcribed and edited by volunteers. (The PJP is currently seeking volunteers to help transcribe or edit stories!) PJP publishes about 10 stories a week. Writers retain copyright of their work, and every writer also gets a portfolio page. On the website, stories are tagged by state and topics. The co-founders are also working to develop a toolkit for educators, which will include a textbook in comic book format.

I also learned about the San Quentin News and the podcast Ear Hustle in this webinar. One of the co-hosts of the podcast is actually inside San Quentin. I had never heard of either of these before, but I’m glad to have more resources to learn from those who are incarcerated or were formerly incarcerated. These resources are also potentially very valuable for reference work!

You can find all three of the JSTOR webinar recordings related to the American Prison Newspaper project below. I will need to watch the others soon.

American Prison Newspapers, featuring James McGrath Morris (author of Jailhouse Journalism; 1 hour)
American Prison Newspapers, featuring Kerry Meyers (Deputy Director of the Louisiana Parole Project and ex-editor of The Angolite; 1 hour)
American Prison Newspapers, featuring Yukari Iwatani Kane and Shaheen Pasha (co-founders and co-directors of the Prison Journalism Project; 1 hour)

You do have to share your name and email to watch the recordings.

This post does eventually relate to archives.

I live in California’s Central Valley, just 90 miles away from San Francisco. The Valley is a conservative part of the state. This weekend, I was amazed by our hometown. My husband and I had planned to march in Sacramento, but he got off work very late on Friday, so we opted to go to the march in our own city. The march was sponsored by The Progressive Voice and the Democratic Women’s Club of Stanislaus County. My good friend Joey from Merced joined us with her two teenage daughters, and when we got there, we met with other friends and family members. I did not expect 1,000 people to participate. I did not expect the huge show of support from people in cars as we walked down one of the busiest streets in town. Here is an article from our local paper, “Signs, Chants, Honks, and Cheers Mark Large, Upbeat Women’s March Modesto.”

When I got home from the march, I spent some time looking at photographs people were posting of marchers and their posters. Here are some interesting articles related to posters from marchers and photographs round the world and within the United States.

The Atlantic’s “Photos of the Women’s Marches Around the World“
BuzzFeed’s “32 of the Most Powerful Photos of Women’s Marches Around the World“
BuzzFeed’s “61 of the Greatest Signs from Women’s Marches Around the Country.”
BuzzFeed’s “The White House Fence is Covered with Signs from the Women’s March“
Hyperallergic’s “Required Reading: Women’s March Posters“
The New York Times’ “Pictures from Women’s Marches on Every Continent“
NPR’s “Women’s Marches Go Global: Postcards from Protests Around the World“
Slate’s “The Best, Nastiest Protest Signs from the Women’s March on Washington“

The Society of American Archivists’ Women Archivists Section is interested in archiving materials, including posters, photographs, and oral histories from the women’s marches. Their project is called the Women’s March on Washington Archives Project. Click here to find the Project’s Facebook group and here for their Twitter account.

I plan to contribute photos. Some friends also gave me their posters. I just have to find out if California has a repository for the physical materials. Please feel free to share about this archival project. This could be a potentially rich source of primary material for those studying about the marches in the future.

Here are some photos I took this weekend.