As students made their way back to campus for the fall 2024 semester, the University of Texas Libraries put together a fun and engaging lineup of events as part of Longhorn Welcome. The Libraries’ Welcome Week was all about giving new and returning students a chance to meet new people, get creative, and discover everything the Libraries have to offer.
Things kicked off on Monday, August 26, with the “Color and Geometry in Islamic Art” event at The Foundry in the Fine Arts Library. Students got hands-on with geometric patterns and the math behind Islamic art, working with 3D models and crafting their own intricate designs, some even taking time to make Arabic jewelry. With about 35 attendees from different departments, everyone got the chance to be creative and learn more about The Foundry’s resources for future projects.
Tuesday, August 27, brought the Zine Making Party, which transformed the Fine Arts Library into a buzzing creative space. Over 60 students, faculty, and staff dove into the zine collection, scissors and glue sticks in hand, and created their own zine pages. It was a DIY vibe all around, with people blending personal creativity and ideas with inspiration from the Libraries’ growing collection of zines.
On Wednesday, August 28, nearly 100 people gathered for “Stepping into Fall: A Celebration of Indian Dance and Music.” The night featured amazing performances from student groups like Texas Taraana, Gandharva, Sindhu Vasudevan, and Fusion Bollywood. From live Hindustani music to Bollywood fusion choreography, the audience got to experience an exciting mix of traditional and contemporary Indian art forms. The event was cosponsored by the South Asia Institute and SPIC MACAY, giving attendees a chance to learn more about these student groups and how to get involved.
Thursday, August 29, the UFCU Room in PCL was transformed into a Bibliogarden—a relaxed space where students could explore all kinds of cool books, graphic novels, zines, maps, and more from the Libraries’ collections. Around 40 attendees wandered through the offerings, checking out everything from rare books to fun reading materials that Libraries staff recommended. The variety of formats and languages sparked curiosity, and many left inspired to dive deeper into the Libraries’ collections and maybe even learn a new language or two.
To wrap up the week on Friday, August 30, the Libraries teamed up with the Center for Asian American Studies to screen Everything, Everywhere All at Once (2022) at the PCL. About 100 people showed up to enjoy the sci-fi adventure, which had everyone laughing and tearing up at different moments. The screening wasn’t just a movie night—it was also a chance to enjoy some great food from Tso Chinese, highlighting how partnerships can bring cultural events to campus in a big way.
All in all, the UT Libraries’ week of events brought students and faculty together, sparking creativity and offering a fun way to connect with the resources and communities on campus. It was a perfect way to kick off Longhorn Welcome 2024, and everyone walked away feeling a little more inspired.
In April, Dr. Adrien Smith, assistant professor of Instruction in the Department of Germanic Studies took her Yiddish class (YID 612) into the recording studio at the Fine Arts Library’s Foundry makerspace to capture the essence of traditional Yiddish folk songs.
The project was part of a year-long, accelerated language course that not only aimed to teach the Yiddish language but also to immerse students in its rich culture and history. The course utilized a range of instructional methods, including board games, songs, poetry, textbooks, and grammatical exercises. The rigorous approach fostered a close-knit community of students passionate about Yiddish language and culture.
Dr. Smith sought to create an engaging and practical learning experience for her students. She envisioned a project that would allow her students to practice their language skills and provide them with a lasting memento of their efforts. To achieve this, she attended a training session at the Foundry’s recording studio, with the hope of gaining the skills necessary to record her students singing traditional Yiddish folk songs.
After her training, Dr. Smith and the Foundry team met in late March to plan the recording sessions. They decided to hold two sessions: one focused on a group recording and another on small group projects. They carefully considered the logistics, including accommodating about a dozen students and instruments in the studio, selecting appropriate microphones, and allocating sufficient time for the recordings.
The first session took place on April 15. Nearly a dozen students, accompanied by a professional accordionist, gathered in the studio. Dr. Smith directed the students while the Foundry team assisted with the recording equipment and software. After a few test recordings, they successfully captured the entire class singing “Der alef-beys iz zeyer sheyn” and “Got hot bashafn himl mit erd.”
The second session, held on April 22, focused on small group recordings for a final project. Dr. Smith, now comfortable with the recording equipment, managed the session independently. She successfully recorded five more folk songs, which she later edited and published on SoundCloud, featuring cover art designed by one of her students.
This collaboration between Dr. Smith and the Foundry highlights the valuable opportunities the Foundry offers to modern languages and humanities courses. Recording sessions like these allow students to practice their language skills in a dynamic and cultural context, and, additionally, the recorded performances serve as a tangible reminder of their learning experience.
Dr. Smith and her students thoroughly enjoyed the experience, and she looks forward to the opportunity of returning to the Foundry for projects in future semesters.
As students return to campus for the fall 2024 semester, the University of Texas Libraries is offering an engaging series of events as part of Longhorn Welcome. These events are designed to welcome new and returning students, offering them a chance to connect, learn, and explore the diverse resources available at the Libraries. Here’s a look at what’s happening:
Description: Discover the beauty of Islamic art through its intricate patterns and vibrant colors. This event provides an introduction to the cultural and artistic significance of Islamic geometric designs.
Description: Get creative at our Zine-Making Party! This interactive event invites students to craft their own zines, with all materials provided. It’s a fun way to express your individuality and connect with others.
Description: Immerse yourself in the rich traditions of Indian dance and music. This celebration offers a vibrant performance that highlights the beauty of Indian culture and the joy of community.
Description: Relax in the Bibliogarden, a tranquil space where students can enjoy books and refreshments in a garden setting. It’s the perfect way to unwind and enjoy some quiet time amidst the hustle and bustle of campus life.
Description: Don’t miss this special screening of Everything Everywhere All at Once. This critically acclaimed film is a thrilling, genre-bending adventure that’s sure to captivate audiences with its blend of action, humor, and emotional depth.
These events are a fantastic way for students to start the semester on a high note. All are welcome, and students are encouraged to participate and make the most of these unique opportunities. For more information, visit the UT Libraries’ events page.
Read, hot & digitized: Librarians and the digital scholarship they love — In this series, librarians from UTL’s Arts, Humanities and Global Studies Engagement Team briefly present, explore and critique existing examples of digital scholarship. Our hope is that these monthly reviews will inspire critical reflection of and future creative contributions to the growing fields of digital scholarship.
Among the candidates for the Best Data Visualization category in the 2023 Digital Humanities Award, I found this recent project from the Shanghai Archives (Shanghai dang an guan 上海檔案館, Following the Archives to Know Shanghai). The project beautifully takes viewers on a tour through Shanghai’s most significant historical sites. It is built on archival materials about over 100 city landmarks in Shanghai. All the sites are plotted onto georeferenced historical maps. Viewers can choose from 13 base historical maps ranging from 1855 to 2024 (The following screenshot features a base map from 1923). Currently, the site only supports Chinese as the interface language, but Google Translate does a sufficient job of making it navigable in English.
Figure 1. Screenshot of all landmarks referenced on a 1923 map.
Shanghai, one of the first treaty ports that China opened to the West in the 1840s, grew into one of Asia’s biggest international metropolises and financial centers by the late nineteenth century. The city was home to many of modern China’s political, economic, and cultural elites, and its foreign concessions hosted thousands of foreign merchants, colonial officials, missionaries, and adventurers. Since the nineteenth century, the city also saw many major historical events that shaped modern China. For example, as the hub of China’s emerging modern/Westernized educational institutions, Shanghai was one of the centers of the May Fourth movement in 1919 that popularized Western political and scientific values to new generations of Chinese youth. Soon after, the Chinese Communist Party convened its national congress in the city in 1921. The city was also home to many international banks and manufacturing enterprises, which incubated the labor movements of the 1920s and 1930s. Beyond all these, the battles between the Chinese soldiers and invading Japanese forces in 1931 and 1937 were fought on the city’s streets while spies serving various regimes hustled throughout the city ruled by both Chinese and foreign authorities.
This project by the Shanghai Archives aims to present this complex and exciting history to the users. Sites are categorized into five categories: famous people’s residences (mingren guju 名人故居), revolutionary landmarks (hongse dibiao 红色地标), youth movements sites (qingnian yundong 青年运动), transportation infrastructures (jiaotong 交通), and ships and shipyards (lun chuan 轮船).
To explore a location, you click on it on the map, and a new window opens up on the right side, showing a timeline with documents related to the landmark. The following example shows eleven items related to the HSBC Bank building on the bund (waitan 外灘). Most items are historical photographs of the building, but the collection also contains a digitized copy of the bank’s stock certificate from 1894. The site also provides 3D models of the buildings for users to explore.
Figure 2. A Stock Certificate of the HSBC Bank from 1894.
Figure 3. 3D model of the HSBC Bank Building.
The project also provides audiovisual materials for some storied sites. For example, among the items related to the racecourse (Pao Ma Chang 跑馬場), there is a short documentary showing historical clips of events held there.
Figure 4. A documentary clip featuring the Shanghai horse racecourse.
The project is commendable in making archival materials available to the public in an interactive and engaging way, although it does have a pronounced emphasis on the communists’ activities in presenting the story map. As metadata is the foundation of all digital humanities projects, I am compelled to comment that the metadata of presented archival items leaves much to be desired. In the map view, items are only provided with title, source, and year, without any identifying numbers linking back to the Archives or its partner institutions. The browse view features a waterfall layout like Pinterest, which may be compelling to some but unfortunately does not provide more metadata than the story map view.
Figure 5. A waterfall view of archival materials available through the project.
Overall, the site offers an engaging journey through Shanghai’s recent past. It is exciting to see more locations and archival materials being added. I hope the quality of metadata can be enhanced one day. It would also be great if the textual documents could be OCRed and searched in full text.
After almost five years, I was able to travel back to China in May and June. This time, my first in the country in my current role as East Asian Studies Librarian, I was eager to bring back more unique library materials, meet and connect with library colleagues and vendors in China, and get up to date with the Chinese book scene after so long.
I started my trip in Beijing, the country’s capital city and cultural center. There, I visited a popular weekend book market at Baoguo si 報國寺, an old temple complex first built in the Ming dynasty. In the 1940s, the complex was occupied by both local and central authorities in charge of granary administration. In the late 1990s, the temple complex became a famous antiquarian market. Not until this spring did it welcome second-hand book vendors and rebrand itself into a used book bazaar.
Second-hand and antiquarian book market in Baoguo si.
From the Baoguo si market, I selected several sets of xiao ren shu 小人书, a palm-sized comic book that took shape in post-1949 China. The sets I bought are primarily adaptations of popular foreign films and fiction from the 1980s, an era when Western culture was (re)introduced into China. Through this inexpensive and readily available format, Xiao ren shu became a genre through which Chinese readers gained a peep into popular foreign literature and film.
Xiao ren shu comic books on sale at Baoguo si
Similar collectibles can also be found in Beijing’s Panjiayuan second-hand market (Panjiayuan jiuhuo shichang 潘家園舊貨市場). Having taken shape in the early 1990s, the giant market has gradually replaced the centuries-old Liulichang 琉璃廠 to become the biggest antiquarian market in Beijing. Panjiayuan has both “permanent” shops and make-shift booths that have vendors selling jewelry, ceramics, paintings, calligraphy, religious and ritual supplies, furniture, and, of course, books, and occasionally archival and manuscript materials.
Flipping through an old archive folder at Panjiayuan.
Beijing is also home to many of the vendors we work with here at UT Libraries. CIBTC (China International Book Trading Company) and Zhenben are the two book trading companies that UTL has partnered with for decades. In my discussions with representatives from both, I learned so much about the current state of the Chinese publishing market as these vendors are a critical part of the ecosystem of East Asian collections in North America. They help us to work around language barriers and complex legal requirements for exporting and importing library materials and they also help us hunt down rare and unique items our patrons need. I also was able to visit our electronic resource vendors. For example, I met with representatives from CNKI (China National Knowledge Infrastructure), a crucial vendor through which we can get access to the vast amount of academic information from China. There, I toured their automated data processing unit and met with the head of the overseas department. I learned about the company’s recent advances in AI, their large language model (LLM) and new products in both the development and deployment pipelines.
Touring data processing center at CNKI.
Meeting with CNKI colleagues.
Last but not least in Beijing, I was able to visit the First Historical Archives (Di yi lishi dang’an guan 第一歷史檔案館) which moved to a new location in 2021. In my life as a Qing historian, the “Yi shi guan” (as people in the field like to call it) has been a treasure trove. In its new location, they have also established new visitation and usage procedures. For example, foreign and domestic researchers are now treated similarly. Likewise, scheduling is now simplified and online. Under these revised access procedures, I was able to spend some very happy hours reading and transcribing some 18th- and 19th century documents in the brand new building.
The entrance hall of the First Historical Archives.
After Beijing, I traveled to Nanjing and Shanghai. In Nanjing, I revisited the bookshops near Nanjing University that I frequented as a college student over a decade ago–I was glad to see that all the establishments are still in business. Nestled in the narrow streets behind the university, these bookshops continue to be highly aligned with their main clientele’s (professors and students) intellectual interests– one may very well be able to find very rare out-of-print editions that freshly came out from a scholar’s private library. Indeed, I was able to bring several of those back to UTL.
Bookshop near the Nanjing University.
Last but not least, serendipitously, I met with public engagement colleagues at the Shanghai Library, the largest library system in China and according to its claims, the third largest in the world by collection volume. While there, I was intrigued by the innovative strides the library is making to attract the public. One such example is their gamification of the famous Dream of the Red Chamber/Story of the Stone. The masterpiece of Chinese literature is transformed into a role-playing game with well-designed props and plots through which participants gain an immersive experience in the intriguing and poetic world of the fiction and as well as compete with each other in a monopoly-like game.
Part of the Dream of Red Chamber game developed by the Shanghai Library.
I have gained so much knowledge of the current state of China’s scholarly publishing landscape and strengthened our collaborations with vendors to get critical research resources available to researchers and students at UT. Trips like this are crucial for us at UT Libraries to keep up with the new developments in the fields and meet the ever-evolving needs of our users. We deeply appreciate the generosity of donors to our Hornraiser fundraising, which has made overseas trips possible and allows the global collections at UTL to grow and evolve. I also thank the Center for East Asian Studies’ generous support to the trip and their continuous support to the UT Libraries.
Read, hot & digitized: Librarians and the digital scholarship they love — In this series, librarians from the Libraries’ Arts, Humanities and Global Studies Engagement Team briefly present, explore and critique existing examples of digital scholarship. Our hope is that these monthly reviews will inspire critical reflection of and future creative contributions to the growing fields of digital scholarship.
One of my favorite digitization projects is the SF Nexus from Temple University Libraries’ Duckworth Scholars Studio. It’s a digital corpus of 403 Science Fiction (SF) works, mostly novels, anthologies, and single-author short story collections published between 1945 and 1990 in the United States. It was created from scans of physical books in Temple’s Paskow Science Fiction Collection. It’s a notable project because SF has long been sidelined in literary studies, even though research on the genre can bring to light topics well worthy of study – race, gender, politics, futurism, climate change, and technology. This genre bias has carried over to digital humanities (DH), even though computational DH methods can accelerate this research beyond traditional methods like close reading one text at a time.
The project’s first step was to digitize the print books from the Paskow Collection. The team at Temple made the bold decision to physically disassemble the books. Most were cheaply-made paperbacks already in various states of decay and would sustain irreparable damage from digitization. They intentionally chose books that were not already part of the HathiTrust Digital Library, and after the digitization process, HathiTrust ingested these works, preserving them far longer than the physical items might have survived while also making them available to a much wider audience of researchers.
After scanning, the team created the Omeka exhibit Digitizing the New Wave, which highlights mid-twentieth century SF book covers. (Omeka is a commonly-used platform for scholarly online exhibits.) I thoroughly enjoy browsing Digitizing the New Wave, mostly for the entertaining cover art. But it’s also a great work of scholarship in its own right. It sheds light on lesser-known SF novels and writers from the New Wave Era, roughly from 1960-1990. I appreciate how the team structured the exhibit – it’s organized by sub-genre. Visitors can browse early “cli-fi” books (SF discussing climate catastrophe) and find examples of the subversive sub-genre Cyberpunk beyond well-known authors like Philip K. Dick and Neal Stephenson.
A screenshot of the Cyberpunk section from the Digitizing the New Wave Omeka exhibit.
Digitizing the New Wave is a great entry point for anyone interested in DH covering SF (and cover art). But in terms of research potential, the current iteration of the project – the aforementioned SF Nexus – offers a great deal more for computational DH, such as text mining and topic modeling visualizations. To facilitate such projects, the SF Nexus offers several datasets, including one organized by book chapters and discrete sections of books (what they call “chunks”) and CSV files with metadata associated with the corpus, including one of “named entities” (proper names associated with real-world objects, such as place names or author names). These datasets are available through a HuggingFace repository linked from the SF Nexus website.
One aspect of the SF Nexus that I find most interesting is the approach to copyright. All of the works in the corpus were published after 1928, the current cutoff date for materials to enter the public domain, and so are still in copyright. The SF Nexus is pretty small as far as digitized corpora go, with only 403 works. This was an intentional choice, partly due to copyright concerns. Many of the books are orphan works (works in which the rightsholder is difficult or impossible to identify or contact), and the subsequent datasets are designed for non-consumptive use. “Non-consumptive” means the digitized versions of the text are not meant to be read as ebooks, but rather studied at an aggregate level in a quantitative way. Additionally, the website includes a copyright Take Down Notice with contact information for a potential rightsholder to request removal.
A screenshot of the SF Nexus’ Take Down Notice, at the bottom of their Data webpage
Currently, the team at Temple is looking to expand the corpus and find partner institutions with substantial SF print collections to contribute. Temple has also been the home institution for most of the current research generated from the project, so the team is also spreading the word to researchers elsewhere with hopes of seeing more research and publications.
And if all this discussion of digitizing old Science Fiction novels has you curious to actually read some, head over to the PCL! UT Libraries has a collection strength in late twentieth century SF that we continue to build on by collecting new SF novels, short story collections, and anthologies! Learn more about our SF collection on our Science Fiction LibGuide!
A new exhibition at the Benson Latin American Collection highlightsthe cultural production of the region’s avant-gardeartists and thinkers
By Veronica Valarino
The early decades of the 20th century in major Latin American cities saw the explosion of publications and writers in a movement fueled by a growing access to publishing and an increasingly educated readership. The movement, known as vanguardismo, produced some of the region’s most celebrated writers, and reflected the dynamism and complexity of contemporary reality. These vanguardists embraced avant-garde techniques, experimental forms, and bold thematic explorations, capturing the turbulence of a rapidly changing society.
Magazine covers from Revista de Antropofagia (Cannabalism Magazine) and Klaxon, a monthly modern art magazine. Both were published in São Paulo.
Brazilian poet Mário de Andrade, exhibition board and poem excerpt
The term vanguardism originates from the military concept of the vanguard, which refers to soldiers at the forefront of a formation. In the context of the arts, avant-garde, or vanguardia, denotes innovative and provocative artistic and literary movements that emerged in Europe and the Americas during the 1920s and 1930s. These movements arose amidst a tumultuous era marked by significant events such as World War I, the Russian Revolution, the Great Depression, and the Spanish Civil War. The combination of societal dissatisfaction, technological advancements, and political upheaval prompted reflections on the contemporary crisis and an uncertain future. Avant-garde artists, or vanguardistas, distinguished themselves by their pursuit of innovation and experimentation, deliberately breaking away from established artistic traditions.
Top: Peruvian poet Magda Portal; below: cover of the Peruvian journal Amauta
Amauta January 1928 issue, Lima, Peru. The issue contains an article by the magazine’s founder, José Carlos Mariátegui, a leading voice in the country’s avant-garde movement and an outspoken Marxist.
Latin American vanguardismo, characterized by its unified yet distinct cultural development, arose almost simultaneously in major cities across the region, like Havana, Lima, Mexico City, Montevideo, Santiago, São Paulo, and, especially, Buenos Aires. Vanguardists’ intellectual, artistic, and political debates were documented in numerous periodicals and magazines, which also provided a platform for vanguardist manifestos. These publications articulated expansive poetic visions, engaged in political activism, and advocated for social and political change.
Exhibition panel about Cuban vanguardists Alejo Carpentier and Nicolás Guillén
Latin American vanguardismo is a significant cultural movement that gave voice to a relatively unified and distinctly Latin American art. It is also part of a larger, international movement. Hence, Latin American vanguardismo should not be seen as a mere reproduction of the European avant-garde. It was a continent-wide development, simultaneously international and autochthonous in its orientation as it grew out of and responded to the continent’s own cultural and social concerns.
Magazine cover of Revista de Avance, 1930. The magazine was published in Havana, Cuba, between 1927 and 1930.
The Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection has steadily expanded its archival materials and rare books related to the cultural history of Latin America over the years. Recent additions, such as the collections of César Vallejo, Magda Portal, and Pablo Antonio Cuadra, have significantly enhanced the collection, making it an invaluable resource for research. This exhibition delves into a pivotal historical moment shaped by visionary literary luminaries. By exploring their poetic works, magazines, and manifestos, we celebrate these influential figures.
Poems, Magazines & Manifestos is on view in the Ann Hartness Reading Room at the Benson Latin American Collection (SRH 1), 2300 Red River Street, during summer and fall 2024.
Library hours: Monday–Friday, 9am–5pm. Closed July 4 and Sept. 2.
This exhibition was developed by Veronica Valarino, Benson Exhibition Curator.
A collection of conductor, composer and educator Walter Ducloux is now discoverable on Texas ScholarWorks, the digital repository of The University of Texas at Austin.
Born in Germany in 1912, Ducloux immigrated to the United States in 1933. He held various teaching positions, including as a music professor at The University of Texas at Austin for 28 years. Ducloux was the co-founder of Austin Lyric Opera, and served as the director of the Austin Symphony Orchestra from 1972 to 1980. His contributions to the musical world were vast, influencing countless students and musicians through his work.
The Walter Ducloux collection is comprised of reel-to-reel tapes of historical recordings of operatic and orchestral works dated from 1949 to 1983. The recordings primarily feature performance ensembles from the University of Southern California and The University of Texas at Austin.
The initiative to enhance access to the Ducloux materials was spearheaded by Librarian for Performing Arts Molly Roy, who earlier this year proposed a new workflow to expedite the revelation of previously hidden materials in the Historical Music Recording Collection (HMRC). Roy’s innovative approach not only enhances accessibility but also facilitates the transition of these materials to more appropriate storage at the LSF.
The finding aid can be viewed here, and the bibliographic record is now searchable through the university’s catalog here. These resources enable users to find specific recordings by keyword and determine their exact locations within the Library Storage Facility (LSF).
Researchers and music enthusiasts alike will greatly benefit from this improved discovery of the rich recordings within the Walter Ducloux Collection. This milestone underscores the university’s commitment to preserving and promoting its valuable historical resources.
The successful implementation of this project is a testament to the collaborative efforts of several departments, with key contributions from staff across the Libraries, including Whit Williams and Marjie Lawrence from Content Management, Brittany Centeno and Joey Marez from Preservation and Colleen Lyon from Scholarly Communication. The collective efforts have been crucial in bringing this project to fruition.
Read, hot & digitized: Librarians and the digital scholarship they love — In this series, librarians from UTL’s Arts, Humanities and Global Studies Engagement Team briefly present, explore and critique existing examples of digital scholarship. Our hope is that these monthly reviews will inspire critical reflection of and future creative contributions to the growing fields of digital scholarship.
Financially supported by the Indian Ministry of Culture, the Virtual Museum of Images and Sound is an online platform drawing upon and digitally presenting the amazingly rich resources held in the American Institute of Indian Studies’ (AIIS) collections. While the open access museum highlights a vast range of artistic expression that I encourage everyone to explore, this brief post highlights the audio recordings from the Archives and Research Centre for Ethnomusicology (ARCE).
Grab your headphones, settle into your comfortable chair, and join in to listen and learn!
For those new to South Asian music traditions, the ARCE’s Music in Context section provides a great introductory overview as it organizes recordings thematically. While one might expect a section on ragas, the ARCE site encourages one to listen to songs associated with life cycle events, with work, or with ritual traditions. If curated thematic journeys aren’t your style, rest assured that the site also operationalizes a number of digital humanities methods to delve into the dizzying array of musical types. For example, one can use the Mapping Music or the Music Timeline interfaces to discover recordings by geographical location or in their chronological context. There are so many fascinating things to find here—for example, did you know that the American jazz artist Teddy Weatherford lived in Kolkata (the city then known as Calcutta) and was featured on India’s First Jazz Record in 1944? Or that the 1978 “Jazz Yatra” brought the likes of saxophonist Sonny Rollins and sitarist Ustad Vilayat Khan together? One loses oneself in the midst of such resources.
Beyond the fun to be had on the site from wherever you are, it is important to remember ARCE’s compelling vision to support the study of ethnomusicology in India. The original goals for the AIIS analog collection were to protect and preserve recordings made by foreign scholars in the course of their research which were subsequently deposited in archives around the world. Troublingly, it was obvious that such recordings were rarely available in India itself. Addressing this problem head on, ARCE declares that “repatriation of collections has remained a major aim of the ARCE, which houses collections… which were not [previously] available in India. Scholars and collectors from all over the world, as well as India, continue to deposit collections of their recordings regularly at ARCE.” In addition, they see the collection and the wide array of associated programs and events anchored in the collection as a way to stimulate new ethnomusicological research worldwide. Knowing this driving mission, it is no surprise that ARCE has made so many collections freely available online. I commend them on this important work.
I further applaud ARCE on their partnerships to collaboratively digitize and make recordings openly available. To cite one recent and impactful success, ARCE worked with grant funding from the Modern Endangered Archives Program (MEAP) to preserve, robustly describe, and offer access to the “Recordings of Hereditary Musicians of Western Rajasthan.” A scholarly collection formerly only on audio cassettes, the new online open access through ARCE and MEAP allows listeners worldwide to celebrate and enjoy Rajasthani music, culture and history.
Learn more with these databases (restricted to UT affiliates):
Saarey Music provides streaming access to over 60 years of South Asian classical music including genres like Dhurpad, Thumri, Kafi, Tarana, and Ghazal.
Smithsonian Global Sound is a virtual encyclopedia of the world’s musical and aural traditions and includes material from the Archive Research Centre for Ethnomusicology (ARCE).
Ryan Lynch, Head of Special Collections and Senior Archivist at the Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection, and Rachel E. Winston, Black Diaspora Archivist, attended the annual meeting of traditional Black communities in Eldorado, state of São Paulo, as guests of EAACONE, one of the Benson’s archival partners.
ONE OF THE PARTNERSHIPS that emerged from the LLILAS Benson Mellon-funded project “Cultivating a Latin American Post-Custodial Archival Community” involved extensive collaboration with EAACONE, Equipe de Articulação e Assessoria às Comunidades Negras do Vale do Ribeira, located in Eldorado, Vale do Ribeira, São Paulo, Brazil. (EAACONE’s name translates as Team for Articulation and Assessment of Black Communities of Vale do Ribeira).
Women from Quilombo Sapatu perform “Nha Muruca” at the Encontrão .
Digitized materials and metadata from the EAACONE archive are available in three languages on the Latin American Digital Initiatives Repository. LLILAS Benson’s collaboration consisted, in part, of training of EAACONE staff in digitization and metadata, as well as funding the purchase of equipment and the salaries of archival employees from the quilombola* community. Additional funds covered the creation of a traveling exhibition for the purpose of introducing schoolchildren and other community members to the archive and to the history of EAACONE and MOAB, the anti-dam movement with which it is associated.
From left: Attorneys Fernando Prioste (Instituto
Socioambiental, ISA) and Rafaela Santos (EAACONE) speak with Letícia de França (EAACONE).
EAACONE’s archive, titled Quilombos do Vale do Ribeira (Quilombos of Vale do Ribeira), consists of materials compiled from 25 years of EAACONE history and 35 years of MOAB (Movimento dos Ameaçados por Barragens, or Movement of Peoples Threatened by Dams), a grassroots movement protesting the construction of hydroelectric dams with negative impacts on the communities and environment of Vale do Ribeira. The dates of materials range from 1955 to the late 1990s.
Several members of the LLILAS Benson archival team have visited Eldorado during the years of the collaboration. Most recently, Ryan Lynch (Benson Head of Special Collections and Senior Archivist) and Rachel E. Winston (Black Diaspora Archivist) visited Eldorado to attend the XXVIII Encontro das Comunidades Negras do Vale do Ribeira (28th Meeting of Black Communities of Vale do Ribeira)—known as the Encontrão (Big Meetup)—on November 18, 2023. Documents from the EAACONE archives were on display on tables at the event, as were vinyl panels from a traveling exhibition about the archive and the history of the area’s Black communities.
Tânia Moraes (foreground), Letícia de França, and Andrey Pupo set up a display table with EAACONE archival materials.
“Attending the Encontrão helped me contextualize the work that EAACONE does with quilombo communities,” said Lynch. “Watching residents of the different communities see themselves, or their friends and relatives, in the documents, was an invigorating reminder of the importance of our work as archivists and post-custodial partners. Many of the people in attendance had made history and continue to make history. Thanks to the Mellon grant, their story is available not only to themselves and their descendants but also to K–12 students, researchers, and activists in other independent Black communities in the Americas.”
EAACONE’s traveling exhibition, which draws on archival materials digitized in collaboration with
LLILAS Benson, will be used in schools and at events. This panel describes women’s meetings and includes archival photographs.
The LLILAS Benson collaboration was included in the event via the use of the LLILAS Benson logo on exhibition materials, and Lynch noted that it was also mentioned multiple times by speakers. He and Winston were introduced as VIPs at the beginning of the proceedings, and Lynch was invited by organizers to deliver a few impromptu remarks.
“I look forward to exploring future partnerships that will allow us to continue to play a role in this important documentation and exchange of knowledge and experience,” he said.
Benson Head of Collections / Senior
Archivist Ryan Lynch shared greetings from LLILAS Benson and discussed the collaboration with EAACONE.
In her role as Black Diaspora Archivist, Winston has visited more than one post-custodial partner in Latin America. Both she and Lynch had visited Eldorado previously. “Reconnecting with EAACONE colleagues in person, and meeting more community members (documented and represented in the EAACONE collection) was incredible,” Winston said.
From left: Noel Castelo, Rodrigo Marinho Rodrigues da Silva, and José Rodrigues da Silva sing after
the conclusion of the Encontrão. The banner hanging on the wall talks about MOAB, the historic anti-dam movement that has been a source of activism among quilombola communities in Vale do Ribeira.
“Being a part of this project and partnership with EAACONE from the beginning to the end has been a highlight of my career at the Benson,” Winston adds. “When there, the importance of the work becomes more salient. EAACONE has been and continues to be an important fixture in the Vale do Ribeira. The impact of their work is amplified by our collaboration and by the work we do to preserve their archive. To see the EAACONE materials in the place of creation, used and viewed by the community members represented in them, and to be in community with that community, is a remarkable experience, and a reminder of the power of post-custodial archival praxis.”
“I Love Eldorado” sign at the bus station in Eldorado.
*Quilombolas are Afro-descendant Brazilians who live in rural Black communities known as quilombos, which were originally established by enslaved people who fled enslavement to establish autonomous communities. There are 88 such communities in Vale do Ribeira, an area in the Brazilian states of São Paulo and neighboring Paraná. To read more about quilombolas in Vale do Ribeira, see Edward Shore, Brazilian Roças: A Legacy in Peril (2017) and The Quilombo Activists’ Archive (2019).
Dancing at the Encontrão. A group of women and girls from Quilombo Sapatu performed a circle dance, Nhu Muruca, before breaking into pairs. Here, others have joined.Onlookers enjoy the dance performed by the women of Quilombo Sapatu.Letícia de França films the dance performance.Sign outside the location of the Encontrão, Quilombo Abobral Margem Esquerda, Eldorado. The large red lettering reads Land Yes! Dams No!Chove Chuva! A quilombola elder and Encontrão attendee respond as rain begins, pausing the event.After the rain, Encontrão attendees share a meal.Lunch! A traditional lunch was served, prepared by local quilombolas.
