Category Archives: Area Studies

Remembering a Legacy through the Sharir Collection

A graduate costume design class recently visited the Fine Arts Library to learn more about library resources. I was thrilled to be able to share with them excerpts from performances by Sharir+Bustamante DanceWorks, projecting video clips such as 2001’s Automated Body Project on our media wall. To everyone’s delight, we then had the chance to view the actual physical costumes seen in the video footage, examples we now understand as early explorations in wearable technology.

Wearable Technology. Photo by Mark Doroba

It was exciting to witness the students engage with these artifacts, thoughtfully analyzing form and function through the lens of design; posing insightful questions; and drawing connections to their course material, ongoing discussions, and personal experiences.

This interactive instructional opportunity was only possible through the generous donation of Dr. Yacov Sharir, who gifted his archive to the Fine Arts Library in 2016. Sharir came to Austin in 1978 to start the American Deaf Dance Company and became faculty at UT shortly thereafter. In 1982, the Sharir Dance Company became the professional company-in-residence at the UT Department of Theatre and Dance. (The company later took the name Sharir+Bustamante Danceworks in 1998, acknowledging José Luis Bustamante as co-artistic director). Sharir was an early innovator in the area of dance and digital technology, and his work has had a profound impact not only on the University, but on the Austin modern dance community as a whole.

Sharir Dance Company, Wise Heart (1988). Photo by Jon Leatherwood

Sharir passed away on September 29, 2023, at the age of 83, leaving behind a rich legacy as an artist, educator, and mentor. As we remember, honor, and celebrate this legacy, the gift of his archive takes on a deeper meaning, an enduring offering for many more groups of students and researchers to come.

Sharir Dance Company. Cyber Human Dances (1996)

I encourage you to explore the Sharir and Sharir/Bustamante Dance Collection which includes videos, photographs, programs, press materials, art, costumes, and virtual reality equipment. It features the choreography of Sharir and Bustamante through the 2007 final season of S+BDW and beyond, along with the work of many guest artists and collaborators. Owing to the combined efforts of former Theatre and Dance Librarian Beth Kerr, research assistant Katie Van Winkle, and many folks in UT Libraries’ Digitization Services, a large portion of the collection has been digitized, and is openly accessible to the public on Texas ScholarWorks.

View the Sharir and Sharir/Bustamante Dance Collection on Texas ScholarWorks.

For access to the complete archive, contact Molly Roy.

Notes from FILUNI

Benson Director Melissa Guy recently attended La Feria Internacional del Libro de las Universitarias y los Universitarios 2023 (FILUNI), a transnational book fair and conference that was held at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México in Mexico City August 29-September 3.

UT Austin became the first university from the United States to participate as the guest of honor at this prestigious event. The gathering attracted over 35,000 participants from 10 different countries, and featured over 50 roundtable discussions, research symposia, live podcasts, musical performances, film screenings, and exhibits, covering a wide range of topics.

The UT delegation was comprised of more than 130 faculty members, graduate students, performers, staffers, campus leaders, and alumni representing 20 of the University’s colleges, schools, and units. The University of Texas Press, a long-time FILUNI participant, showcased 600 of its titles, with more than 1,100 books available for purchase at the fair’s on-site bookstore.

While in attendance, Guy had the opportunity to talk with regional media, and was featured in several publications:

“Colección Nettie Lee Benson, joyas latinoamericanas en EU,” El Universal

https://www.eluniversal.com.mx/cultura/coleccion-nettie-lee-benson-joyas-latinoamericanas-en-eu/

“Los tesoros mexicanos en la Universidad de Texas en Austin,” El Economista  https://www.eleconomista.com.mx/arteseideas/Los-tesoros-mexicanos-en-la-Universidad-de-Texas-en-Austin-20230903-0047.html   

“Guarding Latin America’s Literary Treasures: An Interview with Melissa Guy,” Voices of Mexico

https://drive.google.com/file/d/16vbmG-2WCduB9z5WULAiA5qxnzdGDSgP/view

Papers of Celebrated Author, Poet, and Activist Jorge Argueta Come to the Benson

BY ANA A. RICO

The Benson Latin American Collection is pleased to announce the acquisition of the Jorge Tetl Argueta Pérez Papers. This collection captures the personal history of Argueta’s work as an award-winning children’s book author, poet, activist, organizer, cultural worker, teacher, and publisher. It includes manuscripts, books, journals, original artwork, correspondence, photographs, posters, and newspapers.

A smiling man with dark hair and mustache, black cowboy hat, red t-shirt illustrated with two Indigenous figures, faces the camera on the left side of the frame. In the background, a long avenue at the end of which is the U.S. Capitol.
Jorge Argueta in Washington, DC, ca. 2000. Photographer unknown.

Jorge Argueta was born in El Salvador and is of Pipil-Nahua descent. In the early 1980s, he immigrated to San Francisco during the Salvadoran Civil War. This experience influenced his early poetry, before he began writing children’s books. He is currently the Poet Laureate of San Mateo County, California, and is active in both San Mateo County and the Mission District community of San Francisco.

Two abstract multicolor drawings in crayon are side-by-side. Each one has a short handwritten poem scrawled next to the drawing.
Poems and artwork by Jorge Argueta, created shortly after arriving in the U.S., 1980s

Known as a performer and event organizer, Argueta works to promote multicultural children’s literature through events such as reading series, poetry festivals, and street fairs. He has held positions in notable San Francisco organizations, such as the de Young Museum of San Francisco, where he was a Poet-in-Residence for the Poets in the Galleries Program. He has been a member of the Board of Directors of Acción Latina and a curator of the Mixed Poetry Series. He is an editor at Luna’s Press Books and is co-owner of Luna’s Press Bookstore in San Francisco.

Colorful poster advertising performances of the opera Xochitl and the Flowers, libretto based on a book by José Argueta
Poster advertising performances Xochitl and the Flowers, an opera whose libretto is based on a book by Jorge Argueta

His impact does not stop in California, however. He established a children’s library, La Biblioteca de los Sueños, in 2016. A lifelong dream of his, the library now stands in Santo Domingo de Guzmán, his hometown. He also started The International Children’s Poetry Festival in Manyula, El Salvador, which has occurred every November since 2010. Argueta’s dedication to children’s literacy and literature has had a tremendous impact on both of his communities.   

Colorful cover of the children's book Alfredito Flies Home. We see a boy from the back. He is wearing a red long-sleeved shirt and blue pants. He is in a yard with green grass, a fence, and there is a football on a small area of concrete near the grass. He is making airplane shape with arms. The title of the book is written on a luggage tag.
Children’s book by Jorge Argueta, illustrated by Luis Garay, published in 2007

Argueta’s work is recognized nationally and internationally. He has received the Américas Book Award, NAPPA Golden Award, Lee Bennett Hopkins Award, and Salinas de Alba Award, and his books are featured in the likes of the USBBY Outstanding International Books List, Kirkus Reviews Best Children’s Books, and the Cooperative Children’s Book Center Choices. He continues his commitment to spreading multicultural children’s literature through classroom visits, earning the gratitude of young readers across the country and much thank-you correspondence from his visits. Although he is a prominent figure in bilingual children’s books, he also aims to reach older audiences through poetry and a memoir published in 2017.

This collection is an invaluable addition to the Benson. Its addition complements current collections such as the Carmen Lomas Garza Papers and Artworks, the Carmen Tafolla Papers, as well as the Benson’s Central American collections that feature Miguel Ángel Asturias, Ernesto Cardenal, and Pablo Antonio Cuadra.


Ana A. Rico is a master’s student at the School of Information and the Collection Development GRA at the Benson Latin American Collection.

Capturing the Israeli Zeitgeist in real-time

israeli protest t-shirt: "One of many t-shirts produced during the summer protests. The text reads “Not right, not left -- straight forward!”"
One of many t-shirts produced during the summer protests. The text reads “Not right, not left — straight forward!”

With the support of UT Libraries, and the generosity of donors in a recent Hornraiser campaign, I went to Israel on an acquisition trip on behalf of the UT Libraries in June. I have written in the past about the advantages of field work by a subject liaison in an academic library when it comes to curating and developing our collections. Being on the ground, one has an opportunity to acquire unique items that cannot be purchased remotely online. While networking with vendors and individuals in book fairs and book stores, there is a much bigger chance to come across alternative and non-mainstream materials. Moreover, making acquaintances face-to-face is a great way to spread the word about UT and UT Libraries and to make additional contacts. 

My experience during this last trip made me realize yet again why acquisition trips are so beneficial to my work. One of the most significant advantages is the unparalleled opportunity to witness historical events in real-time. This allows for collecting ‘limited editions’ of grey literature that is created for or emerges as a result of current events. Throughout 2023 there has been a lot of civil unrest in the streets throughout Israel in reaction to the newly elected administration’s actions. There have been weekly rallies and marches against, and sometimes in favor of, the government and its officials. During my stay in Tel Aviv, I attended a few of those rallies, not only as a spectator, but also as an avid collector of anything that might be a valuable addition to the library’s Israeli collection. I was able to gather all sorts of ephemeral items distributed only during the protests: fanzines, comic strips, stickers, banners, pamphlets, and even t-shirts. I was reminded of the social justice protests of summer 2011, during which I also managed to put my hand on some materials available only then and there. By acquiring these unique items, adding them to and preserving them in our collections, we are able to capture the local zeitgeist while it is being shaped in real time, and thus, make it accessible for future generations of researchers.

Series of fanzines published in limited edition during 2023 protests in Israel
Handing out stickers at a rally.

Beyond ephemera, I had additional serendipitous, one-of-a-kind opportunities for collection development during my trip. While browsing the tables at one of the rallies, I met activists from the Communist Party of Israel (CPI) which led to a visit to their office a few days later, where I managed to acquire some of their publications which are not distributed to the mainstream market. These publications would complement other emerging pockets of distinctive collections at UT Libraries about communism and socialism such as the Socialist Pamphlets collection, Ernesto Cardenal Papers, Sajjad Zaheer Digital Archive, and fanzines recently acquired by UTL European Studies subject liaison Ian Goodale at the Montreal Anarchist Bookfair.       

One night I went to watch a movie at the Herzliya Cinematheque, a 30 minutes ride from Tel Aviv. As it turned out, that venue had a small section where they were offering free of charge publications and DVDs. By mere chance, I was lucky to put my hand on a rare publication about adaptations of Israeli literature to cinema — a perfect and rare addition to our Israeli cinema & film collection. Likewise, while browsing an antique and book market one morning in Tel Aviv, I came across internationally unique programs from Israeli film festivals. Chatting with the vendor, he made the effort to introduce me to other vendors around him, all of whom sell publications related to Israeli cinema. These personal, on-the-ground and face-to-face encounters are instrumental to expanding the network of our vendors, leading to future, distinctive acquisitions.

“Getting adapted in Cinema/to film” – rare publication about copyrights for adaptations of Hebrew literature to film. The title is a pun mixing ‘adaptation’ and ‘to get lost’ – two terms that sound identically in Hebrew.   

Benson Exhibitions Focus on Chile

Two upcoming exhibitions at the Benson Latin American Collection will focus on Chile in commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the violent coup that overthrew the government of democratically elected president Salvador Allende on September 11, 1973.

In addition, a LLILAS Benson special event, “Chile 50 Years after the Military Coup: Testimonies and Remembrances,” taking place Tuesday, September 12, features a panel of Chileans, some of whom lived through the 1973 coup, moderated by Professor of History Joshua Frens-String. The event and the exhibitions are free and open to the public.

A second public event, organized by LLILAS Benson and the Rapoport Center for Human Rights and Justice, is titled “Before and After Chile 1973: Recovering a More Just Future.” It will take place in the Benson’s 2nd floor conference room on Thursday, October 19, from 5 to 6:30 p.m.

Battle for Chile: Cold War, Coup, and the Court of Public Opinion

From September 11, 2023, through April 30, 2024, the Hartness Reading Room Gallery at the Benson Latin American Collection will host an exhibition that focuses on Chilean politics and activism in the late 1960s through the mid-1980s.  

Centered on Chilean and non-Chilean individuals and entities trying to influence public and international opinion, Battle for Chile shows the country as one center of an international clash between capitalism and socialism. It focuses in particular on the high-stakes fight for international opinion as the post-coup regime continued to commit unspeakable atrocities under the guise of fighting global communism.  

On a bright red background, white silhouettes outlined in black suggest people running or fighting. The words Battle for Chile appear in bold lettering on this poster advertising an exhibition.
Battle for Chile exhibition poster

Reports and telegrams from the George Lister Papers show U.S. government concern over Salvador Allende’s candidacies and eventual election as well as an account of the coup in process. Sepa, an anti-Allende publication, declares his presidency illegitimate and seems to call for a military overthrow. Material distributed by the Pinochet regime and aimed at international audiences promotes reports of economic progress. Chilean and non-Chilean activists in the post-coup era work to share news of human rights violations. Anti-Pinochet and pro-Allende activists accuse the United States and other governments and corporations of creating the conditions leading to the coup or even supporting it. Transnational socialist organizations, often based in Cuba, capitalize on atrocities to build support for their cause through captivating posters and publications.  

Battle for Chile is an opportunity to see some of the Benson’s extensive collection of political ephemera and rare magazines as well as selections from archival collections.

— D Ryan Lynch, Head of Special Collections & Senior Archivist, Benson Latin American Collection

Walls That Speak: Street Art and Activism in Chile

On October 18, 2019, demonstrations erupted in the streets of Chile’s capital Santiago in reaction to an increase in subway fares, along with concerns about the cost of living and social inequality. Massive protests spread across the nation, some peaceful and some devolving into vandalism. Protesters demanded the resignation of President Sebastián Piñera. This social uprising is now recognized as the most significant in the country since the end of its dictatorship almost three decades ago.  

Chilean street artists emerged as participants and instigators, utilizing city walls as a canvas to express demands of the movement as well as document intergenerational trauma connected to Augusto Pinochet’s 1973–1990 dictatorship. Their artwork soon became visible on social media and served as a supportive backdrop for the Chilean demonstrators. Among those artists was Maurice Huenún, aka Pikoenelojo Stencil, who, like his peers, provided a visual narration of the protestors’ grievances and hopes for the future. His stencils explore themes of social justice, human rights, environmental concerns, political corruption, inequality, gender, anti-establishment sentiments, and reflections on local or global events. 

Against a white background, the words "Walls That Speak" appear in bold black with the letters looking slightly worn. There is a large stenciled image of a soldier holding a rifle or bayonet at the end of which is a bloodied brain. This poster advertises an exhibition of stencil street art.
Walls That Speak exhibition poster featuring art by Pikoenelojo Stencil

Walls That Speak: Street Art and Activism in Chile, a fall 2023 exhibition at the Benson Latin American Collection, highlights a recent acquisition of Pikoenelojo Stencil’s work, showcasing 12 original stencil artworks crafted by this prominent Chilean street artist. The works address topics such as criticism of Piñera’s policies, privatization, international corporations, the Pinochet dictatorship, systemic police repression, criticism of Christian dogma, among other topics. The collection provides a powerful visual narrative of the violent events that occurred in October 2019 while shedding light on the enduring legacy of Chile’s painful dictatorial past.  

— Veronica Valarino, Curator of Exhibitions, Benson Latin American Collection 

If you go . . .

The exhibitions at the Benson Latin American Collection are free and open to the public during library hours, which are Monday–Friday, 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. The Benson is located at 2300 Red River Street.

Benson Publishes Early-20th-Century Mexican American Newspapers Associated with Jovita Idar

By Ryan Lynch and Carla Alvarez

On Monday, August 14, the U.S. Mint released a quarter commemorating Mexican American journalist and activist Jovita Idar (b. Laredo, 1885–d. San Antonio, 1946) as part of its American Women Quarters program. In conjunction with this release, the Benson Latin American Collection recently published three issues of two newspapers that are associated with Idar. Together, these publications represent some of the earliest examples of Mexican American journalism. 

Learn about the Federico Idar and Idar Family Papers

The newly published items include two extremely rare issues of Evolución, a newspaper founded by Idar in 1916 and published until 1920. These issues document international and regional events such as the Mexican Revolution and World War I, as well as local topics such as containment of the flu outbreak in Nuevo Laredo and regional union organizing. There is also a single issue of El Progreso, a Laredo-based newspaper operated by the Idar family. 

Yellowed front page of a Spanish-language newspaper titled Evolución. There are various headlines relating to World War I, and one image.
Restored copy of “Evolución,” a daily paper published in Laredo, Texas Benson Latin American Collection Available online at https://collections.lib.utexas.edu/catalog/utblac:b17abce6-b75f-4e8b-80be-248f5d05f484

The Benson has received several requests for material related to Idar during the COVID shutdown and in recent months. In 2020, a cell phone snapshot of the October 26, 1918, issue of Evolución appeared in an episode about Jovita Idar on the PBS show Unladylike. Aware of the significance of these newspapers, Benson Special Collections staff sent them for conservation treatment and digitization as soon as possible.

El Progreso is at the heart of a story about Jovita Idar standing up to the Texas Rangers, who wanted to shut down her family’s paper. According to an oral history with descendant Aquilino Idar and his wife Guadalupe, when the Texas Rangers showed up at the El Progreso print shop, Jovita stood at the door and refused entry. The Rangers left but returned early the next morning and used hammers to destroy the press (oral history held by UT San Antonio Special Collections).

Yellowed front page of the Spanish-language newspaper "El Progresso," dated October 29, 1914. Main headline refers to World War I and the march of the Germans. The page includes several black-and-white photographs related to news stories, including one of two women on horseback.
Issue of “El Progreso,” an independent daily newspaper published in Laredo by the Idar family. Benson Latin American Collection. The entire issue is available online at https://collections.lib.utexas.edu/catalog/utblac:fdca5830-7f96-459d-9ead-807cd14d0a57

The two issues of Evolución recently received conservation treatment as part of the UT Austin Campus Conservation Initiative (CCI). The program, backed by Provost Sharon Wood, allows paper conservator Rachel Mochon to treat items from the Benson and other campus entities, including the Harry Ransom Center, the Briscoe Center for American History, and the Blanton Museum of Art.

Yellowed close-up of the top half of a front page of the Spanish-language newspaper Evolución, dated Laredo, Texas, Sábado 26 de Octubre de 1918. A large vertical crease down the middle shows where the once-torn item has been restored.
This issue of the Spanish-language newspaper “Evolución” was restored by the UT Austin Campus Conservation Initiative. The large vertical crease down the middle shows where the once-torn item has been restored. Benson Latin American Collection.

Other Benson items that have received treatment include a sixteenth-century land claim produced by an Indigenous community in Mexico, one of the first dictionaries of an Indigenous language published in the Americas, and a scrapbook from a Brazilian mining operation.

Yellowed front page of a Spanish-language newspaper titled Evolución. A large crease down the center shows where the torn page was restored by the UT Austin Campus Conservation Initiative.
Front page of Evolución, recently restored by the UT Austin Campus Conservation Initiative. Benson Latin American Collection. Available online at https://collections.lib.utexas.edu/catalog/utblac:46cf1f06-cf99-4a87-9aa0-f67128a77855

Related Resources

Collecting Francophone Zines and Books in Montreal

Due to generous donor support to a Hornraiser campaign for foreign acquisitions trips, I was recently able to travel to Canada to attend the Montreal Anarchist Bookfair and purchase books for the UT Libraries’ collections. In addition to meeting with vendors and participating in the international community of librarians, zine makers, booksellers, and publishers at the book fair, I collected materials that continue to grow the UT Libraries’ collection of Francophone zines and literature, further developing our collection of rare and distinct materials related to global leftist movements past and present.

The Montreal Anarchist Bookfair is North America’s largest anarchist book fair, and has been held since 2009. Attracting visitors from all over the continent, the fair included over 80 vendor tables where attendees could browse and purchase materials and discuss non-commercial publishing and distribution directly with content producers. Vendors ranged from established presses like AK Press and PM Press to individual creators selling their zines and other materials. The book fair also featured a diverse range of speakers and workshops, including offerings such as an introduction to anarchist thought, a talk on Mastodon and federated social media, and a panel discussion about the book Black Metal Rainbows recently published by PM Press.

A picture of zines and books purchased at the bookfair.
A small selection of books and zines purchased at the bookfair.

The book fair offered many opportunities to acquire materials we would not otherwise have access to, and to speak directly with publishers, writers, and artists and to learn about the processes and motivations behind why certain books or zines were written and made. A couple of my favorite acquisitions for the UTL library include a global history of the Industrial Workers of the World, a radical union founded in 1905 that is still active today, and a zine-bibliography highlighting resources on the transfeminism movement. The trip also gave me a valuable opportunity to build our holdings of Francophone materials from North America, expanding our corpus beyond materials published in Europe, the Caribbean, and Africa, thereby making our holdings even broader globally than they already were.

Picture of two books and two zines acquired at the book fair.
Additional books and zines acquired at the book fair.

Beyond all this, the trip allowed me the opportunity to represent UT Austin internationally to a diverse group of vendors, artists, and colleagues, and I’m grateful that I was able to serve the Libraries in such a capacity. I look forward to continuing to build our distinctive holdings and further expand UT’s collections to include diverse ideas and voices.

Librarian Ian Goodale standing at the entrance to the bookfair.
Librarian Ian Goodale standing at the entrance to the bookfair.

AILLA Road Trip: Teaching about the Indigenous Language Archive in Rural Oaxaca

BY EDEN EWING

When I arrived in San Marcos Zacatepec in rural Oaxaca, it was dark outside. A kind Chatino-speaking woman cooked me food: chicken soup with homemade tortillas. Dr. Anthony Woodbury from the UT Department of Linguistics and I had been traveling since early that morning, first arriving in Mexico City from Austin and then Puerto Escondido after a several-hour layover. We had to take a bus for several more hours to get to San Marcos Zacatepec, a town in the Sierra Madre de Oaxaca mountains and the first I would visit during my trek. This was the setting for the community outreach and research work I would be undertaking during spring break.

The Chatino-speaking region of Oaxaca is breathtakingly beautiful. All three communities that I visited are nestled in the Sierra Madre del Sur mountain range. Zacatepec is at the lowest altitude of all the Chatino-speaking communities that I visited, so it can get fairly hot during the day. However, San Juan Quiahije, another Chatino community, is several thousand feet higher up the mountain—cooler during the day and quite cold at night.

A sweeping line of mountains brownish-green, clouds of white, blue, and gray, with blue sky in the distance.
Although it wasn’t as lush as San Marcos Zacatepec, there was a beautiful view of the mountains from my balcony in San Juan Quiahije.

I am a dual-degree master’s student in Latin American Studies and Information Studies at The University of Texas at Austin, working to become an academic librarian with a subject specialty in Latin American and Indigenous Studies. I had come to Oaxaca with a clear goal in mind: to teach several workshops on archival access and navigation for the Archive of the Indigenous Languages of Latin America (AILLA), a digital archive at the Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection. Dr. Susan Kung, AILLA’s coordinator, invited me to take part in a project with Dr. Emiliana Cruz, professor of anthropology at CIESAS–Mexico, and Dr. Anthony Woodbury, professor of linguistics at UT Austin. As part of the project, I spent my spring break in three Chatino-speaking villages: San Marcos Zacatepec, San Juan Quiahije, and San Miguel Panixtlahuaca. Several local language activists and teachers in the community wanted to be able to use the materials in AILLA to learn Chatino and listen to oral histories and stories in the language.

I agreed to go without hesitation, thrilled to participate in a project that brings together archivists, academics, and Indigenous community members around cultural materials represented in AILLA’s collections. I had hoped that, by getting access to these materials, Indigenous communities might be able to use them for projects related to the revitalization of their language and traditional cultural practices.


The Chatino Language Documentation Project is the subject of this 2015 article in Life & Letters magazine, which features reflections from several linguist researchers.


I soon learned that each town experienced different issues regarding their fluency in the Chatino language and ability to access AILLA. The vast majority of the population speaks a variant of Eastern Chatino, a language represented by several collections in the archive. San Marcos Zacatepec, however, differed significantly from the other two towns: For one, it is a very small village with poor internet access. Secondly, most of the community members no longer speak Chatino. There are only about 300 speakers left in the town and all of them are elderly. In contrast, the language proficiency is strong in both San Juan Quiahije and San Miguel Panixtlahuaca. While the primary issue in Zacatepec was access to the internet, there did appear to be a connection between a lack of ability to speak Chatino and the teachers having less interest in accessing the archive to find materials to use with schoolchildren.

A pale-gray wall is in the foreground. Painted on the wall is a simple rainbow with dark-gray clouds at each end. On either side of the rainbow, small blocks of different colors are painted, each with a word next to it in black lettering. In the background there is a red brick building with black wrought-iron gates in an archway. A few people are also visible in the background.
San Miguel Panixtlahuaca has educational murals in the center of town. This one shows a rainbow with the names of different colors in Chatino.

Community Workshops & the Technology Gap

In total, I taught five workshops on how to access and navigate AILLA in various spaces for different audiences: one small-group workshop at a community member’s house and another at a middle school in San Marcos Zacatepec; one each at a middle and a high school in San Juan Quiahije; and a final one at a public library in San Miguel Panixtlahuaca. Two of the workshops were conducted by myself and the other three were conducted with Dr. Cruz.

Each workshop had its own dynamic. For the first workshop we conducted in San Marcos Zacatepec, we played a game during which an older speaker would say a word in Spanish and the children had to say the word in Chatino. Some of the kids actually knew more Chatino than I thought they did, but it still felt like older members of the community were more invested in what was happening than the children were. In addition, without an internet connection or access to a space for our projector, it was not possible to demonstrate the use of the archive.

The second workshop in San Marcos Zacatepec was held at a private home with a small group of people. This session included Christian, a ten-year-old who brought his Chatino de Panixtlahuaca writing workbooks with him. Everyone was serious about learning how to use the archive and engaged throughout the session. I even saw one person making a PowerPoint with AILLA instructions as I walked the group through how to register for an account and navigate the Chatino language collections.

A boy looks at a cell phone. To his right, the author stands, pointing at something on the phone's screen. In the background there are visible two men, trees, and part of a red house.
I taught Christian how to look at the AILLA collections of many different languages across Latin America.

Unexpectedly, the experience gave me insight on how to effectively organize workshops that connect communities to information resources, a key skill for any academic librarian. Although Dr. Cruz was with me at the middle school in San Juan Quiahije, I taught the workshop at the high school there by myself. This meant coordinating a session with around 40 high school students by myself. This was the first time I had taught a workshop to such a large group of people. It was challenging and I was a little nervous, but the experience was exactly what I needed to become a better information professional.

One issue that became glaringly clear was that technological requirements can be a huge barrier to access for rural Global South communities. In the middle school in San Marcos Zacatepec, there was no internet, so we were not able to actively demonstrate the archive. Although San Juan Quiahije and San Miguel Panixtlahuaca had much better internet, we still experienced technological problems. For example, in San Juan Quiahije, we quickly found out that a majority of the middle school students did not have email addresses, so we had to spend part of the workshop teaching them how to make Gmail accounts. At the high school in San Juan Quiahije, there were issues with power outlets not working. I learned that archivists need to be prepared for anything, be creative, and really reflect on the sort of technology that a community might have access to.

Exterior wall of a building with a brightly painted mural on one part. The mural shows a scene with fruits, vegetables, and trees on green land, with darker-green mountains in the background and a blue sky beyond it. Objects on the mural have white numbers painted near them. Below the painting there is a list of numbers with words, painted in black. Each word is the Chatino term for its corresponding image in the painting.
Murals with the names of fruits and vegetables were on the walls at the Chatino Culture Museum in San Miguel Panixtlahuaca.

The Need for Continuity

Despite the numerous technological problems, this project provides us with a positive example of how archives can engage with communities whose materials are represented in AILLA’s collections. As I reflected on my experience, I realized that this cannot be the end of our relationship with the Chatino-speaking community. Rather, to ensure that these efforts are successful, this should be seen as the beginning of many more projects along these lines. The experience vindicated my belief that communities whose materials are represented in archives must have access to them, and that we should do whatever we can to facilitate that access.

LLILAS Benson is a proponent of projects that emphasize horizontal relationships with the communities and organizations represented in its archives and collections. As such, LLILAS Benson’s digital resources and digital initiatives hold a great deal of promise for future collaboration of this kind.


Eden Ewing is a dual-degree master’s student at LLILAS and the iSchool.


Related Links

Making Books and Tools Speak Chatino: Interview with Hilaria Cruz*

How Languages Get Writing Systems: An Interview with Hilaria Cruz

* Dr. Hilaria Cruz a Chatino-speaking linguist, is the sister of Dr. Emiliana Cruz and a UT Austin alumna.

READ HOT AND DIGITIZED: I Know We Will Meet Again, Japanese Canadians’ Letters, 1942–1948

Read, hot & digitized: Librarians and the digital scholarship they love — In this series, librarians from the UT 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 day when I was familiarizing myself with the history of Japanese Canadians, I encountered this lovely, small online exhibition. It is built on 36 PDF files of digitized letters selected from the Joan Gillis fonds, housed at the University of British Columbia Library’s Rare Books and Special Collections. The exhibition, beautifully titled “I know we will meet again,” tells a dark and brutal episode in Japanese Canadian history from 1942 to 1948. 

The letters were written by young Japanese Canadians to Joan Gillis (1928–2019, more info on Gillis), a white teenage girl they shared elementary and middle school years with before being forcefully removed from their homes in British Columbia to various locations in interior Canada during WWII. Immediately after Pearl Harbor, the Canadian government seized fishing boats and confiscated cameras and shortwave radios owned by Japanese Canadians. In January 1942, the Canadian federal government passed an order to remove Japanese Canadians from coastal British Columbia. By March 1942, about 22,000 Japanese Canadians were dispersed to areas east of the Rocky Mountains and were not granted freedom until 1949. During their forced removal, the Canadian government also seized, confiscated, and sold Japanese Canadian properties left in BC, including lands, houses, farms, etc. 

The letters detail the harsh childhood and teenage years that Gillis’ Japanese Canadian friends had to endure. All the letters in this exhibition have been scanned, transcribed, annotated, and geo-coded, thereby making it easy to explore the letters’ content by author, theme, location, and time.

For example, when we choose to browse by subject, we are directed to a beautiful and effective visualization of the subjects discussed. 

Figure 1. Color-coded subject visualization

As a person with mild color vision deficiency, I have to commend the curators’ apparent thoughtfulness in making the spectrum easier to see. Click on the little colored circles, then the associated subject will be highlighted in each letter.

Likewise, one can open up a transcript and see every sentence’s annotated subject on the right. 

Figure 2. Annotated letter transcript.

Maps help users grasp the extent of the dispersal of the letter writers as each letter is encoded with coordinates. One can zoom in and out to see the physical distance between the letter writers. One suggestion I would have is to mark Gillis’ location as well, just to give viewers a sharper sense of how far they have been dispersed. 

Figure 3. An overview of the letters’ locations.

Figure 4. A zoomed-in and city-level view of the letters’ original locations.

The curators have enhanced the exhibition through suggested themes which include essays that reference snippets from the letters. These essays give historical contexts in which the letters were produced. For example, in the essay on “Communications,” the curators discuss how the correspondence between Gillis and her friends was censored by the Canadian authorities. Under “Labour,” one will find more information about sugar beets farming that many letter writers’ families “volunteered” to engage in, although the letters make clear this “volunteering” was the only option other than labor camps and the splitting up of families. 

Last but not least, I love the notes under “About the Collection.” The Land Acknowledgement is specific and lists all Indigenous lands that are mentioned in the collection. There is also a deep reflection of publicizing materials that were meant to be private and intimate. In particular, how the wartime censorship adds another layer of complexity to the nature of this correspondence. The curators’ own personal reflections communicated their own positionality towards the project and personal growth in a profound and touching way. 

The project is built with open-source tools. The content management tool, CollectionBuilder is a set of static web templates for online collections created and maintained by librarians at the University of Idaho. The transcriptions are prepared with Oral History as Data, also a static web tool based on Github Pages and Jekyll to analyze and visualize transcripts, also by the same group at the University of Idaho. 

I love the collection not only in the sense it teaches me about a dark episode in history effectively but also demonstrates how such a project can help each of us grow by reflecting on our own positions in relation to the history documented in the project. 

Yi Shan is East Asian Studies Librarian at the University of Texas Libraries.


Further reading

  1. UT Libraries Asian Americans Studies Guide
  2. Fonds RBSC-ARC-1786 – Joan Gillis fonds at UBC Rare Books and Special Collections, UBC Library. https://rbscarchives.library.ubc.ca/joan-gillis-fonds
  3. Matthew McRae, “Japanese Canadian internment and the struggle for redress,” Canadian Museum for Human Rights. https://tinyurl.com/2xzujnhr?t=1687387156.
  4. Maryka Omatsu. Bittersweet Passage: Redress and the Japanese Canadian Experience. Toronto : Between The Lines, 1992.
  5. Mona Oikawa. Cartographies of Violence: Japanese Canadian Women, Memory, and the Subjects of the Internment. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2018.

Read Hot and Digitized: Preserving the Outcasts with The Queer Zine Archive Project

Read, hot & digitized: Librarians and the digital scholarship they love — In this series, librarians from the UT 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.

Zines have long been a medium for weirdos, freaks, and outcasts on the margins, which means they’ve been a staple of queer expression. The Queer Zine Archive Project (QZAP) has been digitizing and preserving queer zines for twenty years

First of all, what are zines? Zines are DIY publications, usually staple-bound and made with printer paper. They’re cheap and easy to produce, and most zine makers give them away for free or sell them at low prices to recoup costs. This allows them to bypass mainstream publishers, so zines are often a medium for marginalized and radical voices. 

Zines developed out of Science Fiction fan culture in the 1930s. In the 1970s, the onset of photocopying technology coincided with the rise of punk music. Punk fans (who often overlapped with Sci-fi fans) latched onto zines as a way to write about their favorite bands, share stories, and build community. As such, zines have always been a venue for outsider expression and radical politics. In the 1990s, feminist and queer zine makers really took hold of the medium. Punk communities might have been made up of outcasts, but they weren’t immune to misogyny and homophobia. Women and LGBTQ punks experienced marginalization and discrimination within their scenes, and zines provided a much-needed space to voice these experiences and find other like-minded queers. 

So a project like QZAP is pretty revolutionary! This searchable database is run by a collective based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and it is and will remain free and open to use. QZAP’s goal is to create a “living history” so they continue to accept new submissions from contemporary queer zine makers. They hold a broad definition of “queer,” too, recognizing that identities and language change over time. Zine makers submit their physical zines to QZAP, and collective members, usually librarians, archivists, scholars, and graduate students, scan the zines and create the metadata. Like zines themselves, QZAP is a DIY enterprise!

QZAP’s homepage features a rotation of different zine covers. This featured zine is about the representation of Black Lesbians in the Lesbian Herstory Archives.

QZAP allows users to browse zines, which is one of my favorite ways to explore their collections. With so much interesting and obscure content, browsing QZAP’s collection is a fun, serendipitous experience. QZAP also has an Advanced Search option for users to find zines by author, place of publication, or year of publication. I’ve used QZAP when working with Women’s & Gender Studies classes so students can see a broad set of queer zines over time. While the website’s look and feel are pretty simple and the technology is a bit dated, students respond enthusiastically to the content. I think QZAP’s simple design and stable technology have made it a sustainable project, especially because it is run by a volunteer collective independent of a university or institution. 

Here’s a screenshot of a digitized zine and its metadata record in QZAP. I like that the metadata is so prominent next to the digital object.

One of my favorite things about QZAP is that it uses a specialized metadata schema just for zines called xZINECOREx, based on the more common DublinCore schema. Cataloging and describing zines are challenging. They often don’t have a title page with publication information. Sometimes no author or creator is listed, or the author goes by a pseudonym. Maybe they have a publication date, but often they do not.

A sample record using the xZINECOREx metadata schema.

Given these complexities, libraries and archives handle describing zines in all sorts of ways. The xZINECOREx schema provides a standard that can be used across institutions and by independent projects like QZAP. QZAP contributes metadata from its collection to the Zine Union Catalog, which aims to be a single place to search for zines across multiple libraries, archives, and independent collections. Because zines are ephemeral, this catalog is a great resource for scholars interested in the history of zines. 

A digital collection like QZAP is vital to preserving the history of these rare, hard-to-find publications, yet there remains great value in studying physical zines. The physical objects provide the reader with a unique, tactile experience. This is especially important for LGBTQ+ history, which is so often erased or hidden. Reading a personal, first-hand account from a queer punk in the 90s – from the actual paper zine that person made by hand – is visceral and powerful. It’s an experience hard to replicate in an online setting. If you find QZAP intriguing, I encourage you to stop by our Zine Collection on the 5th floor of the Fine Arts Library. Our collection has many queer zines, including many published in Texas, and dates back to the 1990s.  

Want to learn more about zines? Check out these resources: