Hi, everybody. My name is Joseph Alley, and I am the new Project Archivist for “The Road from Hell is Paved with Little Rocks.” As you know from reading this blog, this project is the result of a grant from the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) as part of their Digitizing Hidden Collections Initiative.<\/p>\n
I obtained my Master of Arts\u00a0in Public History from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock in May of 2016. While in the program, I held a graduate assistantship at the William J. Clinton Presidential Library and took part in a seminar class where I helped publish a history of the Little Rock Zoo. I also hold a Bachelor of Science in History from Bethel University in McKenzie, Tennessee. <\/p>\n
During my time in the public history program, I followed the “museum track” of classes. It was not until I completed my thesis using a collection at UA Little Rock Center for Arkansas History and Culture (CAHC) that I discovered my interest in working in archives. After I defended my thesis at the end of 2015, CAHC asked me to work on some of their other collections. I have been with them ever since. <\/p>\n
Currently my focus is creating metadata for the Butler Center of Arkansas Studies’ Office of Desegregation Monitoring papers. Using our recently-acquired planetary scanner, two scanning technicians create over 1,000 scans per day. I then am also preparing all of these scanned images to be uploaded to the online catalog for access by researchers around the world.<\/p>\n
Another aspect of my position is working with multiple institutions. Though I am an employee of the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, I also work with the Butler Center for Arkansas Studies and the Little Rock Central High School National Historic Site. This is a very large project that will digitize thousands of individual documents, and it requires multiple hands working on it to make sure it will see completion.<\/p>\n
Look for future posts in the coming months about materials from the collection, our experiences with the overhead scanner, and our final push to the end this coming August!<\/p>\n\tngg_shortcode_0_placeholder\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Meet Our New Project Archivist Hi, everybody. My name is Joseph Alley, and I am the new Project Archivist for “The Road from Hell is Paved with Little Rocks.” As you know from reading this blog, this project is the…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n