A One Stop Black History Shop: Umbra Search African American History

If you've been reading my blog for some time or know anything about me, you are aware that the digitization of African American Historical Collections is my thing. It might also be on your radar that I am one of the rare librarians who actually enjoys assessment and that I have created a number of digital collection user experience surveys.

 Back in March, when I first arrived at Payne, I received an email from the Society of American Archivists Archives and Archivist of Color Roundtable listserv about an opportunity to test out a new online library of African American Historical objects. After visiting the site and completing the Beta Survey, I immediately saw areas of synergy between the Umbra digital collection and the Payne Theological Seminary and A.M.E. Church Archive.

Slated to officially launch in Winter 2016, the Umbra project is a partnership between the University of Minnesota Libraries’ Givens Collection of African American Literature and Performing Arts Archives, and Penumbra Theatre Company. The Umbra project makes digitally accessible a national collection of digital material order to connect researchers, artists, teachers, and students to over 500 years of African American history, represented by photographs, scripts, manuscripts, maps, news stories, film and video. In its beta form, Umbra contains over 350,000 items. Umbra: Search African American History is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services and the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation.

 

After spending the better part of an hour searching the Beta test site I was pleased with how intituitive the search interface was and how accurately it produced results with fairly simple subject phrases. Umbra expertly recommended great related subjects for review. I also searched for under-highlighted figures in both African American and A.M.E. history and was still rewarded with enough relevant sources to craft a small exhibit in Omeka (whether or not one can create a page on a topic or person in Omeka is a good metric for me). Items featured in the collection link back to the original contributor's page but still open in a consistent design on the Umbra site. There is consistency in user experience (font, color, size, graphic elements) across the site. The Umbra project is also the "bee knees" because its contributors represent a range of cultural heritage organizations including majority academic libraries, museums, heritage registers, and the archives of historically black college and universities. Partners include The Schomburg, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, Yale University, African American Registry and...wait for it...Payne Theological Seminary.  

 

Payne materials will be included in the portal and Umbra A.M.E materials (approximately 3,262 items) will be incorporated into a future Payne digital archive to be hosted at www.payne.edu. I reached out to Cecily Marcus, Principal Investigator of the project to discuss the inclusion of materials from the Payne Theological Seminary and A.M.E. Church Digital Collection. The project is well administered as evidenced by the Umbra Partner Agreement that addresses metadata and image issues, including copyright and Letter of Understanding that addresses other partnership opportunities. This was a collaboration that made immediate sense for Payne stakeholders and the project coordinators' attention to detail and concerns for copyright and proper attribution in this digital age assuaged any concerns I had about participating. Along with our items being included in the national discovery platform, an embeddable widget that brings together digitized metadata and images will be featured on the Payne portal so that users with a range of interests can search broadly African American history.

Click here to become a Beta Tester and find out more about the collection!