ETSU’s Archives of Appalachia and Reece Museum were awarded a SHARP grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, which was distributing funds given by the American Rescue Plan.
“The Reece Museum and the Archives of Appalachia, we put our heads together and came up with a proposal that’s going to help draw attention to some of the unique voices represented through the artifacts and materials we have in our collections,” said Jeremy Smith, director of the Archives of Appalachia.
During the pandemic, many patrons began expecting access to more digital content in addition to in-person materials.
“We really wanted to leverage that and come up with a way that we can enhance digital access to a greater portion of our collections and, at the same time, really highlight some of the diversity of voices and the perspectives that we have in our collections,” said Smith.
Through the grant, the Archives and Reece will be hiring three new positions: a full-time, a 12-month position in both places and a part-time photographer.
They will also purchase equipment and supplies that will help them digitize their content and will be bringing on more student workers to aid in the process.
“What we are doing is selecting key parts of our holdings, and with our additional staff, we are either going to photograph them if they are artifacts, which is primarily what the Reece deals with, or we’re going to scan them on a range of different flat bed scanners, if they’re manuscripts or flat materials,” said Smith.
They plan to provide access to over 30,000 items they have not previously had available online, including the Mary Alexander papers, writings by an African American historian from ETSU.
Patrons can expect an expansive collection of new materials to appear online as early as Fall 2022 and leading into early 2023.
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