My name is Natalia Fernández. I am Oregon State University’s new Oregon Multicultural Librarian and I am the archivist of the Oregon Multicultural Archives, the OMA – this archive is a part of Oregon State University (OSU), located in Corvallis, OR.
This summer the OMA has two very exciting projects that I want to share with anyone who is interested and I thought…why not a blog? But before I begin talking about those projects, I think a little background information about the OMA would be helpful. So, I plan to briefly explain the establishment and mission of the OMA, mention a few cornerstone collections, and then I’ll talk about the two upcoming projects.
The OMA was established in 2005 with a collection focus of 4 ethnic minorities within Oregon: African-Americans, Asian-Americans, Native Americans, and Latinos. First, existing collections within the OSU archives that matched the collection scope were highlighted and then new collections were solicited.
Though the physical collections are a part of the OSU archives, they are intellectually separated. On the website you will find collection guides which are divided by ethnic community, a link to our digital photographic collection, and a related resources page that includes a listing of repositories that hold multicultural collections throughout the Northwest.
http://archives.library.oregonstate.edu/oma/
The OMA Digital Collection currently contains over 600 images with new materials added at least every two weeks. One of our most heavily represented collections within the digital collection is the Urban League of Portland records which I will discuss in more detail momentarily – the digital collection contains over 350 Urban League photographs.
http://oregondigital.org/sets/oregon-multicultural-archives/
I’ve selected a few collections that represent the scope and variety of archival materials within the OMA: the Braceros in Oregon Photograph Collection, the Urban League of Portland Records, and The Japanese-American Association of Lane County, Oregon Oral History Collection.
This collection documents both the work and daily lives of the agricultural workers in the 1940s Bracero Program. It is an example of a collection created out of existing OSU university archives materials, the majority of which are Extension Service photographs. The website itself includes a lengthy listing of additional primary and secondary sources.
http://oregondigital.org/sets/braceros/
The Urban League of Portland was established in 1945 to assist the African-American Community socially, economically, and politically. The collection was acquired in 2007 and because the organization still exists, we continue to have a relationship with the record creators and we continue to receive administrative and programming records.
http://archives.library.oregonstate.edu/ulpdx/index.html
The content of these 11 oral histories includes the interviewees immigrant and World War II internment camp experiences, as well as their lives in Eugene and neighboring communities in the years following the war. The website consists of contextual and biographical information, interview transcripts, and digital recordings of the interviews.
http://osulibrary.oregonstate.edu/digitalcollections/jaa/
The OMA has two very exciting upcoming projects: the first is a project to develop and implement an Archives and Records Management Training Institute for Oregon’s nine federally recognized tribes. The second is to create a website/digital collection for a recent acquisition of Oregon Chinese Disinterment documents.
There are nine federally recognized tribes in Oregon and various tribal leaders have voiced the need for assistance with their tribal archives. So the question became “How can we provide tribal members with the opportunity to attend an archival and records management training institute at little to no cost and specifically designed for their needs?”
The OSU Archives developed a proposal for a 2 year LSTA grant that would provide the tribes with financially affordable and locally accessible archival training. The year 1 proposal was accepted and this summer we will be visiting each of the tribes for an onsite needs assessment of their archival materials and we will begin developing the institute curriculum.
The curriculum development and institute itself will be a collaborative effort. We have invited Native American archivists from the Grand Ronde Tribe and the Smithsonian to co-teach and the curriculum will be based on other Tribal Institutes. Our hope is to host the institute in the new OSU Native American Longhouse which is scheduled to be completed in the Summer of 2012.
As part of our goals of accessibility and sustainability with this project, we plan to create a project website to be updated throughout the two years, record the institute workshops and sessions to then make them available for future use for the attendees as well as non-attendees, and follow up with the tribes in the months following the institute.
Our Second Upcoming Project: It is part of Chinese tradition for the living to care for the deceased’s remains in order to protect their spirits and those of the living. The way in which the Chinese immigrants that came to the Pacific Northwest in the mid nineteenth century and afterward continued this practice was by making arrangements for their remains to be disinterred and shipped back to China to their families.
In early 2010, an anonymous donor gave a box of records to the Oregon Public Broadcasting radio’s newsroom which pertained to the shipment of Chinese immigrant remains from Portland to Hong Kong. Several months later Northwest News Networks regional correspondent Tom Banse reported the story.
The collection consists of documents such as these disinterment application and permit forms from cemeteries all over Oregon. Two major disinterment and shipment efforts took place in 1928 and 1949. The organization responsible for this process was the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association.
As part of a collaborative effort, the records were temporarily transferred to the PSU University Archives for digitization and preservation work, the OMA will host the electronic files within a digital collection, and the original documents will eventually be transferred permanently to the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association in Portland.
The digital collection project will begin this summer as an internship and it will be a collaborative effort between the OMA, the CCBA and potentially other institutions who have related materials. As a part of this project, the CCBA has more documents to digitize, documents in Chinese need to be translated, and further research needs to be conducted.
One shared idea between the two projects that I just mentioned is the concept of stewardship of documents vs. custodianship of documents. Rather than solely focusing on acquiring physical collections, the OMA can provide assistance to communities to care for their own archival materials and can act as a host to collections rather than an owner. A way in which to accomplish this is by building trusting relationships with communities and working in collaboration with other institutions with similar goals to ultimately allow communities to tell their own stories and preserve their own history.
