Visiting Scholar Examines Development of 1920s Ball State and Its Relationship to Muncie as Part of Dissertation

The Ball State University Libraries have a wealth of resources to support the research of visiting scholars.

LaDale C. Winling, a Ph.D. candidate in Architectural History and Theory from the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, spent the month of July 2008 conducting research in the University Libraries’ Archives and Special Collections and the Geospatial Resources and Map Collection. Winling’s research was funded by Ball State’s Center for Middletown Studies.

Winling is currently working on his dissertation, tentatively titled Post-Industrial Plans: Universities, Students and the Politics of Urban Space. He chose Ball State University, along with the University of Texas-Austin, University of California-Berkeley, and the University of Chicago-Hyde Park/Woodlawn, as part of a chronological case study in the changing relationship between cities and institutions of higher education.

Dr. James J. Connolly, Director of the Center for Middletown Studies, said, “Dale is here to explore connections between the development of the community and the growth of Ball State between the world wars. His study will add an interesting dimension to research on Middletown, since the school’s role in the city was all but ignored by the Lynds in their first book, as well as to the history of higher education in the United States.”

While at Ball State, Winling used a variety of resources from the Archives and Special Collections to examine the development of Ball State Teacher’s College in the 1920s through the papers of former president Lemuel A. Pittenger, college building and planning files, the Ball State Daily News, and real estate and planning records for Muncie and Delaware County. He also took advantage of the collections and GIS resources available in the Geospatial Resources and Map Collection.

Speaking of his visit, Winling said, “Researching the role of Ball State in Muncie during the Middletown years would not be possible without the rich resources on administrative activity and student life available at the university archives. Combining that with the mapping capabilities of the Geospatial Resources and documents in the Map Collection, I hope to make a significant contribution to the scholarship on Muncie.”

For more information, contact Maren L. Read, University Libraries’ Archivist for Manuscript Collections, MLRead@bsu.edu, 765-285-5078.

Ball State University Libraries’ Ongoing Collaboration with Center for Middletown Studies Promotes Learning, Teaching, and Research

Ball State University Libraries seeks to support the learning, teaching, and research missions of Ball State University through collaboration with academic units.

One long-standing example of this type of collaborative work has been the relationship between the Center for Middletown Studies and the University Libraries’ Archives and Special Collections.

Archives and Special Collections personnel serve as ex-officio members of the Advisory Board for the Center for Middletown Studies. At the fall meeting of the Board on December 10, 2007, evidence of the ongoing collaboration between the two units was highlighted in several ways.

Philip James Deloria, archivist for digital projects and university records, gave a presentation on a project to establish a University Libraries’ presence in Second Life, a multi-user virtual environment. The goal of the collaborative project with the Center for Middletown Studies is to create a Middletown Library and Archives, which will consist of an exhibit space and reference area showcasing Middletown Studies resources from Archives and Special Collections.

Deloria presented a tour of the virtual world of Second Life for Board members. He provided examples of compelling educational applications of the technology to present resources for students, faculty, and researchers in this virtual environment. A front page article on the University Libraries’ Second Life project appeared in the Ball State Daily News on the same day as the meeting.

Maren L. Read, archivist for manuscript collections, and John B. Straw, assistant dean for digital initiatives and special collections, reported on activities, acquisitions, outreach, and use related to Middletown research in Archives and Special Collections.

Middletown and local history materials accounted for 26% of the total use in Archives and Special Collections from June through November 2007. Two Educational Foundations classes used these resources for an immersive learning project on Washington Carver and South View elementary schools. Fourteen significant collections related to Middletown and Muncie history were added to Archives and Special Collections in the last six months.

Several new collaborative initiatives are planned between the University Libraries and the Center for Middletown Studies for the new year, including grant proposals to create a multi-dimensional Middletown Digital Teaching Archive.

Historic Anti-Klan Newspaper to be Available in the Ball State University Digital Media Repository, a Project of Ball State University Libraries

The announcement that the Ball State University Libraries have received a Library Services and Technology Act digitization mini-grant for 2007-2008 for $23,041 means that a historically significant newspaper will soon be available globally for research, learning, and teaching. The grant funds will be used to digitize The Muncie Post-Democrat and provide access to it through the Ball State University Digital Media Repository, a project of the University Libraries.

The Muncie Post-Democrat was published by former Muncie mayor George Dale from 1921 through 1936, and continued after his death until 1950. During Dale’s tenure, the newspaper was a strong voice against the Ku Klux Klan in Indiana, especially the Muncie Klan. Dale was nationally prominent for his fight against the Klan. He was beaten, shot, and even spent time in prison because of his strong anti-Klan position.

Dale used the newspaper as a weapon against the Klan and its many prominent local members, including Muncie’s mayor, chief of police, lawyers, judges, and other politicians. The newspaper is a unique historical artifact that is extremely valuable for researchers on the Klan in Indiana during the 1920s and 1930s.

After Dale’s death, the newspaper continued, although the battle with the Klan was basically over. The later issues provide a pro-Democratic Party, pro-labor viewpoint. While the anti-Klan years may be of the greatest historical interest to researchers, the entire run of the newspaper has educational and research value.

The newspaper is used by students, faculty, historians, and the general public. Digitizing this rich resource will make it available 24/7/365 to a vastly increased number of users globally through the Internet.

The digitization of the Muncie Post-Democrat will also serve as a key element in another project. Ball State University’s Center for Middletown Studies, in collaboration with Archives and Special Collections, has begun to work to develop an online teaching archive to explore the impact of the Great Depression on Muncie, the site of the seminal Middletown research.

Writing in support of the grant application, Dr. James J. Connolly, Director of the Center for Middletown Studies, said that the digital archive will permit students, researchers, and the general public to investigate the ways the Great Depression changed (or did not change) the experiences of Middletown residents in the six areas identified by sociologists Robert and Helen Lynd in their original 1920s study.

The original newspapers are quickly deteriorating. A vast majority of them are very fragile, brittle, and virtually falling apart when handled. For the project, the paper copies will be encapsulated so that they can be scanned without harming them. Digitizing them will help preserve the originals as well as make the newspaper more accessible. Optical Character Recognition will be done to make the text of the newspapers searchable.

The grant project begins in July, with 1,198 issues and 4,924 pages to be digitized and made available through the Digital Media Repository by mid-2008.

For more information, contact John B. Straw, Ball State University Libraries’ Director for Archives and Special Collections, JStraw@bsu.edu, (765) 285-5078.

This newsletter article first appeared in The Library Insider 5(5): 5; May 2007.

Ball State University Libraries Staff Collaborate to Make Middletown Digital Oral History Collection Searchable

Researchers can now search 42 oral history interviews in the Middletown Digital Oral History Collection, at http://libx.bsu.edu/MidOrHist/midorhist.php.

For the Middletown Jewish Oral History Project I, Dr. Warren Vander Hill conducted interviews with Martin Schwartz and Mort Pazol, among others. The Black Muncie Oral History Project, conducted by Hurley C. Goodall and J. Paul Mitchell, includes interviews with Muncie, Indiana citizens such as Ray Buley and Lucille Williams.

Each oral history interview includes a streaming wma audio file and a transcript in PDF format. The inclusion of transcripts makes it possible for researchers to read along as they listen to the interviews or identify specific sections of the interview for listening. By providing the transcripts in PDF format, users can also print them for further study and analysis.

The transcripts provide students and faculty with several ways to search the collection. They can search each transcript for subjects, names, or places as well as search across all of the oral history interviews and the larger Ball State University Digital Media Repository, a project of the University Libraries.

Writing transcripts to accompany the oral history interviews has been a combined effort of people throughout the University Libraries, including staff and student assistants from various units within these groups:
· Access Services
· Acquisitions Services
· Archives and Special Collections Research Center
· Cataloging and Metadata Services
· Center for Middletown Studies
· Geospatial Center and Map Collections
· Metadata and Digital Initiatives

These personnel have spent many hours listening to the interviews to ensure that the transcripts are accurate. The transcripts are then checked and rechecked at least twice by Archives and Special Collections Research Center and Collection Resources Management personnel for accuracy.

In our training for this project, we selected the Baylor University Institute for Oral History Transcribing Style Guide. This document guided us in transcribing the words, speech patterns, and thought patterns of the interviewees and interviewers in a way that is easy to read and uniform in structure. Copies of this guide were given to each project participant, and the guide has helped to answer many questions, such as when to include and when not to include crutch words, like ‘hm,’ ‘uh-hm,’ and ‘unh-uh.’

Metadata and Digital Initiatives personnel also created an Oral Histories Wiki which assisted in ongoing training,www.bsu.edu/libraries/wiki/index.php?title=Oral_Histories.

Using the Wiki, we share any areas not covered in the style guide with the personnel working on the project. For example, we have included “Common Capitalization and Spelling Questions,” a list of specific terms that have come up in the interviews, such as words related to Jewish and Catholic religious practices.

The City Directories and several other manuscript collections in the Archives and Special Collections Research Center have been useful in checking the spellings of names and places in Muncie, Indiana, that are often mentioned in the interviews. We have also used collections already available in the Digital Media Repository e.g., The Muncie Times and the Other Side of Middletown photographs.

To facilitate locating oral histories, metadata records have been created for each interview using Dublin Core, a back-end standard used to describe digital content in a consistent way. We created user-friendly fields, such as Interviewee, Interviewer, Date Recorded, Duration, and Subject.

In addition to providing useful information about the oral histories, metadata records allow the collection to be searched within the larger Ball State University Digital Media Repository. For example, if you do an exact phrase search for Marion, Indiana, you will find digital objects from several collections including oral histories, audio newscasts, and newspaper issues.

Another tool implemented in this collection is controlled vocabulary. In this case, controlled vocabulary refers to a standard list of authorized terms like names, places, and subjects used to describe digital artifacts in metadata records. While the Digital Media Repository can be searched using natural language, inputting descriptors in this controlled way makes it easier for researchers to find all the information related to a specific topic. For example, when referring to the Black Muncie History Project’s interviewer Hurley C. Goodall, we enter Goodall, Hurley C. Clicking on this personal name will bring up all of his interviews in the collection.

For information on the process of transcribing and describing oral history interviews, contact Amanda A. Hurford, Digital Initiatives Multimedia Developer, AAHurford@bsu.edu, (765) 285-3349 or Maren L. Read, Assistant Archivist for Manuscript Collections, MLRead@bsu.edu, (765) 285-5078.

This newsletter article first appeared in The Library Insider 5(3): 9; March 2007.

Ball State University Classes Cancelled due to Severe Winter Storm; Library Remains Open Except for 3 Hours

On Tuesday, February 13, 2007, Muncie, Indiana received 11 to 12 inches of snow or more, depending on where you were in the city or surrounding area. This was the region’s third largest snowfall in 60 years, according to the National Weather Service. The snow fell on top of an existing four-inch base. Wind gusts exceeded 41 mph on Tuesday afternoon, with visibility dropping to less than a quarter mile, and continued to blow causing drifting through the evening and Wednesday.

Ball State University cancelled classes on Tuesday; however, all Ball State offices remained open, including Bracken Library. As the day went on, Libraries’ staff called to report that they could not drive to work because of the inclement weather and poor condition of local streets and county roads. For this reason, Bracken closed at midnight rather than at its usual closing time of 3 a.m.

Late Tuesday evening, University President Jo Ann Gora announced that the University was closed, effective at 10:30 p.m. and that it would remain closed until Wednesday noon. As conditions worsened, this announcement was later modified to an all-campus closing of offices and classes until Wednesday at 5:00 p.m. The exception was that essential services personnel were required to report for work during the closure. The University’s Essential Services Units include:
· Residence and Dining Halls
· Public Safety
· University Computing Services
· Bracken Library
· Health Center
· Switchboard
· Student Center Hotel
· Heat Plant
· University Gyms
· WIPB-TV
· Indiana Public Radio

Special thanks are due to Suzanne S. Rice, Assistant Dean for Public Services; Jan A. Vance, Periodical/Reserve/Microforms Collection Supervisor; and student assistants Laura E. Shackelford and Max F. Hackman who worked Tuesday night until midnight. Similarly, Suzanne and Jan were first on hand Wednesday morning for Bracken Library’s 7 a.m. opening. They were joined by Diane L. Frankland, Circulation Supervisor, and Bradley C. Johnston, Educational Resources Center Booking/Reserves Assistant, both of whom walked to work to help open Bracken. Additional essential staff members arrived through the day as soon as they could find means to do so.

Thanks are also due to the University’s 28-person grounds crew who worked tirelessly to clear sidewalks, streets, and parking lots to allow students to park and move around campus. This included cleaning the walks leading to Bracken Library’s north and south entrances.

Thanks are also due to the University Libraries’ personnel who, despite the really bad weather, made it possible for the Libraries to provide our students and faculty with services for research and learning.

For more information, contact Arthur W. Hafner, Ph.D., M.B.A., Ball State University’s Dean of University Libraries, AHafner@bsu.edu, (765) 285-5277.

This newsletter article first appeared in The Library Insider 5(3): 2; March 2007. Photo courtesy of Derick L. Brattain.