 So Paris, I really do think you're a couple of quick revisions away from being ready to submit this. It's come together really well I've scribbled some notes on it here, and I'll get those. Oh, I'm typed up and get them over to you ASAP Cool. Cool. Cool. I'll get those revisions done as fast as I can and thanks for taking the time out to look at this Appreciate it. No need to thank me. I'm your mentor. It's my job. Don't worry. I can mentor you as well Really? There's no other tenured librarians. It's just me and you in the library. It's just me and you Good evening and welcome to For Your Reference brought to you by your friendly neighborhood librarians here at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville I'm Robin Beaton-Beau. I'm Paris Layland, and I'm Sarah Johnson And I just want to say y'all I have enough love to go around. Okay? Oh goody And Paris you do have to remember all of your lessons about sharing Nobody likes a lesson Robin Well, I think all of us agree that Mentoring is a critical part of the academic process But I do feel like academics sometimes forget that staff might benefit from it as well So we tend to focus on tenure track faculty And and students particularly grad students It sounds like a growth opportunity to me Yeah for sure for sure I think all of us could use someone to help us get through this thing called life And tonight we have a very special guest with her own perspective on mentoring and a variety of other topics This is reviewer two I would like to send a warm welcome to our guest tonight. Dr Stacey Patton is an award-winning journalist author college professor and nationally recognized child advocate I could go on but I prefer to let her speak for herself Welcome Stacey Hi, Robin. It's so good to be here. I'm so happy to have you here Why don't we start by having you tell us a little bit about you and uh, you're you're much varied work So I as you said I'm a college professor. I teach journalism at Howard University I'm also a research associate at Morgan State University. My academic work focuses on Childhood in American history as a construct Looking at the intersections of race and childhood and parenting, corporal punishment The horrible lynchings of children during Jim Crow and I'm also a child advocate outside of Academe so I do a lot of work with child welfare professionals pediatricians clinicians law enforcement folks To talk about things like corporal punishment juvenile justice issues racial disparities in education those sorts of things Yeah, so you uh, you are very very busy and doing Work doing some very short work Glad you are not there doing that. Yes um Now due to some unforeseen circumstances The reviewer too that was planned to be here cannot join us tonight. Um, so every you and the audience are stuck with me That's a good day Um, now, so let's get to that end the question you and I are going to be talking around generally Is this uh, what does history teaching history telling an academic mentorship need to do Right now in our current moment Before we start I want to remind everyone in the audience if you would like to ask a question of our guest Just drop them in the comments on either youtube or facebook and we'll see how many we can get to Now if it's okay with you, I'll start us off with a question We talked a little bit about how this was going to look before this and uh, you made note that going into grad school You had some expectations about who your idea what your ideal advisor would look like who that would be and how did that how did reality sort of Differ from what your initial expectations were so I was going into Enhanced my knowledge about african-american history and uh, I had in mind that I wanted I had a question in mind that I wanted to understand the historical evolution of corporal punishment in african-american culture and so When I applied to graduate schools, I think I probably applied to a half dozen schools One of the things I did was I went on department websites to look at the profiles of The professors who were there. I looked at the type of work that they were doing The books they had written What their areas of focus were so that I could make sure that I went to a program where there were people who were versed um in these particular fields and um and because I'm african-american I thought oh, I'm going to go to a history program where there's some african-american faculty They surely could are the best possible, you know, equipped Folks to help me navigate my research process my growth my understanding and so I came into my program thinking oh, I'll work with these two of very well known african-american women historians and I quickly Learned that they just weren't the best match. Some of it was personality differences ideological differences Some of it had to do with accessibility because a lot of times when you're Black faculty at predominantly white institutions You get deluged with Having to do all the diversity work and the undergraduates come to you because you're there And they just don't always have enough time or energy to nurture graduate students and so I got a lesson from another mentor another famous african-american male historian who kind of chuckled and he says You're going to learn that the best qualified people don't always share the same, you know Physiognomy that was the word that he used I had to look at it Physiognomy as you it was about who's the best red who's capable of Preparing you to make nuanced arguments to find new insights to create a document that has value to the profession That's going to add value to your marketability beyond your program And help you do some cutting-edge scholarship that speaks across different fields And so I dumped them I it was a lot of backlash for doing that because it's a you know When I was a reporter at the chronicle higher education I always did stories about students grad students particularly who made that decision and suffered the consequences Right. It's a very political sort of thing. I think people don't realize it just going Oh, wait, I think it'll be easier to work with this person over here like that That is seen by a lot of academics as a huge slight and if And grad students need to know that they're like pawns and The nastiness and the politics of of academe. I had no Clue just how mean spirited and you know sabotaging like you're talking about people with tenure You know people who are full professors You know doing these sorts of things to Folks, you know, they just get power off of either making or breaking other people's careers young folks Especially right and I will say I I've seen some of that as well I've also seen though that there are people like you and I think people like myself who Have you know gone through a process and thought well, that's it fall down on the side of I really hate that I had to suffer through that and I'm going to make sure nobody else has to do Absolutely. Yes So tell us a little about who your advisor Ended up being Because that's who was supposed to be with us tonight and unfortunately she cannot be here Yes, so I had a wonderful advisor dr. Virginia yonnes from rector's history Program. She actually started teaching in the program the year I was born We always had a good laugh about that You were on the tenure track the year I was born. So she's a immigration scholar Um focuses mostly on The experiences of Italians and does work on marvered need and So she's well versed in terms of concepts of childhood And anthropology and so on and so forth and we were an unlikely pair Here I was concerned about Understanding, you know, african-american childhood. So at first I'm thinking what is this white woman? You're gonna teach me Black childhood. I know black childhood better than she does. I was once a black childhood. I survived black childhood She can't tell me anything, but I met up with her in a A semester-long seminar on childhood and it was a Cross-disciplinary group of scholars from Rutgers and beyond who met weekly and I remember giving her my seminar paper and She read it and when I got it back it looked like a crime scene And I was like, oh my god. I know nothing and so That's the thing is when you just first start grad school you don't and you just need to Except that and except the sea of red and do what you can to fix it Absolutely So we met and we sat down together side by side as we would do for the next, you know, six years and She explained every mark Every comment, but it wasn't just like this is wrong. That's wrong. You don't know anything. What are you doing here? Go back to journalism. You'll never be a historian it was This thing has a lot of potential and I'm gonna show you what works And I'm going to show you how to make it better I'm going to show you how to write like a historian and how to connect the experiences of black children To this so-called master narrative of american history And I'm going to show you how to add a lot of new ones and our relationship began with that and and we evolved into friendship and you know, I call her the wise woman and You know regard her like one of my village moms You know, she did more than just mentor me through You know the dissertation proposal the oral defense the actual writing of the dissertation itself You know, she would show me, you know, like if I needed a letter of recommendation It wasn't that she would just write this Letter for me. She'd say you're gonna have to do these for students in the future So this is how you do this. This is how you write a job letter This is how you need to market yourself on this interview Let me tell you some secrets about what really gets historians all excited for a candidate You know, so she had a lot of humor lots of nurture and you know, and she just taught me life stuff too That's awesome So you talk about her her sort of teaching of how to be a historian and a thing that historians do is they um dig around a lot in the archives, which uh, I know you've spent a lot of time doing Um, and that differs a little bit bit from like, you know, library research that people typically think about as you know Going in and finding articles and databases From your perspective, what do you feel like the archives have afforded you In terms of storytelling that these other kinds of sources don't Well, so I think this is a question about the difference between Libraries and archives, you know, of course, both are excellent Resources of information for the public. It's an important, uh, role in that But they they they differ in terms of the types of materials that they hold and the way that people can get in and access them Um, so for me, I've used archives um archival materials such as letters photographs, uh, you know, this primary source stuff that's really unique and rare and And specialized and when I've gone into the archives as a storyteller, I've used them as a journalist Um as a as a historian Um, you know, I find that the people who oversee them Are very knowledgeable about these documents. They often give you way more than you ask for So sometimes I when I was in grad school I would walk into like the library of congress or some, you know, the schaumburg or whatever And people would look at me like I was no child left behind because I'm very young And I would ask these guys like I need to see the ledgers From the new york society for the suppression of vice. They'd look at me like, what do you need that for girly? And I'm like, you know, for this dissertation chapter that they perk up So they always find me these Documents that I wanted but things that were related and I was able to get the serendipity of making these synergetic, you know, uh You know connection between the files and so, um as a storyteller I use archival records to make sense of the past um The present and these historical echoes that we're living with Right now and so they help us do storytelling with multiple characters Different perspectives different possibilities One of the things my advisor jenny taught me about the archives is that, you know Um, you got to look for these moments of contingency contingencies these topsy turvy relationships the unusual suspects And so the archives from me Have helped me expand the number of stories the different kinds of stories that can be told and for me That's trying to look for children who don't often leave behind records But they have these experiences that get recorded in the most, um, you know Low places pun intended And add some sort of nuance to um, how we understand history Great so you You do research you dig around in some pretty dark stuff when you're here in the archives, so um It thinking about your relationship with jenny can you tell us about a time when she really helped you work through? Maybe some difficult content you encountered and you were you were maybe struggling with it Yeah, so I you know because of the topics that I look at which is really about the abuse of children horrible abuses in For me the archives have been a chamber of horrors And sometimes I'm like there's no hope here There are no heroes In this story You know, we often are told to go into the archives and find resistance people who fought back Um, but sometimes it's not there um, so I think that I recall gathering, um Old postcards from the late 19th early 20th century of children um These are cartoon images that continue to circulate in our culture now as black memorabilia And I collected hundreds of these things from different sources And I was just looking at all this awful stuff and I'm like this is f'd up All right. This is horrible. These people are evil and so I would call her up and you know, I'm like I found this disgusting stuff and you know people suck right and so You know, she would allow me to rant To very in very raw terms describe what I was looking at and how I felt and it was in that process that you know my you know, uh My emotions were overriding my critical thinking about this stuff and clouding my ability to ask historical questions Like who are the artists behind these? Who are the companies? Can we go into the archives and look for any written material that explains their motives? How did people in that time? Understand what they were creating. What questions can we ask? What assumptions can we make? So we would go through that emotional process and then say okay now that we've gotten that over there You can still she would always say you have the right to be angry to call this ugly to call it racist But that's not the story There's nuance and complexity in all of this and so she pushed me To step away And then come back all the time look away. Look at it again Look away again Ask a different set of questions and you start to see things more kaleidoscopically and nuance And so that help being able to ask those intellectual questions Helps me manage my emotions when I see really dark and ugly things so A thing we a question, uh, we asked of some archaeologists we had on here for the first part of season two is What are do you have any techniques or tricks? I mean, I think you're a journalist, you know that this whole idea of objectivity has always been somewhat of a lie We could do a whole evening on that. Let's just set that over here What you know kinds of techniques or tricks to use to ensure you're trying to remain as objective as you possibly Can in the telling of the stories that you encounter So you talk about this kaleidoscope, but how do you keep your own sort of stuff? out of there we all we all bring our own ideologies and you know our backgrounds and but how do you like And I think I think sometimes maybe our backgrounds and our political ideologies can help us tell that story But like sometimes they can get in the way. Can you talk a little bit about? You know, it's a tough one and it's especially tough given The stuff that I see and given that we're still living With the consequences these intergenerational inheritances um in our current moment and But I try to remember Um the words of another mentor of mine. She's a journalism mentor who just recently passed away um And she would always tell me That you know one of the most important lessons that She learned as a storyteller You know and she was a writer and an editor When you go into the archives You got to be quiet enough To let others speak All right, you got to be quiet enough to let others speak and so your job as a historian Your job as a storyteller is to listen Just listen. What are the documents telling you? What are these people telling you from their own voices their diaries their letters? You know the editorials you're reading in old papers So your job is to listen to all that you may not agree with it. I laugh a lot I like going to the 19th century because everybody was off the chain They just didn't hold back Inwards all over the place like just Able is the language all the stuff that triggers us today 19th century. They just didn't they didn't care, right? So it's like wow, this is really juicy stuff So I laugh a lot because it's so ridiculous what people are saying But our job is to listen and then to amplify And then to synthesize and then to distill right um One technique though. I'm trying particularly with my next book Because it's so difficult. I need to find a way To invite people to take my hand and come watch The ugly brutal evil murders of children So they need me and my voice and my energy to help them go through that chamber of horrors So I want to say robin come sit down with me. We're gonna go back To some ugly scenes And so I actually have a conversation The so technique that I'm using to help myself get through this and my readers to get through this is to have a conversation Well, let me show you this picture And what do you think so I'm actually asking questions. So it cuts um, you know some of that uh, you know tension and emotion But what I'm seeing far too much happening In the academy particularly in gender studies and some you know You know another uh topics around sexuality and race is too much Entrenchment and ideological um Thinking on things there's a lot of rigidity people are bringing their traumas to the archives Like you got to check that in the locker somewhere because their own personal unresolved stuff Is guiding You know how they go and they look at they read things onto the past that aren't there They put words into people's mouths. That's not what they meant All right, and so we've got to check our own traumas our own unresolved stuff in our own ideological motive sometimes so that we don't distort the historical record right Thank you. Um so Changing gears just a little bit because this is a question Um, I had new and I talked a little bit about too so As a mentor particularly in 2022 as we're looking at like the the nature of the academy the state of the academy um, it's um, you know, there's this whole uh Alt-ac is this is this phrase that gets thrown around a lot because people are saying okay Maybe you want a phd, but maybe you want to think about what a job? outside of academia looks like because you Is particularly in some disciplines are starting to get over on with phd's Um, and there just aren't jobs available again We could go on all night about how there are fewer jobs percentage-wise than there used to be But do you think given that it's more important now than ever for academics to try to have some kind of Hand on the pulse finger on the pulse of what's going on outside Absolutely So, you know, some years ago. I was a reporter for the Chronicle of higher education. I covered a graduate education um, adjunct faculty labor issues And I was constantly writing about student loan debt completion to degree Alt-ac plan B Those sorts of things it was really interesting here. Jenny comes back into the picture because when I finished at Rutgers They generally send out a congratulatory note when somebody gets a job and so My advisor said oh, we need to send out a note saying that My student Stacy Patton has landed a job as a reporter covering graduate education at the Chronicle of higher ed And so she was told by the chair Oh, no, we that job that kind of job doesn't count because it's not a tenure track position in history and she was You know smoke coming out the nostrils, you know doing her Italian hand signals all that right And I was heard I was like wow so that I like I just don't count They're not proud of me for this and so, you know, I got a little bit of revenge. So I ended up doing a story um focused on an american historical society um, no the american historical association And what it was doing in terms of having this conversation within the discipline so I looked at the top 10 graduate programs in history And tried to get them to report how they were tracking phd outcomes Where were people getting their jobs and a lot of the schools were doing a horrible job And so my piece caught the attention of the aha Which then said we've got a passive policy that talks about, you know, tracking where phd History phd's end up and we've got to start having conversations about all acts, right? And so what what happened is you had all these boomers who are like, I don't I've been in the academy for 30 years How can you that's not my job to you know, teach, you know, these grad students how to get jobs outside of acadene So given the numbers, right the shrinking proportion Of tenure track positions ballooning student loan debts, right? I'd also wrote about the rising numbers of phd's on welfare that thing Viral and it was scary. I mean, I saw phd's like grown white men Crying because they got a phd and medieval history and they go into the wick office Because you know when they got into grad school, nobody told them about the realities like look dude You could be poor smart and poor, right? And So um white male and poor Yep, um dr wick, right? That's so bad So yes now more than ever Graduate programs need to be transparent They need to be training students how to be marketable. They need to be having conversations with employers So how do we use History phd's in these various industries and government in commerce in some sort of way What are these, you know, different possibilities, right? And so um those even if you even if you study a very narrow topic in history That there are some skills that come along with being able to do that kind of storytelling, right? Absolutely and I think it's totally Irresponsible to allow students to come in To graduate programs and do very very very narrow things That won't get them a job that just won't and you know, I worked full time while I was in graduate school So at graduation folks are like, so what are you doing? I'm like, I'm going to work on Monday, you know So this idea that you know grad students should only like be studying by candlelight You know and keeping their head in the archives and not doing other things to make themselves marketable Whether in school it's totally irresponsible So I have a final question for you tonight. This is this is kind of a personal question. Okay Uh, you recently had a relationship Uh, you could potentially call it something of a love affair You have noted that this relationship taught you a lot about life and love And it was with a cat. I believe you have a picture. Um, if you could tell us a little bit about this story And I found some exciting news that has come from it So that's my little furball friend who I affectionately named not my cat So rob you got to understand. I'm not a cat person. I don't even like cats You probably doesn't either I mean, I respect them. I'm very kind to them You know, I'll say you're cute, you know, but keep it moving because I just don't like the way they They have certain habits. Like, you know, they look at you and it takes them like 90 seconds to blink And I just you like your inferior and then when they finally blink they just roll their eyes at you Right and you know, the jumping on furniture You know, just I just can't live with a cat and so this cat came to my house while I was gardening And I ended up feeding it and it kept coming back And and so like over months I kind of got attached to it But I was very clear like I have boundaries in this relationship You're not living inside my house, but I will set up a nice little space for you a bed bowl All of these things that so you you know can be comfortable when you come to visit me And so, you know Over 60,000 people who are on my facebook page Took this journey and people who don't like cats were like, I don't even like cats But I feel emotionally invested and connected to this story And there were bets taken people thought oh, yeah, she's gonna be living with this cat And so I ended up having to move I sold my house And you know the question was is she gonna take the cat with her Or she's gonna leave the cat behind and there was a huge debate. I mean it was nasty fierce debating You have a responsibility to take here this cat But ultimately I got lucky because the new owners have a cat And they and and and so they took the cat and the cat still comes and goes as she pleases They send me updates. She's doing well and as a result of this like eight month love of reluctant love affair Simon and shuster recently I signed a book deal with them to produce a children's story about the lessons this cat this furball Taught me about life love attachment healing all of those sorts of things That's awesome. I can not wait to read it. I guarantee you I will have a copy for myself and one for my little free library out front Wonderful wonderful Thank you again for joining us tonight. This is unfortunately all the time we have so we'll have to say goodbye to you tonight I hope we get to talk to you again sometime. Absolutely. Thanks so much for having me You are very welcome. And now we're going to send you all over to paris wailing with check this out Welcome viewers. Here you are at the check this out segment and in an effort to kind of continue the theme of listening to voices of the past And how they understood their realities We're going to be looking at historical resources available to you online and at utk libraries that tell stories of the past So listen closely, you know, ut instructors researchers and students Y'all have a bunch of unique and powerful collections that are rich with historical insight basically at y'all's fingertips And hopefully after listening today, you're going to feel more inspired than ever to use ut libraries and special collections As you explore the past from different perspectives. So considering our broad topic of cultural interactions and history Where does one even begin to look for historical documentation at the intersection of these subjects, right? Let's quickly kind of just walk through this, right? So y'all probably guessed it You can head a ride on over to utk libraries homepage and scroll down to the section titled Research and select research guides. All right now Y'all may remember me talking about research guides in the past and I only bring them up As often as possible because I use them to kind of orient myself whenever I'm helping students with their research questions during my research shift. So Again, research guides are a great place to start to explain a topic to find help and most importantly to save time So as we've already seen ut libraries makes it easy to get started by allowing you to select research guides And then you can sort by subject Now since we're talking about the past we can choose the broad subject of history And after selecting history a bulleted list appears With different guides for this subject So here your option is kind of range from a broad history of cultural identity like asian history Or um, maybe you're looking for something for a like a more specific perspective Or geographical location like afghan americans in tennessee or my final example here Maybe you're curious about our local history here in noxville during a specific time period Well, check out this great guy called title noxville history These are just a few examples of how you can begin exploring both broadly And narrow down your topic as you kind of scroll through our research guides. All right So once you've selected a guide that kind of feature curiosity We get to the contents of a research guide and this content can kind of consist of a databases Streaming video collections. I call archival records and other media that kind of pertain to your topic So in this case since it's women's history mom I selected women's history materials at special collections Which can hear more about a little bit later, but in this guide We're going to find links to primary and secondary materials that match this subject So this specific image on the screen focuses on the digital collections tab on the left that highlights women in our collections So you don't have to come on campus to view Anna kather and wiley sketches, you know Say to guess you can view them online. How convenient for the exploratory phase, right? There are more tabs to left like videos on the research guide tab That provide links to other research guides with even more materials like women's suffrage and women of the university of tennessee collections Which are um other access points into another perspective in time and in content So this is where we really get to see the beauty of research guides as they can kind of help you connect to topics and dig deeper into specific Identities to possibly lift underrepresented voices of the past. All right So in this final image I've actually left the women's suffrage guide and selected us history the 19th century and civil war guide From the history uh bulleted research guide list I clicked on the databases tab basically to show you that you can access subject specific databases that have descriptions of the materials it contains Right there in the research guide. So this is perfect for coursework and research, you know So as y'all can see this is just a tip of the iceberg when it comes to exploring historical topics from various perspectives But hopefully this motivates you to use the utk libraries resources to be life into the stories that you find And share them accurately in the present. All right And remember if y'all need help you can always contact your subject library and you're all here to help you. All right So this wraps up our check this out segment. Thanks for joining me coming up next. We have stories from the stacks. So sarah johnson Hi everyone and welcome to stories from the stacks Tonight we have the wonderful holly mercer with us a holly has uh joined the university of tennessee noxville in 2012 and currently is our senior associate dean and professor in the ut libraries Her work history includes positions at stanford university of kansas and texas and an m She believes libraries are central to learning and innovation that research libraries can accomplish more through collaboration And the openness and integrity in the research process are keys to the future breakthroughs and discoveries She currently serves as chair of the board of governors for hathie trust A non-for-profit collaborative of academic and research libraries preserving 17 plus million digitized items And holly holds a bachelor's degree in classical studies from duke and a master's in library and information science from the university of south carolina Big warm welcome to holly mercer Hi, thanks. Thanks for being here So ut libraries has recently acquired a fabulous collection The complete personal archive of the internationally renowned modernist painter buford delaney And we get to learn about what all goes into acquiring a collection like this And i'm so excited So let's start off with some background information Who is buford delaney? And why is the acquisition of his collection significant to ut libraries and the wider noxville area? Yeah, uh, i'm very excited to be able to talk to you about it Uh, uh, buford delaney is a native of noxville. He was born here in 1901 and uh in Paris's segment she mentioned the artist katherine wiley who Was mentored by lord loyde branson who was noxville's first full-time professional artist He all loyde branson also took buford under his wing and mentored and encouraged him to Explore his talents. He did the same thing for buford's brother joseph So buford developed as an artist By 1929 He had settled in new york and he was a member of the harlem renaissance And and one of the leading modernist Painters of his time a real force in the 20th century art world in terms of his abstract and expressionist paintings He was known for his portraits and also his depictions of Scenes just from city life And he also did some more freeform abstract works The uh, buford delaney collection is Greater in both size and importance than any other buford delaney collection that's available in a library or archive An example of another collection is the schaumburg center for research in black culture That's part of the new york public library The collection that we now have richly documents delaney's work his life It contains correspondence With about 140 different people including James bald one georgia o' keith Henry miller al hershfeld and many more Um The collection has loose sketches family childhood photos Uh photographs with james bald one and other friends of delaney and sketchbooks There were Early depictions of or preliminary studies of of works that later became some of his major paintings and what For the those who were far less talented what I would call doodles So buford's brother Joseph delaney was also an artist And joseph served briefly as an artist in residence here at ut moxville And his collections are many of his collections are available at ut's ewing art gallery um It includes paintings archival materials sketchbooks drawings. So Then the noxville museum of art Holds several works of buford delaney and the bet cultural exchange center in here in noxville is uh creating a museum to document the Um and honor the delaney family So this collection Um this acquisition of the buford delaney collection really establishes noxville tennessee as the place to study The the life and the legacy Of buford delaney Wow Um One that's just like an incredible opportunity to be able to have that as part of you know our history here at ut and in noxville um and Just what I mean there are so many opportunities for the future to come and that's that's pretty cool. Um And you know, so you've already mentioned Multiple things that are in this kind of archive and you know, that's a it's a lot going into just this one thing that he You know personal collection. What exactly did the process look like for acquiring this specific collection? So it's uh it's a it's a long and interesting story and we don't have time for the entire story, but i'm gonna start in uh 2014 when um the the buford delaney archive or collection um was moved to be stored at the noxville museum of art and um at that time chris bronstad who is the modern political archivist um in special collections at ut noxville Performed an archival assessment um of the delaney archive And what that really entailed was creating um a A general index and description of the collection and um I am going to read the conclusion of chris bronstad's assessment her summary statement because I think it really encapsulates why this Why this collection is so important and why we're so happy that it is um going to be preserved here Given the extent of these materials and the diverse and important world they document This would be an exciting collection for any repository to accept It gives context and depth to the vital but under documented intersections of african-american lgbt artistic expatriate identities and cultures But this is an especially amazing collection for our university as it shows how these important cultural moments and intersections Have a direct connection to our own local noxville history So meanwhile, uh the court appointed administrator for the buford delaney estate was working to settle the affairs of the estate and The ut libraries began Uh in earnest looking at acquiring the collection in 2020. So that was quite a few years had passed and with the generous support of Of donors we were able to purchase the collection earlier this year Wow Chris chris is she's very articulate. I feel like that was that was wonderful um And it also feels like kind of like a meant to be type situation clearly, you know hard work and generous donations made it possible but you know Maybe be for delaney was always supposed to come back home to noxville. Um, I'd like to think anyways um, so now I know that we're all super excited to view these artifacts, but the collection isn't quite available yet Um, what are some next steps for the collection? So, um In archival terms the collection needs to be processed arranged and described But really what that means is that we need to have some time to assess the condition of everything in the collection we might need to Stabilize some materials because they're very fragile. They've They've been through a lot over the decades It might be simple things like removing paper clips and rubber bands But after those things are done everything needs to be rehoused and arranged in a way that makes Uh, that makes sense and then finally the Curators will describe Every single item. So they'll go through item by item and and describe everything in the collection and what this will do is help Researchers know What's in the collection and it will help special collection staff know Where the materials are located within the collection? So as you can imagine for something this size it is going to be um, uh lengthy glorious process and yet I think it would be really Fascinating and fun work too. And I'm just a little bit Envious of those who get to spend that much time exploring and learning about this collection I'm right there with you. I would totally be in a room just looking at all of this I'd probably had to have a harder time processing it because I would just be in awe of everything But um, thank you so much that explains a whole lot The this conversation has been super eye-opening. I've definitely learned More than I ever thought I could learn in a short few minutes about acquiring a collection and and one as significant as this So thank you so much for being here. I really appreciate the time That you've given us tonight I enjoyed it. Thanks Bye So while we weigh on this beautiful collection to become available to us There is so much more to be explored in the archives already So I encourage you to take some time and visit the bessie b creek more special collections and university archives here at Hodges library And that's it. The first story is from the sex. See you next time all right That is it for another show the final episode of season two will be on april 21st same time same channel Uh, we'd also like to take a minute to invite you to upcoming in-person events. That's right other human beings in the flesh Local spoken word performer and hip-hop artist black atticus will perform at john c Hodges library on thursday march 31st 2022 You can register to attend that event tiny dot utk dot edu's forward slash boundless 22 All you can also join us on tuesday april 5th From 5 30 p.m to 7 p.m for a lecture and book signing with geologist and professor emeritus robert d hatter jr And author john e ross find out more about both of these events at lib dot utk dot edu See y'all next time You