ASERL’s Special Collections Interest Group was established in 2017 to encourage cooperation and partnerships among member libraries. A series of activities was undertaken in 2017 to bring together special collections professionals and libraries, in particular for shared digital collections and expanding professional development. Activities included site visits to 24 member institutions and a professional development survey to inform future webinars.
In 2019, the group offered two webinars on outreach and community engagement and donor relations, a disaster response survey and is planning a Shared digital exhibit to launch in Fall 2019. See the Webinar Archive for recordings of these sessions.
Activities
- COVID19 Resources for Archives and Special Collections
- Collection Profiles gathered from site visits and interviews with administrators of special collections
- ASERL Disaster Response Survey (*.xls format) results from an information gathering survey on disaster supplies and response at member institutions
- Shared Exhibit exploring the history of enslavement in the Southeastern US as part of the 400th anniversary of the first arrival of Africans to the English colonies
Interest Group
- Brenda Burk bburk@clemson.edu (Head of Special Collections, Clemson University Library)
- Chrystal Carpenter carpenterc2@vcu.edu (Head, Special Collections and Archives, Virginia Commonwealth University Libraries)
- Cristina Favretto cfavretto@miami.edu (Head, Special Collections, University of Miami Library)
- Laura Micham laura.m@duke.edu (Director, Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History and Culture, Duke University Libraries)
- Aaron Pahl apahl@uab.edu (Digital Curation Librarian, University of Alabama at Birmingham Library)
- Tammy Trần ttran58@gmu.edu (Library Fellow, George Mason University Law Library)
- Ximena Valdivia xvaldivi@fiu.edu (Cataloging and Metadata Librarian, Florida International University Library)
Special Collection Profiles
University of Florida Special and Area Studies Collections
University of South Florida Special Collections
University of Central Florida Special Collections
University of Alabama Special
Collections
University of North Carolina-Greensboro Special Collections and Archives
Collections Spotlight

Carnival Collection: Floats and Costumes — Tulane University
TULANE UNIVERSITY — Fantastical floats and colorful costumes have become a hallmark of Mardi Gras parades, but did you know these Carnival traditions date back well over a century? Tulane’s Louisiana Research Collection preserves possibly the largest collection of New Orleans Carnival paper items, and the digital Carnival Collection features more than 5,500 original float and costume designs. Most are from Carnival’s “Golden Age” (the 1870s through the 1940s) with about three hundred designs from 1950 to 1970.

Kenneth Frederick Marsh Photograph Collection — University of South Carolina
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH CAROLINA — The photographs of Kenneth Frederick Marsh (d. 1968) were used to illustrate the following books by photographer Marsh and his wife, Blanche Marsh: Historic Flat Rock (North Carolina), Plantation Heritage, Robert Mills, and The New South, Greenville, S.C. The photographs and negatives depict historic and modern homes, public buildings, textile mills, churches, and scenes of South Carolina and Flat Rock, N.C. Many of the photographs are unpublished.

William H. Scott Family Papers, 1848-1982 — Emory University
EMORY UNIVERSITY — Selections from the papers of William H. Scott, an African American Baptist minister and political activist, and his son William H. Scott, Jr. from 1848-1982, including correspondence, scrapbooks, photographs, broadsides, sermons, writings, and other collected material.

John C. Wyatt Lexington Herald-Leader Photographs — University of Kentucky
UNIVERSITY OF KENTUCKY — The John C. Wyatt Lexington Herald-Leader photographs follows the changing urban landscape of Lexington, the agricultural, tobacco and horse racing industries, key national events such as World War II and Vietnam, as well as notable regional and national figures.
Update from ASERL’s Professional Development Interest Group

ASERL Publishes 2023 Annual Report

ASERL at 2023 Charleston Library Conference

Thank you, Karen Manning — Inaugural ASERL Visiting Program Officer for BIPOC Programming 2022-2023

“What We Did This Summer” — ASERL’s latest newsletter is out!
