ACRL News Issue (B) of College & Research Libraries February 1994 / 75 Indiana builds three African American special collections By Grace Jackson-Brown An overview o f important resources I ndiana University (IU) is building three spe­cial collections in the humanities with em­ phasis on the history and culture o f African Americans. The collection trio includes the Black Culture Center Library, the Black Film Center/Archives, and the Archives o f African- American Music, History, and Culture. The IU Black Culture Center Library was born out o f the Office of Afro-American Affairs, under the administration o f then vice-chancel­ lor Herman Hudson, in 1970. Hudson took notice o f a reading room organized primarily by students, and transformed it in 1972 into a Multi-Media Resource Center with upgraded facilities in a renovated sorority house. The Black Culture Center remains in this facility today, but its collection has more than tripled in size. It includes 3,500 monographs on Afri- can-American history and culture; a collection o f about 300 audiotape cassettes of speeches, poetry, and music; 70 popular and scholarly journal titles; an information file with more than 1,000 subject headings; and a biography file containing more than 950 biographies. IU Li­ braries made the Black Culture Center Library its fifteenth branch library in 1991. For more information about the Black Culture Center Li­ brary contact the author at (812) 855-3237. Film Center/Archives The Black Film Center/Archives is a unique repository of African-American films and related material which began in 1979. The latest addi­ tion to the archives, donated in 1993, is the Peter Davis Collection o f outtakes, stills, pho­ tographs, and manuscripts. The Davis Collec­ tion includes such films as Winnie Mandela, South Africa: The White Laager, Generations o f Resistance, and Anatomy o f Violence which was made in conjunction with Stokely Carmichael and Allen Ginsburg. The archive owns films spanning the century of independent filmmak­ ers such as Oscar Micheaux, Spencer Williams, and Julie Dash. The archive also has holdings of many contemporary Hollywood films, as well as Blaxploitation-era films. In addition to films, the archive owns movie posters, interviews on videotapes, a computerized filmography, and a vertical file o f critical articles, stills, film ad­ vertisements, and other memorabilia. The Black Film Center/Archives is a part of the IU De­ partment o f Afro-American Studies. For more information about the Black Film Center/Ar­ chives contact Phyllis Klotman at (812) 855- 6041. Music, history, and culture The IU Archives o f African-American Music, History, and Culture (AAAMHC) was founded in 1991 with grant assistance from the Ford Foundation. The AAAMHC is a collection with unique materials on African-American popular music and ethnomusicology. Radio producer Lee Bailey donated the tapes from his program “Radioscope,” a digest of 1980s and 1990s in­ terviews and hip hop music. The AAAMHC also owns historical materials on blues and gospel music, photos, manuscripts, and other paper artifacts. Portia Maultsby, director o f AAA, is a renowned ethnomusicologist specializing in Af­ rican-American popular and gospel music and its ties to West Africa. The AAAMHC is a part (Indiana cont. on page 83) Grace Jackson-Brown is head librarian o f the Black Culture Center Library at Indiana University, Bloomington; e-mail: jacksonb@ucs.indiana.edu mailto:jacksonb@ucs.indiana.edu February 1994/83 The graphic designs w e used worked very well for brochures, bookmarks, and buttons, but were not effective for communicating our message on posters. The messages “Don’t eat or drink in the library” and “Don’t make noise in the library” appeared in small print at the bottom o f the posters. The small print was in­ tended to provoke interest and encourage the viewer to take a closer look. One reason that people were not drawn to read the small print may have been because o f the height at which many posters had to be hung. Recommendations The group recommends the following actions to others who want to institute a similar cam­ paign in their library: 1) Have a code o f conduct in place before you begin the campaign. Both patrons and em­ ployees must know what is expected of them. 2) Closely examine the kinds o f problems most common in your library and where they occur. 3) Devise a plan to sell your campaign. Cal­ culate your costs and explore free sources of assistance. Check to see if a class can help. 4) Time the campaign so that things are in place at the beginning o f the fall semester. 5) Be prepared to rethink your position on food, drink, and noise issues. Achieving group consensus requires some compromise. 6) Gain administrative and staff commitment to the campaign. Signs alone w on’t change behavior. ■ (Indiana co n t.from page 75) o f the IU Department o f Afro-American Stud­ ies. For more information call (812) 855-8547. Although the aforementioned African Ameri­ can Studies collections are each housed in three different locations on the IU Bloomington cam­ pus, fundraising efforts are underway to build a new facility which could accommodate all three archives. About $2.5 million in private do­ nations must be raised to match state funding for the new building which will be named the Neal Marshall Black Culture Center. The new center is named after the first African American alumnus of IU, Marcellus Neal, 1895, and the first African American alumna of IU, Frances Marshall, 1919. To make a donation to the Neal Marshall Center, write to the IU Foundation, P.O. Box 500, Showalter House, Bloomington, IN 47402, or call (812) 855-8311. ■ (Censorship co n t.fro m page 78) heightened awareness o f the importance o f preparation for a censorship challenge. The whole process took one and a half months, but it seemed to drag out longer, perhaps pro­ longed by a sense o f insecurity or not knowing what to expect next. Censorship incidents can take a tremendous toll on a community, as evidenced in Cum­ berland County, North Carolina, where the pres­ ence o f Daddy’s Roommate and Heather Has Two Mommies (Alyson, 1989) on library shelves has delayed the construction o f five library branches.2 As academic librarians w e hadn’t been lulled into complacency, but nonetheless were surprised when it happened to us. The groundwork o f the past (the library’s “Collec­ tion Policy Statement,” and the affirmation of the concept o f intellectual freedom) proved to be invaluable. Six months after w e received the initial letter of complaint, we are in the midst of revising and updating our collection development statement. This experience will make us examine more closely the section on censorship and intellectual freedom, so rou­ tinely included in collection development poli­ cies, but never really expected to be used. Notes 1Mary Jo Godwin, “Conservative Groups Con­ tinue Their Fight to Ban Daddy’s Roommate,” American Libraries 23 (December 1992): 968. 2Michael J. Sadowski, “Book Controversy De­ lays New Branches,” School Library Journal 39 (May 1993): 12. ■ (Letters co nt.from page 80) ography, medieval French philology as well as medieval French philological bibliography. Why should a university bother to hire faculty in medieval French philology, or in chemistry, or in philosophy, if its librarians can teach and perform worldly research in these and all other subjects (as McKinzie seems to claim)? What librarians teach is (best called) BI, or (a bit less well called) documentation, or (even less well called) library skills. But to teach re­ search simpliciter, o f both kinds and in all sub­ jects— such a suggestion is on the face o f it unaware both o f what such researchers do and o f the meaning o f the words with which we describe them and their products.—J. M. Perreault, head o f special collections, the Uni­ versity o f Alabama in Huntsville ■