The Atlanta University Center (AUC) Robert W Woodruff Library is honored to receive a generous grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to broaden access to under-represented humanities collections through a project entitled, Spreading the Word:  Expanding Access to African-American Religious Archival Collections of the Atlanta University Center Robert W. Woodruff Library.

The Library’s Archives Research Center and Digital Services Unit will organize, describe, digitize and prepare for access fourteen collections of rare materials that document African American religion spanning from the 1950’s to the 2000’s. The unique collections include varied formats, including correspondence, sermons and speeches, research files, photographs, and audio and video recordings, which document theologians and scholars, as well as Christian and Islamic ideologies. Through this blog we will share our progress in making these collections accessible- showing some behind the scenes views of the work, as well as historical facts about the collections.  Meet a few members of the project team:

Ms. Jessica Leming joins the Archives Research Center as Project Archivist in the Spreading the Word project.  Jessica is a Certified Archivist, most recently working as Visual Collections Librarian/Assistant Professor, Selector for Studio Art and Art History at the University of Mississippi. She has worked in libraries and archives since gaining interest in the preservation of unique materials as a conservation lab student worker in 1991. Since that time, Jessica has worked as a preservation librarian, archivist, and consultant to a variety of libraries and archives, specializing in photographs and audiovisual media. She is a graduate of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign with a Masters in Library and Information Science, and additionally holds bachelor and master degrees in fine arts.

Mr. DuJuan Morris joins the Archives Research Center as a Graduate Assistant.  In this role, Mr. Morris will work with the Project Archivist and other members of the Archives team to assist with arranging, digitizing, and describing various collections in the Spreading the Word project.  Mr. Morris is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Humanities with a concentration in African American Studies/Religion at Clark Atlanta University.  He holds a Master of Divinity from the Interdenominational Theological Center’s Morehouse School of Religion, a Bachelor of Science in Public Affairs Management from Indiana University, and a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy from Indiana University.

Please subscribe to this page by clicking on the “follow” box to receive updates on this project. We look forward to sharing these collections with you!