Latanya Jenkins is our new Reference Librarian for Government Documents and African American Studies.

She started her career at Temple’s Health Sciences Library as a clerk, and soon discovered that academic libraries were interesting enough for her to want to pursue a career as a librarian.

Ms. Jenkins graduated from Drexel University in 2006 with an MSLIS. Her first position out of library school was at Purdue, where she was actively recruited to take part in their Diversity Fellowship Program.

She comes to us by way of Bowie State University where she was a bulldog and Morgan State University, where she was a bear. As an owl, a main goal is to be the kind of engaging and dynamic librarian who inspires others to follow their passions. Towards that end, Ms. Jenkins recently participated in the American Library Association’s Midwinter Conference in Seattle where she presented on a panel about diversity standards in academic libraries.

Outside of work, Ms. Jenkins has dual interests which fit nicely together. She enjoys travel, having spent several weeks in South Africa, Zambia, and Zimbabwe, where she met orphaned lion cubs who were being prepared to be returned to the wild. Thanks to that experience, Ms. Jenkins can advise us not to wear dangling jewelry, striped, or red colored clothing when petting lions!

Throughout her trip Ms. Jenkins was happy to indulge another interest—getting to know diverse cultures through interrogating their cuisine. Whether she is traveling or at home, Ms. Jenkins is happy to explore the width and breadth of human culinary expression.

Please stop by room 219 in Paley and welcome Latanya Jenkins!

Librarian Latanya Jenkins helps lion student in Zimbabwe research newest stick technology.

Photographer unknown, circa 1863, carte-de-visite and manuscript page (University of North Carolina Library, Chapel Hill, Manigault Papers, no. 484, vol. 4)

As part of its commemoration of the 150^th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, the Charles L. Blockson Afro-American Collection presented an Author’s Talk and Book Signing with renowned photographic historian Dr. Deborah Willis and historian of slavery Dr. Barbara Krauthamer on February 8, 2013 in Mitten Hall, Great Court.  Their book features 150 rare photographs (some of which are housed in the Blockson Collection) pertaining to the experiences of enslaved and freed black men, women and children from the antebellum, Civil War and post-Civil War eras.  Speaking to the group, Willis and Krauthamer were able to engage a packed audience of over 200 in a discourse that was a kinetic one, moving through the history, hopes and possibilities of a people seeking to achieve their fullest humanity during one of the most transformative years in our nation’s history.

Krauthamer and Willis became interested in this book project when they discovered a photograph of a woman named “Dolly.” Her picture was pasted onto a $50 Reward notice created after she ran away from an Augusta, Georgia plantation in 1863.  “We both thought that was a story that needed to be explored,” Willis said. “These images allow us to connect to people whose lives would be lost [to us otherwise]” said Krauthamer.  Their book asks: “What did [Dolly] envision when she planned her escape? What did she see around her when she stepped outside her master’s yard and closed the gate behind her? When we look at her picture we see her life in slavery, but we also recognize that the picture is a testament to her liberation.”

The brilliance of their work simply asks the viewer to look at these African Americans as agents in their emancipation.  In the end, Willis hopes their readers will find “a much more nuanced story about slavery. Not just the top down, but the fact that Black people were actively involved in obtaining their freedom,” she said. “That’s what I want people to walk away with, because I didn’t know it when I was in high school.”  “What we wanted to show through the book was African American’s dignity and sense of their own strengths and potential to shape the future and that they were intellectually and philosophically engaged in the major political and social issues of the day.”  “When we look at these photographs, we see full human-beings,” Willis said.  “They were creating their own biographies through these images.”

“Envisioning Emancipation: Black Americans and the End of Slavery” is published by Temple University Press; I encourage you to read it.

www.temple.edu/tempress.

On February 6, 2013, the Center for the Humanities At Temple (CHAT) hosted John Palfrey from the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA).

DPLA has been in the planning stages since 2010 and will have its kickoff in April 2013. Palfrey explained that digital libraries have typically not undergone the level of deliberate planning used during the architectural design of the past’s glorious library buildings. Thus, DPLA considers it important to build an information architecture that will support the project well into the future.

Rather than being a massive repository of digital works, DPLA is designed as a repository of metadata about works held by the country’s other digital libraries. Users can search this metadata to find pathways to digital objects held in previously hard-to-locate information silos.

An important aspect of this open, distributed infrastructure is its modularity. DPLA believes in making their code, metadata, and content free to all. This model will allow any programmer or developer to create applications that access the DPLA metadata in new, creative, and useful ways.

One interesting concern expressed by Palfrey is the idea that we are a critical juncture in the divide between public and privatized information. Today’s cloud-based systems and their ownership by private, profit-driven firms set dangerous precedents that work against the public interest. Consider, for example, the large sums Temple pays for subscription databases and scholarly journals. Palfrey hopes that projects such as DPLA, Open Access publishing, and Wikipedia-style development will shift the balance of information power back to the wider community.

Our spring Beyond the Page public programming series is just getting underway. This season we will once again explore “The American Idea.”

Preview our calendar of talks, programs, events and exhibitions for spring 2013 [PDF] right here. We hope to see you at the Libraries this spring!

In commemoration of the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the Charles L. Blockson Afro-American Collection, Temple University Libraries exhibited images from its signature collection, John W. Mosley Photograph Collection, at Girard College for the Martin Luther King Day of Service on January 21, 2013. The civil rights photos by the internationally and nationally known Philadelphia photographer document the interconnections between Dr. King, Cecil B. Moore, the Freedom Fighters and other Philadelphians who were active participants in the movement to expose and eliminate the wrongs of segregation and inequality in Philadelphia and throughout the nation during the 1960s.

Many of Mosley’s Girard College protest images along with a treasure trove of archival materials from Temple University Libraries’ Urban Archives are featured on the Temple University Libraries’ website Civil Rights in a Northern City: Philadelphia. This primary source collection of photographs, newspaper clippings, oral histories, videos of Dr. King and more powerfully reveals the campaigns fought by African Americans and their supporters at the 10-foot Girard College wall because of an 1831 segregation clause in the will of its founder, Stephan Girard, that the school was created to offer free education to white, male orphans only. Girard believed that a quality education would be marred severely if the sons of enslaved Africans were allowed to study next to the sons of whites. As a result, civil rights organizations prepared to challenge the school’s philosophy. In his speech on August 2, 1965, Dr. King stated that “on the one hand I am delighted to see so many of you here … on the other hand, it is a sad experience to stand at this wall in the 20th century in Philadelphia, the cradle of liberty, and know that it is a barrier to God’s Negro children.”

To learn more about Black activism and civil rights protests launched in North Philadelphia, including the Columbia Avenue riots, visit northerncity.library.temple.edu.