» Making Accessible Avery Research Center’s Institutional History

You may have already heard about how the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has awarded the College of Charleston’s Avery Research Center for African American History and Culture a $2 million grant to support the collection and preservation of the South Carolina Lowcountry’s social and cultural history. But if you’re curious about what the work of preserving that history really involves, read on.

I’m Lauren Bickel, and I’m the assistant director for this project. With my colleague, project archivist Veer Mehta, I’m in charge of taking dusty boxes of records that reflect the history and development of the Avery Research Center (ARC) and turning them into organized collections that people can use. ARC has kept them safe over the years, but by processing them, we’ll make them usable for all kinds of researchers–our own employees, students and scholars at College of Charleston, community members, and anyone else who is interested in the vibrant history of ARC.

The first collection Veer and I are processing is ARC’s institutional records. These begin in the 1980s and extend to the present day, covering the administrations of seven different leaders and the work of dozens of employees and volunteers.

The materials that make up the collection are wide-ranging, from financial documents to planning proposals, program publicity materials to employee files. The diversity of materials will allow future researchers to understand how ARC was set up, how it operates and makes decisions, how it’s changed over the decades, the kinds of people who have worked here, and the diverse and valuable resources ARC provides to the community through programs and publications. 

To me, the most exciting thing about this particular collection is how it gives us a glimpse of the countless events, exhibits, lectures, performances, and educational programs ARC has brought into being over the years. The collection really showcases the creativity and inspiration that fuel everything ARC does–and also the hard work and planning that it takes to pull everything off!

This collection is a large one and processing the collection takes a long time. We have to sort the papers and publications into subject categories and put them in chronological order before they can be housed in acid-free folders and labeled–a big task when there are over a hundred boxes to go through! Then it will be time to create the online finding aid that will keep track of every folder and make them all digitally searchable by anyone who is interested in learning more about ARC.

Once the ARC institutional records are finished, there are smaller but equally important collections to be processed, including the personal papers of various ARC directors, the papers of the AIACR, and many oral histories.

It takes a lot of time and effort to take boxes of random files and turn them into a well-organized and searchable collection. Everyone at Avery is grateful that the Mellon Foundation is enabling us to preserve these records and make them accessible to present and future researchers.

It’s just another way that ARC will preserve and celebrate the history of the African-American community in the Lowcountry.