Native library expands its collections

Page 15

The American Native Press Archives based in Little Rock aims to raise the profile of tribal writers and storytellers and promote their work. Since it started up in 1983, the organization has been the official archives of the Native American Journalists Association collection. It maintains 12 categories of records from NAJA alone, dating back to 1984. Most American and many Canadian Native publishers and journalists belong to NAJA.

Now the archives is rapidly expanding its holdings of other newspapers, periodicals and manuscripts, and moving to get everything on-line.

So far they estimate 4,000 Native writers are included in their Native writers files. Most of these are periodical writers from the period 1825 to 1925. The archives boasts that this is the "most comprehensive resource centre for the study of Native literature during that era." Non-periodical material by Native writers is also available up to the present date.

A large proportion of these holdings are Canadian.

Daniel F. Littlefield, Jr., a co-director who started the archives with James W. Parins, said "we are in the process of establishing (an) electronic catalog of our newspaper and periodical holdings, and of the 1,837 records that we now have in the database, 123 are Canadian First Nations titles. There will be (other Canadian material) entered from our old-style records as we get to them. In addition, we have annual reports from various First Nations groups and other materials of that type in our manuscripts and other types of collections."

About the origin of the archives, Littlefield said he and Parins "founded it and sort of stayed with the program." They both have "release time" from teaching to do the work, but rely on graduate assistants and internships "a lot," in that they use the archives as a teaching facility.

Littlefield added "we now have a major proposal forward to the university to build an archives building and to get us the staff we really need, and we also have a major grant proposal that we're floating to hire a project archivist who can come in and work on manuscript materials."

He said the cataloguing of newspapers, magazines and newsletters will "ultimately" be done by the university's library department.

"We have access to various kinds of help; our problem is primarily space," said Littlefield.

Examples of the Archives' other holdings are its Leslie Newell Collection, a thesis collection related to press freedom and Indian civil and first amendment rights in the United States.

The bulk of its Robert A. Warrior Collection was donated to the archives in 1999 by Warrior, an Osage scholar. It covers the American Indian Movement (AIM) from 1971 to 1992 as well as other 1970s issues.

Numerous contributions of individual writers make up the Small Manuscripts Collection. Materials consist of the writers' own donations and complementary material from other sources. A broad cross-section of tribal groups are represented.

The Native American Chapbooks Collection was begun last year, with James Metzger's donation of 64 chapbooks. Chapbooks generally are small books or pamphlets containing popular tales, ballads, and poetry.

One of the most rapidly growing collections is the Native Organizations Collection, which covers both Native American and Native-related organizations of the past 20 years. The collection contains records of almost every kind of Native organization, with exception of the media organizations that are included in the Native Press History Collection. Papers on tribal, social, political, health business, cultural, legal and other issues are found there.

The Native Press History and Bibliography Research Collection goes back to 1981, but it covers many aspects of Native American publishing since 1828. Periodicals dating from 1985 are the main focus, but there is copious information on book publishing and tribal presses as well. The Native American Rights Fund; Native American AIDS Media Consortium; Wordcaft Circle of Native Writers and Storytellers; and the American Indian Library Association are media organizations represented in this collection.

Finally, there are 600 rolls of microfilm, not even including newspapers and periodicals, that are yet to be catalogued.

Littlefield doesn't know how many hits their internet site is getting, but he said they can tell by the e-mail inquiries "they're really using it to search for information. It's not just casual running of the site."

Although a substantial amount of information is available on line, most still isn't, he said. "We're just starting to get our finding aids worked out and get some of the material on-line.

People can copy material free off the internet, he said, "for personal use, research and teaching, including classroom distribution," so long as the copyright is included: copyright UALR Native Press Archives. "Others need permission" to copy the work, he said.

Researchers can find the American Native Press Archives website at www.anpa.ualr.edu. It contains links to numerous Native schools and organizations as well as to other literature sites and curriculum materials.