Difference Makers 2010: an eBlackChampaign-Urbana Publication

Lenstra, Noah

Permalink

https://hdl.handle.net/2142/18077 Copy

Description

Title

Difference Makers 2010: an eBlackChampaign-Urbana Publication

Author(s)

Lenstra, Noah

Contributor(s)

• Alkalimat, Abdul
• Carpenter, Jaime

Issue Date

2010-11-05

Keyword(s)

• Community Informatics
• Community Memory
• African-American Leadership
• Digital Technology
• Campus-Community Relations

Abstract

Released November 5, 2010, at the eBlackChampaign‐Urbana Campus‐Community Symposium, Graduate School of Library and Information Science, 501 E. Daniel, Champaign, Illinois. Since Fall 2009 the eBlackChampaign‐Urbana project has worked with local youth and community institutions to digitize local African‐American history and make it accessible online. In doing this work we want to both make history come alive and preserve the documentation of our present moment. This booklet will be become a historical record. Deposited in local libraries, stored in personal archives, and made available online, this booklet will be referred to twenty, forty years from today. This booklet fits within a tradition of commemorative collective biographies produced both locally and nationally. Locally, we see this publication is building on the 1983 publication of Raymond Bial and the Champaign County Historical Museum, In All My Years : Portraits of Older Black in Champaign‐Urbana, featuring photographs and brief biographies of a number of important difference makers in the local African‐American community. This tradition continued in the early 2000s when the Early American Museum, in collaboration with the Champaign County African American History Committee and the local chapters of the National Council of Negro Women/National Council of African American Men produced an exhibit and accompanying website entitled “This Legacy is Yours” and “This Legacy is Yours Too” featuring biographies and photographs of a multitude of local difference makers in the African‐American community. Nationally, this booklet fits within the tradition of “Who’s Who” books that seek to list and honor individuals who go out of their way to make a difference. At the University of Illinois Graduate School of Library and Information Science we are interested in what is called “Community Informatics.” Community informatics is the study of the interaction between transformation as expressed in information technology and continuity as expressed in a local, historical community. In eBlackChampaign‐Urbana we are interested in the historical continuity of our local African‐American community through the transformations of that community in the digital age. Through the power of digital technology anyone can make a booklet like this one. We used OpenOffice, a free‐to‐download, open‐source word processing program and GIMP, a free‐todownload, open‐source photo editing program to design and produce this booklet. With these free tools any community organization, such as a church or school, could produce their own difference makers booklet to make up for whatever absences appear in this booklet. In a project like this one there are always going to be individuals and groups that are regrettably missed. We apologize for whatever important gaps this publication has and encourage individuals not represented in this booklet to use the available technological tools to represent themselves online and in‐print. We encourage people and groups to grab the power of technology to represent themselves and ensure the preservation of their communities and their communities’ history. This aim is the ultimate goal of the eBlackChampaign‐Urbana project.

Publisher

eBlackCU.net

Type of Resource

text

Language

en

Permalink

http://hdl.handle.net/2142/18077

Owning Collections