For many of our readers, the Black Gospel Music Restoration Project’s name likely conjures up images of Mahalia Jackson, Sister Rosetta Tharpe or the Mighty Wonders of Aquasco, Maryland. But on this MLK Day 2017, we wanted to draw your attention to a few items from the collection with direct ties to Dr. King, especially…
Tag: Black Gospel Music Restoration Project
“Lord, Don’t Forget About Me” – Thoughts on Sustainability, Digital Collections and Museums
This week, I’ve been attending the Texas Association of Museums’ annual conference in Ft. Worth (a.k.a. Cowtown, a.k.a. Funkytown). Amid the usual offerings on how to engage preschool visitors, trends in collections management and how to navigate federal law as it relates to Native American ceremonial items, one of the recurring themes has been the…
An Open Letter to Darius Rucker Re: The Black Gospel Music Restoration Project
Dear Mr. Rucker, Allow us to introduce ourselves. We are the Digital Projects Group, five dedicated professionals in the world of digital collections in academia, specifically Baylor University in Waco, Texas. You probably don’t know who we are, but we know you’re familiar with Baylor: you and your buddies in Hootie and the Blowfish played…
This Just In! A Quick Look at the DPG in the News So Far This Year
Just a quick post this week to update you all on a couple of the places the DPG and the Digital Collections have been popping up in the media over the past couple of months. We’re always grateful for our work to be featured in any potential arena – digital, broadcast or print – and…
This Train is Bound for D.C.: The Smithsonian-Baylor Digital Projects Group Black Gospel Collaboration Confirmed!
Some big news regarding the Black Gospel Music Restoration Project was made official this weekend via the social media of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC): the Black Gospel Music Restoration Project (BGMRP), managed and maintained by our own Digital Projects Group, will become part of the permanent collection…
An Update on the Black Gospel Music Restoration Project
If you’ve been reading the local newspapers of late – the Waco Tribune-Herald and our on-campus daily, the Baylor Lariat – you’ve seen Baylor’s Black Gospel Music Restoration Project (BGMRP) get some generous front-page coverage. This publicity has centered around last week’s Pruit Symposium, a two-day affair held at Truett Seminary celebrating the project and…
Gather ‘Round and Download the Tale: A Primer for Digital Storytelling in Archives
The storytelling urge is an ingrained part of human behavior spanning back to our earliest conversant days, when “This plant bad, that plant good” wasn’t just helpful advice for staying alive, it could also pass for a rollicking tale around a campfire. Among the myriad ways we’ve progressed here in the 21st century is in…
A Sisyphean* Task, An Unending Passion: “A Life’s Work” and Its Connection to the BGMRP
Back in 2010, a crew of professional documentary filmmakers visited the Digitization Projects Group. They were on a mission: to interview and film the team of professionals working on the Black Gospel Music Restoration Project (BGMRP), a project brought to life through the vision of Baylor University journalism professor Robert Darden. David Licata and his…
Loan, Give, Tip: How Your Materials Can Become a Part of Our Collections
One of the most rewarding parts of our work in the DPG is knowing that our efforts will lead to better exposure for Baylor’s unique collections and a better understanding of the world in which we live. The materials housed in Baylor’s special collections provide ample resources for a career’s worth of output, but there…
Getting to Know the Black Gospel Music Restoration Project (BGMRP)
One of our bigger projects here at the Digitization Projects Group is the Black Gospel Music Restoration Project (BGMRP). Established in 2008, it seeks to preserve America’s proud tradition of black gospel music through digitization, access, and new research. From the earliest days of the project, we established a blog for interested parties to track…
Frances G. Spencer Collection of American Popular Sheet Music & Black Gospel Music Restoration Project: A Comparison
Amanda Harlan presented at the Music Library Association Annual Meeting, Wednesday, March 24th. She did a comparison of the metadata workflow between two major digital music collections at Baylor University: the Frances G. Spencer Collection of American Popular Sheet Music and the Black Gospel Music Restoration Project. She wanted to show the similarities and differences…
New Interviews
Please see http://www.baylor.edu/lib/gospel for some interviews of Robert Darden and Bob Marovich about the Black Gospel Music Restoration Project.