Fiora Watts
LIS 698 Practicum and Seminar
Dr. Tula Giannini
Project Site: Green-Wood Cemetery
Site Supervisor: Anthony Cucchiara, Head Archivist
In 2013, historian Jeffrey Richman donated his personal collection of glass lantern slides to Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn. Sourced from private dealers and donated in their original wooden boxes, the earliest image dates from approximately 1866 and the latest from 1953. The years that span the 1870s through the 1920s are particularly well-represented and provide fascinating evidence of a by-gone New York. My work would be multifaceted, from cleaning and re-housing to arrangement and description and finally, digitization. In this collection, the viewer encounters buildings, transportation, street signs and businesses that have either miraculously survived the passage of time or have long ago faded into the past. We see faces and neighborhoods that look familiar and experience both a shock of recognition and a sense of disquiet—the view is somehow the same, yet everything has changed. We know this place, this city—it is all around us—and yet the lively world we are looking at and the faces that return our gaze through this small square of glass, seemingly so full of life, no longer exist. The lantern slide offers a unique glimpse into this vanished world.
Among many institutions, there is currently an emphasis on uncovering hidden collections. Green-Wood Cemetery is a treasure trove of material, very little of which has yet been made publicly available or digitized; however, it is currently engaged in an ongoing evolution from its identity as a cemetery into a cultural/historical center and locus of primary source material with plans to make its collections available for scholarship. The cemetery will be expanding physically into buildings surrounding the former Weir-McGovern Greenhouse across the street from its Fifth Avenue gates, and will eventually relocate its archives there, offering accessibility for those interested in pursuing historical and genealogical research. As an emerging archive, the lantern slide collection is an important vehicle that will serve to enhance Green-Wood's mission and further its long-range goals. In its unprocessed state, and from disparate sources, this collection held significant potential but would only increase in importance and value once it was shaped into a organized collection that could be accessed, both in analog and digital form. From these efforts, this outstanding record of the past will eventually be able to find its way to historians, students, researchers, and the general public of the future.
LIS 698 Practicum and Seminar
Dr. Tula Giannini
Project Site: Green-Wood Cemetery
Site Supervisor: Anthony Cucchiara, Head Archivist
In 2013, historian Jeffrey Richman donated his personal collection of glass lantern slides to Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn. Sourced from private dealers and donated in their original wooden boxes, the earliest image dates from approximately 1866 and the latest from 1953. The years that span the 1870s through the 1920s are particularly well-represented and provide fascinating evidence of a by-gone New York. My work would be multifaceted, from cleaning and re-housing to arrangement and description and finally, digitization. In this collection, the viewer encounters buildings, transportation, street signs and businesses that have either miraculously survived the passage of time or have long ago faded into the past. We see faces and neighborhoods that look familiar and experience both a shock of recognition and a sense of disquiet—the view is somehow the same, yet everything has changed. We know this place, this city—it is all around us—and yet the lively world we are looking at and the faces that return our gaze through this small square of glass, seemingly so full of life, no longer exist. The lantern slide offers a unique glimpse into this vanished world.
Among many institutions, there is currently an emphasis on uncovering hidden collections. Green-Wood Cemetery is a treasure trove of material, very little of which has yet been made publicly available or digitized; however, it is currently engaged in an ongoing evolution from its identity as a cemetery into a cultural/historical center and locus of primary source material with plans to make its collections available for scholarship. The cemetery will be expanding physically into buildings surrounding the former Weir-McGovern Greenhouse across the street from its Fifth Avenue gates, and will eventually relocate its archives there, offering accessibility for those interested in pursuing historical and genealogical research. As an emerging archive, the lantern slide collection is an important vehicle that will serve to enhance Green-Wood's mission and further its long-range goals. In its unprocessed state, and from disparate sources, this collection held significant potential but would only increase in importance and value once it was shaped into a organized collection that could be accessed, both in analog and digital form. From these efforts, this outstanding record of the past will eventually be able to find its way to historians, students, researchers, and the general public of the future.