Funded Projects
Special Collections routinely collaborates with community partners and funders to make the unique cultural heritage resources available in the repository accessible online.
'One of the Black Legislators': Providing Access to the Tommie F. Brown Papers
- Agency: National Historical Publications and Records Commission
- Program: Archival Projects
- Amount: $144,049.00
- Period: 2024-2026
The project supports processing and description of 125 linear feet of archival material amassed by Tommie F. Brown, an accomplished civic leader, educator, researcher, and state legislator whose career is defined by historic firsts, including serving as the first Black woman to represent the 28th District in the Tennessee House of Representatives. The project will result in an openly accessible finding aid with re-usable, file-level descriptive metadata to support opportunities for community engagement, exhibition, experiential learning, applied research methods, and digitization.
Chattanooga Labor and Manufacturing Digitization Project
- Agency: Tennessee Historical Records Advisory Board
- Program: Regrants from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission
- Amount: $3,630
- Period: 2022-2023
This project aims to describe, digitize, and publish online approximately 218 photographs, as well as related booklets and correspondence totaling roughly 134 pages of material, documenting Wheland Foundry, United States Pipe and Foundry Company, and Dixie Mercerizing Company in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Open access to the materials will contribute to available primary source evidence of industrialization, including the roles of Black people and women in foundries and mills in the New South.
View the Wheland Foundry and United States Pipe and Foundry Company photographs and Dixie Mercerizing Company photographs digital collections.
Providing Access to the Chattanooga History Collections Project
- Agency: University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
- Program: Faculty Grants
- Amount: $1,744
- Period: 2017-2018
The purpose of the Providing Access to the Chattanooga History Collections project is to build an openly accessible repository of finding aids for independent researchers, faculty, and students to create opportunities for experiential learning, professional development, and applied research methods. The project will result in access to detailed inventories of resources previously owned by the Chattanooga History Center that open information about the creation, historical context, and contents of these archival collections for the first time.
Voices of African American Women Oral History Project
- Agency: University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
- Program: Ruth S. Holmberg Grant for Faculty Excellence
- Amount: $3,496
- Period: 2017-2018
This project aims to build an inclusive digital archive of local women’s accomplishments, activism, and experiences as business leaders, legal advocates, educators, social activists, and community builders through the collection, transcription, and online publication of oral histories. Building on the Chattanooga Women's Oral History Project, this work is focused on capturing the lives of African American women in our city, especially experiences that shed light on the local impact of the Civil Rights Movement.
Chattanooga Women's Oral History Project
- Agency: University of Tennessee at Chattanooga Office of Research and Sponsored Programs
- Program: Collaborative Research Initiative for Sponsored Programs
- Amount: $6,300
- Period: 2016-2017
This project enhanced access to the Chattanooga Women’s Oral History Project interviews conducted by the City of Chattanooga Mayor’s Council for Women History Subcommittee and collected by the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga Library’s Special Collections. The project resulted in unfettered digital access and standards-based management of the oral histories though a digital archive that connects public audiences to audio recordings and oral history transcripts for approximately 90 interviews. Using next generation tools to navigate transcriptions, descriptive metadata, and digital recordings, scholars are be able to interpret the language, history, and culture of Chattanooga using digital humanities technologies.
Ralph W. Hood and W. Paul Williamson Serpent Handling Field Recordings and Interviews Digitization Project
- Agency: University of Chattanooga Foundation
- Amount: $48,000
- Period: 2016-2017
This project resulted in the open access publication of nearly 200 field recordings from Ralph W. Hood and W. Paul Williamson’s extraordinary collection of religious services and interviews with serpent handling congregants available and discoverable on a global scale. Using next generation digital tools and technologies to navigate transcriptions, descriptive metadata, and video, scholars are able to interpret the linguistic, religious, musical, and cultural traditions of Appalachian serpent-handlers using text mining, data visualization, GIS mapping, and other digital humanities technologies.