Projects

The group will explore and undertake projects geared toward developing events, resources, and tools for archivists, scholars, and authors working with and/or creating literary papers.  Possible projects might include:

Symposium: An initial symposium, “Beyond the Text: Literary Archives in the 21st Century,” was held at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library on April 26th and 27th, 2013.

Research: The group will foster, support, and/or undertake research projects, at the local and consortial levels,  designed to understand the needs of creators and users and to further archivists’ engagement with literary papers. GLAM(NA) recently completed a Literary Archives User Study.

Publications: The group intends to develop a series of pamphlets designed to help those who create, manage, and use literary papers.  Topics might include:

• Understanding and using literary papers
• Using non-literary papers (ie. legal and financial records) to support literary scholarship
• Privacy issues in literary papers
• Copyright
• Paleography, or Deciphering and reading handwriting
• Guidelines for creating, managing, and using electronic records

Workshops: The group might develop workshops for archivists and scholars designed to advance  understanding and work with literary papers.  An introductory workshop would aim to help archivists and users develop a core set of skills for interpreting literary archives and manuscripts.