(Note: This post was authored by Taylor McNeilly, Processing & Reference Archivist.) Welcome to another #WyattWalkerWednesday post! This week, I have another big announcement to make: all 800+ audio cassettes included in the Dr. and Mrs. Wyatt Tee Walker Collection have been successfully digitized and are available to listen to here at the University of Richmond.
Longtime readers may recall that the Birmingham Campaign recordings that I discussed and linked to last week were part of a much larger number of audio cassettes, roughly 835 in total. The Birmingham Campaign recordings were digitized first as a test batch, sent to the vendor while the remaining 825 were being prepared for digitization. These were selected as the test batch primarily because of their extreme age: although the cassettes turned out to have been recorded in 1991, their labels listed the dates of the original recordings, 1963, making them the oldest cassettes in the collection.
Another distinction between the Birmingham Campaign recordings and the remainder of the cassettes was their content. While Dr. Walker speaks at most of the mass meetings, the remaining cassettes are almost exclusively sermons preached by Dr. Walker during his time at Canaan Baptist Church of Christ in Harlem. These provide an amazingly rich resource for research on a variety of topics, including Baptist theology, the ongoing national and international civil rights movements, and current events in Harlem from 1980 through 2002.
While the test batch of materials was sent out much earlier in 2018, preparing the remaining 800+ cassettes took much more time, so they were sent out for digitization much later. Luckily, the vendor moved through them quickly and returned them to us recently. I’ve been hard at work doing what’s called fixity checks to ensure the files were not damaged or corrupted during delivery and transfer, but this work is finishing up and everything has checked out (so far).
If you read last week’s entry, you know that it takes additional work to have files prepared for online access. The first step is usually to get the recordings transcribed, which not only creates easier access but also helps with our metadata work with the files. Due to the magnitude of the project, this work won’t be done anytime soon. While we’ll be posting the files in batches as the work is completed, I wanted to make sure people who are interested in the cassettes knew that they are accessible on-site as soon as possible.
Let me explain what I mean by “accessible on-site.” As part of the preparation for digitization, these cassettes were inventoried and given filenames for their digital file counterparts. This means that, even though we don’t have full metadata and therefore can’t put the files up online, we do know the title of all the labeled cassettes and which files that cassette turned into. With this information, a researcher can come to the library, look through the inventory, and ask to listen to specific files. While we can’t guarantee that the recording will match the label, it at least gives basic access to this amazing resource.
As always, keep an eye on this blog and the library’s social media feeds for further updates!