About

About The Pan Am Grant Projects

University of Miami cheerleaders at Christening of the Pan American Clipper Hurricane, a DC-4, tail number N88898, at Miami, Florida
University of Miami cheerleaders at Christening of the Pan American Clipper Hurricane

Background

 

In 2012, the University of Miami Libraries Special Collections was awarded a two year grant from the National Historical Publications & Records Commission (NHPRC) to enhance access to the Pan American World Airways, Inc. Records.  The need for the grant was obvious.  As our most used collection, over fifty percent of research requests pertained to Pan Am, yet the collection’s only access tool was an unwieldy 938-page folder inventory. Making the collection even more difficult to use, the original order of the records – essential for understanding the many contexts in which the records were created – had been lost.  During this grant, the project archivist and over 15 students, volunteers, staff members, and librarians spent over 5,000 hours sifting through over 30,000 folders to organize the collection’s 1,500 boxes of records, as well as repairing damaged items, rehousing materials for long-term preservation, and creating a web-based finding aid.  The end result is a collection that has been thematically mapped, mended, and preserved for generations to come, and a finding aid that allows researchers to find the materials they need more quickly and efficiently.  This website, originally published in November 2014, is the culmination of our efforts.

Pan American personnel booking reservations
Pan American Airways personnel booking reservations

In 2016, the University of Miami Libraries (UML) was awarded a second grant by the NHPRC to digitize the Printed Materials Series.  This 18-month digitization project, encompassing more than 60 boxes of material, has yielded over 100,000 pages of digital content and is both full-text searchable and openly available to the public for browsing and research.  While most of the materials were outsourced to Creekside Digital, approximately one-fourth of the boxes were digitized in-house in the library’s Digital Production Lab.  Additionally, a landing page for the new digital collection was created, where users can easily search or browse by subject, location, genre, creator, or time period.  Using the newly digitized content, three new exhibit pages were also created and are now featured on this site.

 

UML was blessed with another grant in 2019 from Council on Library & Information Resources (CLIR) to digitize even more of the Pan Am collection.  This three-year project was a collaboration with HistoryMiami Museum (HMM) who contributed 500 Pan Am artifacts, and Duke University who digitized nearly 7,000 Pan Am advertisements.  Together, they partnered with Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) to create the first-of-its-kind commercial aviation portal, which brings together all of these Pan Am digital collections alongside even more aviation materials from other institutions contained in DPLA's vast holdings.  The portal also includes a timeline digital exhibit, as well as a Primary Source Set and teaching guide for educators.

Credits

NHPRC Processing Grant Project

 

Project Director

Beatrice Skokan, Head of Manuscripts & Archives Management

Project Archivist

Emily Gibson, Visiting Archivist, Special Collections

Project Assistant

Cory Czajkowski, Special Collections

Student Assistants &           Volunteers

Brook Cathey, Briana Tonns, Kathryn Garcia, Marie Hanewinckel, Nate Mensink, Natasha Mijares, Lyn Moulton, Kriti Sood, Lissette St. Michele, and Piero Trinchero

 

"Cleared to Land" Site 

 

Site Curator

Emily Gibson, Visiting Archivist, Special Collections

Site Development &                Design

Lyn MacCorkle, Digital Repository Librarian

Finding Aid Visualization

Sevika Singh, Digital Repository Student Assistant

Site Programming

Jamie Little, Web & Emerging Technologies Digital Programmer

In-house Scanning

Laura Capell, Head of Digital Production; Mark Buchholz, Digital Production Manager; Marcel Lopes, Digital Production Technician

Copy Editing

Sarah Block, Library Communications

Metadata Support

Allison J. O’Dell, Special Collections Cataloging & Metadata Librarian

Video Editing

Vanessa Rodriguez, E-Learning & Emerging Technologies Librarian


 

NHPRC Digitization Grant Project

 

Project Director

Laura Capell, Head of Digital Production

Project Management,                 Digital Exhibit, & Site           Curation

Gabriella Williams, Digital Projects Librarian

In-House Digitazation

Veronica Cabrera, Digital Production Manager; David Almeida, Digital Production Technician; John Hay, Digital Production Technician; Robert Largaespada, Digital Production Technician; Corey Felhberg, Digital Production Student Assistant; Daniel Correa-Manzor, Digital Production Student Assistant

Metadata Support

Elliot Williams, Digital Initiatives Metadata Librarian

Technical Advisor

Paige Morgan, Digital Scholarship Librarian & Scholarly Publishing Officer

Curatorial Advisor

Beatrice Skokan, Head of Manuscripts & Archives Management

Project Communications

Jose Cabrera, Director of Creative Services; Cory Czajkowski, Writer, Creative Services; Brittney Bomnin, Communications Specialist, Creative Services; Gisele Rocha, Project Manager, Creative Services; Ivette Uria, Events Planner, Creative Services

 


CLIR Digitization Grant Project

 

Principal Investigators &

Laura Capell, Head of Digital Production

    Project Management

Gabriella Williams, Digital Projects Librarian

 

Jacqueline Wachholz, Director of the Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising & Marketing History, Duke University

 

Adriana Millares, Collections Manager, HistoryMiami Museum

Curatorial Support

Kristen Lachterman, HistoryMiami Museum

Drewry Wofford, Course Reserve Supervisor

Aviation Portal                           Infrastructure

Scott Williams, Senior Software Engineer, Digital Public Library of America

Primary Source Set,                  Teaching Guide &                Digital Exhibit

Josh Larkin Rowley, Hartman Center Reference Archivist, Duke University

Leah Tams, Archives Intern, Hartman Center, Duke University

Instructional/Pedagogical           Support

Shatha Baydoun, History and Modern Languages & Literatures Librarian

Jason Sylvestre, Special Collections Librarian

In-House Digitization &                Photography

Veronica Cabrera, Digital Production Manager

John Hay, Digital Production Technician

Metadata Support

Elliot Williams, Digital Initiatives Metadata Librarian

Joanne Nicoletti, Metadata Technician

Site Programming

Patricia Villanueva, Web Designer & Front-End Developer

Community Outreach

Shaneé Yvette Murrain, Director of Community Engagement, Digital Public Library of America

Kathleen Williams, Director of Communications, Digital Public Library of America

Michele Reese, Director of Marketing, HistoryMiami

Project Communications

Jose Cabrera, Director of Creative

Cory Czajkowski, Writer, Creative

Gisele Rocha, Project Manager, Creative;

Vanessa Carreño Valle, Community Relations & Events Manager

 

NHPRC Logo

                                                                          

 

Many thanks to the National Historical Publications & Records Commission and the Council on Library & Information Resources for making all of these projects possible.