About
About The Pan Am Grant Projects
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 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
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Project Director |
Beatrice Skokan, Head of Manuscripts & Archives Management |
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Project Archivist |
Emily Gibson, Visiting Archivist, Special Collections |
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Project Assistant |
Cory Czajkowski, Special Collections |
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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
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Site Curator |
Emily Gibson, Visiting Archivist, Special Collections |
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Site Development & Design |
Lyn MacCorkle, Digital Repository Librarian |
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Finding Aid Visualization |
Sevika Singh, Digital Repository Student Assistant |
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Site Programming |
Jamie Little, Web & Emerging Technologies Digital Programmer |
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In-house Scanning |
Laura Capell, Head of Digital Production; Mark Buchholz, Digital Production Manager; Marcel Lopes, Digital Production Technician |
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Copy Editing |
Sarah Block, Library Communications |
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Metadata Support |
Allison J. O’Dell, Special Collections Cataloging & Metadata Librarian |
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Video Editing |
Vanessa Rodriguez, E-Learning & Emerging Technologies Librarian |
NHPRC Digitization Grant Project
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Project Director |
Laura Capell, Head of Digital Production |
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Project Management, Digital Exhibit, & Site Curation |
Gabriella Williams, Digital Projects Librarian |
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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 |
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Metadata Support |
Elliot Williams, Digital Initiatives Metadata Librarian |
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Technical Advisor |
Paige Morgan, Digital Scholarship Librarian & Scholarly Publishing Officer |
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Curatorial Advisor |
Beatrice Skokan, Head of Manuscripts & Archives Management |
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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
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Principal Investigators & |
Laura Capell, Head of Digital Production |
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Project Management |
Gabriella Williams, Digital Projects Librarian |
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Jacqueline Wachholz, Director of the Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising & Marketing History, Duke University |
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Adriana Millares, Collections Manager, HistoryMiami Museum |
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Curatorial Support |
Kristen Lachterman, HistoryMiami Museum Drewry Wofford, Course Reserve Supervisor |
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Aviation Portal Infrastructure |
Scott Williams, Senior Software Engineer, Digital Public Library of America |
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Primary Source Set, Teaching Guide & Digital Exhibit |
Josh Larkin Rowley, Hartman Center Reference Archivist, Duke University Leah Tams, Archives Intern, Hartman Center, Duke University |
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Instructional/Pedagogical Support |
Shatha Baydoun, History and Modern Languages & Literatures Librarian Jason Sylvestre, Special Collections Librarian |
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In-House Digitization & Photography |
Veronica Cabrera, Digital Production Manager John Hay, Digital Production Technician |
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Metadata Support |
Elliot Williams, Digital Initiatives Metadata Librarian Joanne Nicoletti, Metadata Technician |
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Site Programming |
Patricia Villanueva, Web Designer & Front-End Developer |
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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 |
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Project Communications |
Jose Cabrera, Director of Creative Cory Czajkowski, Writer, Creative Gisele Rocha, Project Manager, Creative; Vanessa Carreño Valle, Community Relations & Events Manager |
