With funding by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) has awarded Marquette University, Catholic University of America, St. Catherine University and the Catholic Research Resources Alliance (CRRA) a Cataloging Hidden Special Collections and Archives grant in the amount of $149,964. The grant will support the Catholic Social Action Access Project, one of only 14 selected from a total of 91 applications.
Archivists, catalogers, and interns will create Encoded Archival Description and/or Machine Readable Cataloging records to expose three previously “hidden” collections. The common thread throughout the three significant-in-their-own-right collections is U.S. Catholic social action in the 20th century. St. Catherine University’s Ade Bethune Collection includes the archives of Ade Bethune, world-renowned liturgical artist and social activist; Catholic University of America holds the Washington, D.C. St. Vincent de Paul and Catholic Charities records; and Marquette University’s Dorothy Day-Catholic Worker Collection documents the faith-based movement of Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin.
This grant will enable the American Catholic History Research Center and University Archives to process and create an online finding aid for the Catholic Charities and the St. Vincent de Paul Society records of Washington D.C., which will make using the records to study early Catholic and local charitable practices much easier. The records include correspondence, account books, surveys, photographs and publications related to charitable activities of the St. Vincent de Paul Society and in the District of Columbia.
Marquette Libraries serves as the lead institution for the project. Jean Zanoni, Associate Dean of Libraries and Matt Blessing, Head of Special Collections and Archives, are Co-Principal Investigators. Project collaborators are institutional members of the CRRA and descriptions of project materials will be collocated within the CRRA’s “Catholic Portal”. The Catholic Portal provides access to rare, unique and uncommon materials in libraries, seminaries, special collections and archives. By electronically bringing together resources in many formats from many collections, the Portal enables easy, effective and global discovery of Catholic research resources.
The award is effective January 1, 2010, and project activities will be completed by December 31, 2011.