Black Bibliography Project Gets Increased Funding to Expand Its Database

Dr. Goldsby

Meredith McGill, chair of the department of English at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey, and Jacqueline Goldsby, a professor of English, African American studies, and American studies at Yale, are developing a digital database dedicated to the study of Black-authored and Black-published books, magazines, and newspapers.

The Black Bibliography Project, funded through a $1.7 million grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, seeks to remedy what scholars say is a dearth of accurate, organized data about Black print. The project’s mission is to provide a central clearinghouse of information that will be easily accessible to scholars and students of literature, history, Black diaspora studies, and other fields.

The two professors said their work builds upon a history of efforts by scholars, librarians, and private collectors to identify, curate, and provide access to primary source collections of writings by Black Americans. But the project aims to go beyond collecting and curating: Drs. McGill and Goldsby want to revive the practice of descriptive bibliography – the study of books as physical objects – and apply it to Black literary studies. Descriptive bibliography explores the production and circulation of books with the goal of uncovering insights into the role of print in human history.

Professor Goldsby and McGill have been overseeing a pilot program since 2019, leading a team that includes librarians and curators from Yale’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, graduate students from Yale and Rutgers and scholar-consultants from the University of Texas at Austin, the University of Delaware, and Princeton University. The new grant will support the project through 2025 and allow Goldsby and McGill to assemble a larger team and begin the process of connecting with library and archival repositories nationwide to feed the database.

Related Articles

1 COMMENT

  1. Great news re: funding for the Black Bibliography Project. You may be interested in two of my bibliographic-related works: One the greatest BLACK BIBLIOGRAPHER in the world, Monroe Nathan Work, and the second… a work where the community identified the writers, most of whom had not been identified by librraies and whose voices may have been forever lost. Please see below.

    Moses, Sibyl E. “The Influence of Philanthropic Agencies on the Development of Monroe Nathan Work’s Bibliography..” Libraries & Culture 31, no. 2 (Spring 1996): 326. 16p.

    also:

    Moses, Sibyl E. African American women writers in New Jersey, 1836-2000 : a biographical dictionary and bibliographic guide / Sibyl E. Moses. New Brunswick, N.J. : Rutgers University Press, c2003.
    xx, 231 p. : ill. ; 25 cm.

Leave a Reply

Get the JBHE Weekly Bulletin

Receive our weekly email newsletter delivered to your inbox

Latest News

HBCUs Receive Major Funding From Blue Meridian Partners

The HBCU Transformation Project is a collaboration between the United Negro College Fund (UNCF), Thurgood Marshall College Fund (TMCF), and Partnership for Education Advancement. Forty HBCUs are currently working with the project and additional campuses are expected to join this year. The partnership recently received a $124 million investment from Blue Meridian Partners.

Four African American Scholars Who Are Taking on New Duties

Channon Miller is a new assistant professor at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, and Quienton L. Nichols is the new associate dean of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences at Fayetteville State University in North Carolina. M. D. Lovett has joined Clark Atlanta University as an associate professor of psychology and associate professor Robyn Autry was named director of the Allbritton Center for the Study of Public Life at Wesleyan University in Connecticut.

U.S. News and World Report’s Latest Rankings of the Nation’s Top HBCUs

Spelman College in Atlanta was ranked as the best HBCU and Howard University in Washington, D.C., was second. This was the same as a year ago. This was the 17th year in a row that Spelman College has topped the U.S. News rankings for HBCUs.

University of Georgia’s J. Marshall Shepherd Honored by the Environmental Law Institute

Dr. Shepherd is a professor of geography, the Georgia Athletic Association Distinguished Professor, and the director of the atmospheric sciences program at the University of Georgia. Before joining the faculty at the University of Georgia, he was a research meteorologist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. Dr. Shepherd is an expert in the fields of weather, climate, and remote sensing.

Featured Jobs