Q&Archives: How the Brooklyn Public Library Approaches Curating Collections and Digital Initiatives
An Interview with Natiba Guy-Clement, Manager of Special Collections at Brooklyn Public Library’s Brooklyn Collection
At Urban Archive, we are in a constant state of exploration and experimentation with our partner organizations. So much of our work together involves finding ways to reinterpret and approach archival collections through new digital alternatives.
Since our collaborative process largely happens behind the scenes, we’re starting this series to shed light on our journey, beginning with a conversation with Natiba Guy-Clement: the Manager of Special Collections at Brooklyn Public Library’s Brooklyn Collection. Enjoy!
Urban Archive: What’s your role at your institution?
Natiba: I’m the Manager of Special Collections at Brooklyn Public Library’s Brooklyn Collection, which is the sole archive and special collection (Brooklyn Public Library has 59 branches). Our mission at the Brooklyn Collection is to document the history of Brooklyn from pre-colonial times to the present.
My role at the library is to steward the collections in the archive, curate the content we collect, preserve the materials for future generations, and to make the collections about the borough of Brooklyn available and accessible to users. The types of material we collect vary broadly and include manuscript collections, ephemera, photographs, books, prints, sheet music, and audiovisual content.
Urban Archive: What is the historical significance of your organization’s collections?
Natiba: The Brooklyn Collection’s first major collection was the archive of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle newspaper. The Eagle was the newspaper of note from 1841–1955 and covered news on Brooklyn as an independent city, through consolidation with the city of greater New York, and featured local Brooklyn stories just as much as national and international news. The archive- which consists of full runs of the paper, the photo morgue, clippings, and printing plates-sheds so much light on the happenings in Brooklyn during that time.
Urban Archive: How does this filter through your team’s curatorial framework and current digital initiatives?
Natiba: In many ways, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle archive has shaped what we collect. We document the changes in Brooklyn, it’s communities, and the events that happen here. We’re interested in seeing the borough through the lens of others, and the stories, both from the past and what’s going on right now. Because of this connection to the news and newspapers, and our interest in providing access, some of our biggest digital initiatives are newspaper digitization projects of local Brooklyn Newspapers and Brooklyn High School newspapers. We have a great representative collection of digital images from the Eagle Morgue, as well as from several individual Photographers who’ve documented Brooklyn over the years. Other visual representations of Brooklyn such as maps and ephemeral material like postcards are also available digitally.
We value direct involvement from the Brooklyn community, not just in how they use our collections, but to have them be active participants in the archive. We’ve led community scanning and oral history projects to engage the public and to let folks know that every Brooklyn story is important to us.
As a public library archive, we embrace being rooted in the community we strive to serve. To share the history of where they live, work, play, or are just curious about, and to create a sense of connectivity.
Thanks for reading our first article in our Q&Archives series!
To explore the Brooklyn Collection on Urban Archive, tap here or get lost in one of our favorite Stories by them: The Great Pinball Machine Bust.
