Some people engage in human-rights activism through protests and rescue missions.
Meanwhile, some librarians at UT address the issue in another way: documentation.
UT Libraries debuted its Web site for the Human Rights Documentation Initiative on Monday. The initiative aims to provide access to and archive research that relates to human rights.
The site includes primary-source collections related to human rights, a blog and a Twitter feed with updates on new resources uploaded to the site, as well as upcoming events.
The idea for the initiative arose from a conference Vice Provost Fred Heath attended in 2007 on human-rights archiving and documentation.
“UT Libraries definitely realized there was a need to have that kind of a program,” said Tiffany-Kay Sangwand, a UT human-rights archivist.
The initiative received a $1.2 million grant in July 2008 from the Bridgeway Foundation, a Houston-based nonprofit that seeks to fund organizations committed to solving societal and community problems. The foundation is part of Bridgeway Funds, an investment management firm.
“We’re carving out a new space for what libraries can do,” Sangwand said. “Libraries aren’t just a place where you can check out books. Libraries can also play an important part in preserving this documentation, not only for academics, but for activists as well.”
The initiative’s current projects include working with the Kigali Memorial Center, the Free Burma Rangers and the Texas After Violence Project.
The Kigali Memorial Center, named after the capital of Rwanda, collects testimonies from survivors of genocide, perpetrators and those involved in court proceedings.
“What UT is doing is digitally preserving the video recordings, making copies and working with them to build a Web site to make these resources accessible,” Sangwand said. The Web site documenting the genocide is set to release in April 2010, in time for its 16th anniversary.
Free Burma Rangers is a nonprofit based in an unspecified location in South Asia that provides medical aid, food and protection to internally displaced refugees in Burma.
In the summer of 2009, Nicholas Rejack, a library sciences graduate student, went to the organization’s office to digitally capture 172 mini-digital video tapes, one week’s worth of the 900 total tapes of footage dating back almost a decade. The videos document such aspects of the Burmese conflict such as military training, rescue missions and living conditions of the refugees.
“The portrayal of the issues of Burma in the media in the U.S. don’t emphasize the issues the ethnic minorities face,” Rejack said. “They have been struggling against the central government before the end of the second world war. There are more deeper, complex issues that just never get brought up in the American media.”
Because of the sensitivity of the videos’ content and in order to protect the whereabouts of the refugees featured in the footage, UT will not release the videos to the public anytime soon.
“The documentation is up to Free Burma Rangers,” said Christian Kelleher, archivist and project manager of the Human Rights Documentation Initiative. “They’re the authors of this material. It’s really up to them, how and when it’s made publicly available.”
The Texas After Violence Program, an Austin-based nonprofit, is partnering with the initiative to make public its interviews with people who have been impacted by the death penalty, including families of those executed, families of murder victims, jurors, clergy and law enforcement officials.
“There’s no way in the world that we could afford a server that could host and show all of those interviews, plus all the supporting material,” said Virginia Raymond, UT professor and founder of the program. “We’re hoping these documentations will be used by artists, counselors, historians, anthropologists, to people who work in violence prevention programs, to law enforcement officials, to people who care about the nature of violence.”
Libraries document activists' research
Published: Thursday, November 19, 2009
Updated: Thursday, November 19, 2009
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