Collection Spotlight: Reveal Digital
by Rebecca Johnston, Social Science and Humanities Librarian
Reveal Digital is an open access project dedicated to making previously hidden materials from underrepresented communities freely available to everyone, everywhere. Curated by editorial boards of librarians, archivists, curators, professors and other subject experts, the project’s thematic collections are made up of digitized materials from libraries, museums, historical societies, advocacy groups and individual collectors.
Currently there are six collections available through Reveal Digital:
- American Prison Newspapers, 1800s-present: Voices from the Inside (18,330 items): periodicals published by incarcerated people from the late 19th century to today.
- Behind the Scenes of the Civil Rights Movement (4,189 items): unofficial letters, correspondence, demonstration plan outlines, transportation logs and plans, meeting minutes, programs from worship services, photographs, newsreels, interviews, and musical recordings created by civil rights activists of the late 20th and 21st centuries.
- Black Periodicals: From the Great Migration through Black Power (4,028 items): periodicals, including magazines, and newsletters from the mid to late 20th century, focused on the advocacy of Black Americans for liberation and dignity.
- HIV, AIDS & the Arts (1,788 items): sheet music, manuscripts, playbills, production notes, visual art, items of other art forms, and personal papers from the late 20th to 21st century documenting the relationship between art and the AIDS crisis.
- Independent Voices (21,087 items): alternative press newspapers, magazines, and journals from the latter half of the 20th century
- Student Activism (21,325 items): circulars, leaflets, fliers, pamphlets, newsletters, campaign materials, protest literature, clippings, periodicals, bulletins, letters, press releases, ephemera, and meeting, demonstration, conference, and event documentation from student protest movements of the 20th and early 21st centuries.
Several of the projects will continue to expand as new materials are added, and the next collection to be released will be Documenting White Supremacy and its Opponents in the 1920s.
Libraries and cultural institutions from around the world came together to fund these projects. Syracuse University contributed funding to two collections: Independent Voices and Documenting White Supremacy and its Opponents in the 1920s.
All the items in these collections are free to view and learn about for everyone. For tips on searching JSTOR’s platform, visit JSTOR Search Help. To provide feedback or suggest a title to add to the collection, please complete the Resource Feedback Form.