Soul of a People at ALA part 2

Spark has recently edited together a short little montage of library events connected to the Soul of a People: Exhibiting America's Story initiative by the American Library Association and funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities. Check out the video on Vimeo! http://vimeo.com/12986156

The Exhibiting America's Story initiative included 29 libraries that received a grant to support programming in coordination with the release of Spark's documentary, Soul of a People: Writing America's Story, about the Federal Writers' Project. The Writers' Project recruited unemployed men and women and assigned them to fan out across America to learn its history, interview its citizens and produce the first-ever portrait of America from the ground up in a series of state travel guides.

Leading up to the ALA meeting last week, Spark asked the participating libraries how they used the grant and involved their community. Here are some of the responses:


"We turned back the clock to the 1930s for an opening celebration. The day included two lectures, on the New Deal and the Federal Writers' Project, excerpts from the documentary, and period jazz was played outside of the Library welcoming patrons. Sloppy Jos, said to debut in the 1930s, were served and we hosted a Spam treasure hunt. Food products introduced in the 1930s were displayed along with period ads and photos of local interest..." - Beth Keller, Highland Park Public Library, Illinois

"The greatest benefit to the library from this grant came from reaching out to students, staff, faculty, and the community, including scholars from other colleges, theatrical organizations, musicians, artists, other libraries, senior citizen organizations, and historical societies..." - Alma Zyko, Middlesex Community College Library, Connecticut

"The choice of topics was probably one of the best things about the project. The regional variation between the different states' FWP programs led to a really interesting variety of programs..." - Paul Kauppila, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Library, San Jose State University, California

"We are continuing to use the ideas from the "Soul of a People" programming effort...it was a great learning experience and brought a lot of positive attention to the University Library." - Virginia Haynie Gause, The University of Texas - Pan American, Texas

"Our most successful program was a debate of the New Deal. We had a local journalist and New Deal proponent debate a conservative professor and author of the book "New Deal or Raw Deal?" - Sarah Ormond, Baldwin Public Library, Michigan

"The Soul project here at Armstrong and in the Savannah community was a grand success. The programs were very well attended by a variety of folks whose feedback was very positive. I was impressed by the direction and assistance we got from the ALA/NEH people. We had a lot of support and awfully good material to work with. The Spark Media documentary film, which was shown on the final day, drew a big crowd and all thought it was beautifully done. This was a fine mixture of education and entertainment." - June Hopkins, Armstrong Atlantic State University, Georgia