Andrea Jackson Gavin (left), program director of the HBCU Digital Library Trust, during a site visit at the Shaw University Library with Paulette R. Dillard, president of Shaw University.
Launched in 2023, the HBCU Digital Library Trust is on a mission to reach the next generation of students, researchers, and information seekers through one digital platform with materials showcasing the history of Black academia in the United States post-emancipation.
Funded by the Harvard & the Legacy of Slavery Initiative, the work of the HBCU Digital Library Trust is built on the strong foundation of the digital preservation movement, which began in the 1970s. This movement gained momentum in the United States in the 1990s. In the early 2000s, Janice Franklin and Loretta Parham led the way in introducing collective digital preservation to HBCUs, co-founding the HBCU Library Alliance, a group committed to supporting the sustainability of historically Black colleges and universities libraries at large. In 2006, the Mellon Foundation provided a $375,000 grant to Cornell University and the HBCU Library Alliance. This grant supported the launch of the HBCU Digital Collection.
“Although the full Black experience consists of more than education, the evolution of Black higher education, is a very important aspect that people sometimes overlook,” said Andrea Jackson Gavin, the program director of the HBCU Digital Library Trust. “Whether it’s the record of Black people building or founding their own institutions, or white people like the first president of Paine College working alongside Black people to create new systems and structures, the trust is about maintaining a repository of the history of Black education, that travels from the end of slavery, to the reconstruction era, through today.”
Twenty years ago, the goal of the HBCU Digital Collection was to archive and make accessible HBCU founding materials such as the “Texas State University for Negroes Plan of the Campus”, June 1949. Today, the collection is not only home to founding HBCU documents but also preserves materials such as an interview with Mary McLeod Bethune, 1953, the founder of Bethune-Cookman University, who was a philanthropist and civil rights activist, an adviser to president Franklin D. Roosevelt, and the daughter of enslaved people.
A portrait of Mary McLeod Bethune, circa 1920.
Photo courtesy of Bethune-Cookman University, HBCU Digital Library Collection
In 2008, the Atlanta University Center Woodruff Library became the host of the digital collection, an early digitization program that aimed to expand access to the archival collections at historically Black colleges and universities.
As part of a four-year commitment, Harvard & the Legacy of Slavery Initiative contributed $6 million in 2023 to launch the HBCU Digital Library Trust with Harvard Library, working in partnership with the HBCU Library Alliance and the Atlanta University Center Woodruff Library. The trust is a priority for Harvard Library in its efforts to improve the discovery and accessibility of special archival and digital collections for all. To expand the HBCU Digital Collection, the trust both broadens access and builds capacity so that institutions can benefit from advanced technology and digitization expertise and support.
By 2027, the trust hopes that the more than 102 HBCUs are contributors. To date, the trust has digitized over 16,000 materials.
“The HBCU Digital Library Trust exemplifies the power of collaboration to expand access to knowledge” said Martha Whitehead, the vice president for the Harvard Library and University Librarian and Roy E. Larsen Librarian for the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. “Harvard Library is honored to be a partner in making these vital collections available so more people can discover the stories that have shaped American life.”
The trust in action
Located in Nashville, Tennessee, American Baptist College is one of the smallest HBCUs and a proud contributor to the trust, having archived over 300 materials since 2024. The trust has provided an invaluable capacity to its director of library services, Angel Pridgen. Through the support of a traveling archivist and digitization project manager, who helped identify materials to be archived, created an inventory, and packaged the materials for digital scanning, American Baptist College is already observing an influx of engagement with its digital collection, receiving over 125,000 hits and approximately 10,000 unique visits to date.
Pridgen said she sees American Baptist College’s digital collection as more than just an archive.
“I envision American Baptist College’s digital collection as functioning not only as an educational tool that supports academic inquiry and curriculum development but also as a genealogical resource that helps individuals connect with personal and communal histories,” Pridgen said. “I hope the collection strengthens our institutional legacy while deepening public understanding of our contributions to religious, educational, and civil rights history.”
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