Patsy Johnson |
There are over 100 African American funeral programs in her collection from several South East Louisiana parishes: Tangipahoa, St. Tammany, St. Helena, East Feliciana, and Washington Parishes. A large number of the funeral programs were composed of members of her family, friends, and church family. Having thumbed through her collection, I made a recommendation to her about preserving her collection. In our conversation, I explained how important it is for her collection to be digitized in order to be preserved, and how I have partnership with the EBPL Special Collection Department to assist with the preservation of such collections.
Patsy made use of this opportunity to ensure long term preservation to digitization. It was encouraging to know she understood how these funeral and church programs can be extremely valuable to the study of local history and genealogy research. I discussed with her how disappointed she would be if a natural disaster or other catastrophic event took place that could cause her collection to be damaged or destroyed. It is for reason like this, that we must consider alternative approaches to preserving our rich collections.
Our meeting concluded with a plan of action for preserving her collection and making it accessible to other researcher through online digitization at the EBPL Special Collections Department. It is expected that the process will be completed within three months.
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