A new collaborative project aims to recover the lost stories of Lincoln’s Clyde Malone Community Center and the neighborhood it has supported since 1932.

With $235,196 in grant funding from the Council of Library and Information Resources and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the University of Nebraska–Lincoln Libraries and the Malone Center will embark on a three-year project to prepare, digitize and provide worldwide access to more than 6,000 unique, historically significant documents from the center. The project is titled “Recovering Lost Stories: Digitizing the History of the Malone Community Center, the Heartbeat of an ‘Invisible’ Black Community in Lincoln, Nebraska.”

“(The Council of Library and Information Resources) is looking to amplify the voices of historically marginalized, unseen and hidden populations, with the goal of helping their voices be heard and making their histories and contributions public,” said Charlene Maxey-Harris, associate dean of libraries and a project co-lead. “The archive contains scrapbooks, event programs, reports of neighborhood stabilization, letters between the Malone Community Center and the university chancellors, and much more.”

According to Lorna Dawes, associate professor, social science teaching librarian and fellow co-lead, the strength of the project lies in collaboration. University Libraries will help the Malone Center manage its archives, but the center will retain ownership and management of the materials.

The Council of Library and Information Resources was impressed with the project because of the community focus and Maxey-Harris’ connection and story, Dawes said. 

Maxey-Harris serves on the board of directors for the Malone Center and has long dreamt of making the center’s archives visible to new generations of Black youth. She and Dawes began cultivating the seeds for the project in 2021-22 when they received a Layman Award to explore the social and economic impact of the university’s physical expansion on the Malone neighborhood.

“‘Recovering Lost Stories’ is an example of the evolving roles and responsibilities of research libraries, such as the University Libraries at UNL,” said Liz Lorang, dean of libraries. “For a long time, a research library was judged primarily based on the size of its collections — how many items it owned. As this new project demonstrates, stewarding information so that generations of people may encounter histories and imagine futures does not require ownership. Instead, our work is that of relationships and mutual knowledge sharing.”

Other team members from University Libraries include Melanie Griffin, chair of Archives and Special Collections and lead archivist; Sarah Glover, project archives specialist; and John Wiese, digital strategies technical specialist. Team members from the Malone Center include John Goodwin, director; Tyrina Webster, project manager; and a documents specialist to be hired. Local historian Ed Zimmer will also work on the project.   

The project’s first year will involve preparing the materials for digitization and working with the community advisory team, a group of eight community members with knowledge of the Malone Center’s history and culture. The team will provide context on the materials and decide what is redacted or under restricted access. 

“The community will control its own story,” Maxey-Harris said. “In fact, the community will be invited to contribute to the project with an event planned to capture stories, oral histories and give us context on photos and events.” 

The university will provide physical and digital space and expertise to house the collection, Dawes said, and will teach the center’s staff the skills needed to maintain and expand the archives.

The Malone Center recently broke ground and is raising funds for a new building. 

“Recovering Lost Stories” is one of 18 projects funded by the Council of Library and Information Resources in this grant cycle, selected from 166 applications. 

University Libraries