The Ashes of Waco

Lee Hancock Collection

At the April 19 commemoration in Waco this year, I met Catherine Wessinger, Professor of Religious Studies at Loyola University in New Orleans. She is co-editor of Nova Religio: The Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions," the author of two books on Millenialism, and editor of two books by Branch Davidians (Mt. Carmel survivor Sheila Martin and David Koresh's mother, Bonnie Haldemann).

Catherine informed me of the Lee Hancock Collection at Loyola--a collection rich with internal government memos, interview reports and expert reports, as well as news articles and FLIR videos, among other items related to the raid, siege, assault and trial of the Branch Davidians. Lee gathered these materials during her numerous years researching the topic as a reporter for the Dallas Morning News, and she had access to some government documents that other reporters typically did not have.

Lee, Catherine and the archivists at Loyola were all interested in moving the collection, and after discussions over the ensuing months, we were able to secure acquisition of the collection here at the Southwestern Writers Collection. Although we are a literary manuscripts repository, our collecting scope does include papers from area journalists. We also feel this collection, centered on the government's side, will compliment Reavis' nicely, which focuses more on the Branch Davidian side.

Also, according to Catherine, the Lee Hancock Collection contains photocopies of documents (or detailed notes on classified documents) that have not been or are no longer accessible to the public. Catherine recently wrote an article about the contents of the collection and an article about the startling conclusions she came to as a result of researching the collection. You can read both articles and all the others online in the latest issue of Nova Religio, The entire issue is devoted to the Branch Davidian incident, and will be published in print in October. It also contains an article by Matthew Wittmer, "Traces of the Mount Carmel Community: Documentation and Access," that contains information about the Reavis papers and The Ashes of Waco digital collection.

We're very happy that our work this past year digitizing and providing online access to The Ashes of Waco research materials was instrumental in the future acquisition of the Lee Hancock Collection! We should acquire it around January 2010, and we can definitely see creating a similar digital collection of out of it someday.

we're live

Okay, the website went up today: http://ashesofwaco.library.txstate.edu/. Aniket and I will be tweaking it (as well as the digital collection) over the coming weeks and I'll be adding content to the digital collection for the foreseeable future. Although Aniket's official time with us is done, he graciously offered to keep working on the project remotely as needed--namely, making changes that are too complex for me to handle.

As I get the site and collection to where I want it, we at the Wittliff Collections will start planning for our marketing efforts, and I'll keep the blogosphere updated on those developments. In the meantime (or any time, really) please send me comments, questions, suggestions--either via this blog or the website. I'd love to hear what you think.

more screenshots & news on the site

I just realized I promised more screenshots by the end of the month. Here it is Aug. 31...and the world continues to wait! Well, wait no longer, gentle readers.

Here is the final homepage. We took out the Guestbook page, because users can use this blog to leave comments or e-mail me directly. This way we don't have to keep up a database and worry about monitoring the comments. Eventually we'll have a comments feature implemented within CONTENTdm too, so users can leave them directly connected to an item.

As you may have noticed, we changed the subtitle to "A Digitized Archive" rather than "An Online Exhibit," as we feel that is a better descriptor. Here is About the Project. The links will lead you to the appropriate places on the same page, and "back to top" links will bring you back here.

Author Interview is very similar in look and function. I divided up the interview into subjects and we turned those into links that visitors can use to jump straight there.

Resources is the last page in the portal site. Most of the links are for sites related to the subject, and those are basically the same as I provided in this blog.

When a visitor clicks on Digital Collection, they will go directly to CONTENTdm in a new window. Different users can modify how they want their screen to look, but right now this or something similar is what you'll see when you get there:

We (Aniket and I) are going to be tweaking it over the coming weeks. We're going to try to make it not so black--similar in look to the About the Project or Author Interview page on the portal site--with a lighter background in the middle so everything isn't white-on-black. Also, we're working on getting all the files to embed properly (i.e., the audio/video files to stream). I think we're close, but now Aniket is working pro bono so I hope it doesn't take too much more work.

We're waiting on the University website guys to get us connected to the proper server to we can make the portal site live, and in turn lead people to the CONTENTdm site. They are tied down right now with a project for the University president, but we should be able to get the site up in the next week or two. In the meantime, I keep plugging away on uploading records and entering metadata.

Sorry about the screenshots getting cut off, but if I make them images smaller they're impossible to read.

More soon.

latest on the website

Below is a screen shot of the home page of the upcoming website. The website is close to being in its final stage. The center image will rotate to different images, fading in and out between them. As you can see by the main navigation links, we changed things up a bit since the last post here in mid-July.

About the Project contains brief descriptions of the author (e.g. a bio), the book, the archival papers, the grant that made the project possible, the digital collection, and the Southwestern Writers Collection.  

Author Interview is an edited transcript of my interview with Reavis last December. I divided the transcript into sections by subjects, that the reader can jump directly to. 

Digital Collection and Blog will go directly to their respective places, in a separate window.

Resources is a list of links to provide a person with more resources regarding the grant, the project and the subject.

Guestbook is a place for anyone to leave a comment on what they think about the site and the digital collection, as well as the incident itself, of course.

Aniket has turned most of his attention now to customizing the look of our CONTENTdm pages, and I continue to work on the metadata and digital records. I'll post more screenshots before the end of the month.

The Upcoming Website

Just thought I would check in and update our scores of readers on what's been happening with the project lately. Aniket and I have been working together designing a template for the site. It will consist of: an opening page with a banner, navigation links, and rotating sample images and/or video clips; an "About the Project" page that gives background information on the project; an "About the Incident" page that describes the incident through the lens of Reavis' collection and book; a page to contact us to request copies; and a "Guestbook" where visitors can leave and read comments. In addition, there will be links to this blog and to the digital collection itself.

The pages that Aniket and I create will link to the CONTENTdm pages that contain the actual records, where users will be able to search the metadata and bookmark records of particular interest to them. Because of space concerns (and time and copyright concerns, somewhat) we are not able to provide digital surrogates of all the items at this time. I'm hoping to continue to add more digitized items periodically after the grant period ends. Of course, I will keep the world posted via this blog whenever newly digitized items are added.

Many other CONTENTdm sites that contain audio and/or video files embed them into the site, so no downloading or pre-installed media players are necessary. We plan on doing this for our site. As far as design goes, we're keeping it simple, like the upcoming Wittliff Collections website will look, and stark, like the background and text colors of this blog. 

I'm going to place the Reavis 12/30/08 interview transcript either on the site or in the collection itself, or both. Some students here worked hard to transcribe the interview, and our admin assistant, myself and Reavis all made passes editing it. I think it is a good resource as to how the book and the project came about, as well as why investigating and remembering what happened at Waco in 1993 matters.

Goodbye, Kurt & Hello, Aniket

Kurt's last day here was May 1, but he stopped in today to say goodbye to the Wittliff Collections crew. He's off to Ohio, then to West Virginia for the summer and plans to be back in the area in September. We're going to miss him around here but hope to see him again soon. Thanks for all your hard work on the Ashes of Waco Project, Kurt! 

By the way, per the very slight chance anyone reading this blog needs to hire--or know someone who needs to hire--an a/v preservation specialist, Kurt is your man! 

Today was also Aniket Kulkarni's first day as our Web Design Intern. He's going to work 20 hours a week for the remainder of the grant period. This is the last leg, the home stretch--time to turn the records that Kurt created in CONTENTdm into a vibrant and interactive website. Stay tuned!