From Primary Resources to a Foundation for Programming: Disability History at UTA Libraries

Abstract

In 2013, the Special Collections Department of the University of Texas at Arlington (UTA) Libraries was asked to collect disability history materials. Review of the current collection revealed many materials relating to disabilities. There is even speculation that one of UTA’s maps, the 1493 Secunda etas mundi map, uses disability imagery to depict peoples at the edge of the known world. This was a digital project ripe for exposure and it became the foundation for a program that explored the experience of people with disabilities. From this initial collaboration, two grants were awarded: one from the Texas State Library and Archives Commission to globally expose UTA’s disabilities primary resources, and the other a Humanities Collections and Reference Resources (HCRR) planning grant that invited researchers, librarians and archivists to a Disability History/Archives Conference, also the first of its kind. The HCRR grant outcome will be the creation of a portal to connect and reveal digitized primary materials that reside in university libraries, federal repositories, and nonprofits that concern disability history. Strong ties to the Disability Minor at UTA, the first such program in the southern United States (US), provided an opportunity to create a traveling exhibit with a supplementary digital exhibit that showcases UTA’s early adoption of adaptive sports, which lead in providing accessibility to students with disabilities on our campus during the 1970’s. A continued collaboration involves experiential learning for graduate students who are creating oral histories of prominent Texans with disabilities. See how a simple request to collect primary resources evolved into a program that includes national collaboration and collation of materials that chart disabilities history in the US, one of the largest minorities in the US and worldwide.

Texas Disability History project site: http://library.uta.edu/txdisabilityhistory/