Digital Harlem’s core lies in the Google Maps Program as you can see from the picture listed.
Mainly, the way they were able to develop this project with all the information included is simply just public records. This website is the New York library, home to many books of history that include details from 1866-1965. Indexes include are births, marriages, deaths, and municipal archives.
Digital Harlem is a long-term project thats been active for over 10 years and it strives to be transparent to it’s users on the history of Harlem. Instead of the audience doing all the hard digging themselves with books and searching names on public record databases, Digital Harlem has done it themselves.
Transparency
The whole point of Digital Harlem is to be as accessible and transparent as possible within the bounds of Harlem history dating from 1910.
Visiting Lisa Spiro’s value of ‘Openness’ and ‘Transparency’, we establish that to be ‘transparent’ is to be or include, “open-source software tools, freely accessible digital collections, and open-access journals and books”.
In those quotations, that’s everything Digital Harlem has to offer, and more. It’s free, it’s open, it’s a software tool, and has digital collections of books digitalized into keys and legends laid out on a google map.
They even made a blog about how they did the whole project, “Putting Harlem on the Map” by Kristen Nawrotzki and Jack Dougherty.
This blog maps out the process of finding information through public libaries, old newspapers, and formerly available municipal records online.
Open Sources of Information
On the website is listed main categories of:
- Churches
- Sports
- Numbers Arrests
- January 1925 (‘The Harlem Renaissance’)
- Nightlife (Clubbing, Speakeasy’s, Buffet Flats)
Very clearly, the Sydney team listed a whole tab of sources they got their information. However, this website is sort of dated. So here’s what happens when you try to visit the Municipal Archives of NYC.
They gathered sports scores, arrests, and other general news from the Stephen A. Schwarzman Public Library.
One last thing that remains unavailable today but was in the past is information on schools, churches and fraternities that they found on the Schomburg Centre for Research in Black Culture, New York City.
