A Preservation Milestone
Members of the HBCU RPP audio preservation team were at WGBH in Boston this month to celebrate the hand-off of digitized audio from Shaw University’s WSHA to AAPB. Shown from left, are Field Preservationists Jenohn Euland and Chinyere Neal with Miranda Villesvik and Meghan Sorenson of AAPB.
The HBCU Radio Preservation Project reached a major milestone on Dec. 10, when a hard drivw containing preserved audio from Shaw University’s WSHA was handed over to the American Archive of Public Broadcasting (AAPB) during a special celebration in Boston at WGBH, AAPB’s preservation partner. This makes Shaw University the first among our HBCU partners to reach the goal of both preserving audio and making it publicly accessible.
WSHA, the first black-owned radio station in the country, broadcast from 1968-2018. Now, recordings of the programs WSHA produced over the years will be accessible, through AAPB. These recordings include episodes of the long-running and well-loved community affairs radio program Traces of Faces and Places with host Margaret Rose Murray, a community activist and icon in the Raleigh community. Play-by-play of a basketball game between the Shaw Bears and the Chowan University Hawks. And, of course, the diverse musical programming produced by the station.
In 2024, University Archivist Marie Stark-Farrow went searching “high and low, in every cabinet and storage space in the library,” for WSHA audio recordings after learning about the HBCU Radio Preservation Project. She finally found them stored away in what once served as part of WSHA’s broadcast studios. The audio unearthed by Stark-Farrow and her colleagues, ranging from the late 1980s to mid-2000s, was subsequently inventoried, assessed, and digitized by members of the HBCU RPP preservation team from the Northeast Document Conservation Center (NEDCC). The digitized audio was turned over to Shaw University in October of this year during a celebration recognizing the return of audio material to Shaw University and two other North Carolina HBCUs, North Carolina Central and Elizabeth City State universities.
Before handing over its preserved sound to the AAPB, which manages both digital preservation through the Library of Congress and access through WGBH, Shaw University took a critical step toward providing a widely accessible entry point to the material by working with NEDCC to complete a Deed of Gift, a document that allows the Library of Congress to preserve files in perpetuity. The Deed of Gift also allows Shaw University to maintain control over this important historic material. It enables the institution to stipulate how materials can be used, including which files are publicly accessible and how they can be accessed. Shaw is able to decide whether all of their preserved audio will be accessible through the AAPB website or whether files will just be findable on the AAPB website.
The Deed of Gift is a legal document written in legalese. The preservation team at NEDCC spent a lot of time creating an annotated version for our HBCU partners in order to make sure they understood the language and the commitment being made. “NEDCC did a phenomenal job of annotating it and making it user friendly,” said Stark-Farrow, who signed the Deed of Gift on behalf of Shaw University. “It was a breeze.”
The HBCU Library Digital Trust also offers HBCUs the opportunity to digitally preserve and provide access to their archival collections. This is in addition to institutions archiving their digital files on campus and offering access to them through their campus archives. Having multiple repositories like AAPB and the HBCU Library Digital Trust that safeguard and offer access to this audio is a key component of the HBCU Radio Preservation Project’s commitment to preserving the history, culture and legacy of HBCU radio. In this case, providing a copy of their preserved audio to the AAPB allows Shaw University to continue WSHA’s long-standing legacy of “serving the community like no other.”
With that in mind, Stark-Farrow’s next step is to make the material accessible through campus-based listening stations in the library and Mass Communications department. “People are very excited about this,” she said. “And alumni are going crazy. They love it,” and many have called with offers of help. “This sheds a light on the university; it’s one more cool thing about Shaw University.”