Preserving the cultural artifacts, memorabilia, and other era-specific ephemera is vital to keeping intact the histories, traditions, and identities of a community. We rely on the use of physical preservation approaches and new media technologies to design environment to host and maintain our collections. Examples include restoring music collections impacted by the environmental factors, ensuring accessibility to these materials, integrating artifacts into curriculum design, and producing computational media, such as podcasts, that allow for the exploration of topics that impact our daily lives.
Curating the digital and physical
Our process preserves cultural history in the digital to facilitate equity in access.
847
Vinyls Digitized
239
Artifacts Digitized
Legendary to the Game
The Michael Webster Exhibit
DJ Web is significant to understanding Atlanta’s early hip-hop scene and the role of the DJ in the experience. As one of the first mixtape and club DJs, Webster is recognized by many DJ’s as the person who sparked their interests in the craft. He is part of the resident DJs of the infamous Jellybean’s Skating Rink (fictionalized in the feature film “ATL”) and he influenced the circulation of early rap to a generation of youth growing up in Atlanta’s Southwest community during the early 80s. His vinyl collection is extensive and diverse, crossing musical genres between 1977 through early 2000’s. His collection also includes original autographs, paraphernalia including original fliers and posters that document the social scene of early Hip Hop in Atlanta.
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We Are #Hiphophighered
The HipHop2020 Collection
The HipHop2020 Collection focuses on the preservation of content produced since 2007, when the HipHop2020 Curriculum Project was launched on the campus of Morehouse College, through its current incubation in the School of Literature, Media, and Communication at the Georgia Institute of Technology. This collection includes CDs (1994-2012), photos, videos, course work, classroom activities, original autographs, student work, and a host of digital artifacts and music that influence the design and curation of pedagogies utilizing Hip Hop as a tool for enhancing the social, civic, emotional, spiritual, and political identities of youth and youth influencers engaged in justice-oriented STEM and humanities instruction.
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Hip Hop Journalism in the South
The j. annette
Collection
The j. annette Collection includes the music reviews, cultural pieces, and features in market-leading publications such as The SOURCE, XXL, Rap Pages, SCRATCH, The FADER, and wax poetics written by Hip Hop journalist and Four Four Beat Labs co-founder, Joycelyn “j. annette” Wilson between 1999 and 2007. This significance of this collection rests in its focus on documenting Hip Hop in the American South during its formative years. The collection also includes music in CD format, cassette tapes, artist press kits, and other era-specific ephemera.
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