Abstract:
University of New Orleans Special Collections Librarian Connie Phelps moderates a panel discussion by local archivists of important as well as unusual collections found in university, municipal, and private repositories in New Orleans.
Howard Margot of The Historic New Orleans Collection presents his experiences in the digitization and launch of the Vieux Carré Survey, an online, searchable database containing thousands of architectural plans, photographs, and ownership records documenting 300 years of property evolution in the French Quarter.
Sally Sinor with the Civil District Court for Orleans Parish discusses the records of the New Orleans Notarial Archives which developed from Louisiana’s unique civil law system, representing some 40 million pages of signed acts covering every aspect of history, socioeconomic data, and cultural lifeways of the region from colonial times to the present – the only repository in the United States dedicated to notarial records.
As director of collections for the Louisiana State Museum in 2009, Greg Lambousy began the Louisiana Colonial Documents Digitization Project to create free online access and finding aids for the 70 thousand judicial and notarial records of the New Orleans French Superior Council (1714-1769) and the Spanish Cabildo (1769-1803), documenting the history and culture of the city’s inhabitants during the colonial era. While many associate jazz with New Orleans, the first documented opera staged in New Orleans was performed in 1796, with numerous productions presented on a yearly basis ever since.
Trish Nugent of Loyola University speaks about The New Orleans Opera Association Archives (NOOA), documenting the business and creative operations of the NOOA, one of the oldest continually performing opera companies in the country since 1943.
