Rescuing Liberian History: Preserving the Personal Papers of William V. S. Tubman, Liberia's Longest Serving President

CAMP and the Title VI National Resource Centers for Africa are supporting the efforts of Indiana University to restore and preserve the archives of William V. S. Tubman, Liberia's longest serving president.

Approximately 30,000 documents of the personal papers of Tubman will be retrieved from the library of his unoccupied mansion in Liberia and preserved in a 16-month grant project awarded by the British Library Endangered Archives Programme. The materials, having been inspected approximately twenty-five years ago by Christopher Clapham, a consulting African specialist from Lancaster University, UK, demonstrate the nearly complete integration between Tubman's personal and political lives during his presidency from 1944 until his death in 1971. The bulk of the collection clusters at the beginning (1944-1950) and end (1961-1971) of his administration. Of the collection's importance, Clapham stated that given Tubman's stature as an African head of state during the de-colonization era, these papers will be of particular value for the study of the Organization of African Unity's early years, as well as for the study of West African diplomacy.

The papers are in deteriorating condition and in need of immediate preservation efforts. Much of the collection requires conservation; in 2003, rebel soldiers rummaged through the file cabinets in search of valuables, tossing folders and papers onto the floor, leaving them limp and damp in Liberia's tropical climate (for a more detailed assessment, see http://www.indiana.edu/~libsalc/african/assessmentof%20liberiandocrep.html).

The project, with £ 48,810 in funding from Endangered Archives and additional conservation funding from CAMP/Title VI, will follow a six stage process to retrieve, restore, and microfilm the collection before returning it to Liberia.

Stage I Packing and Shipping to Indiana University: A team trained to pack fragile documents will take special shipping containers to the library of the Tubman Estate where they will retrieve the Tubman papers, flatten and pack them into the containers. Because facilities do not exist in Liberia to deep-freeze and freeze-dry the damp, insect infested collection, the containers will be air shipped back to the E. Lingle Craig Preservation Laboratory at Indiana University.

Stage II Freeze-Dry Papers: The containers with the Tubman Papers will be deep frozen at -10º F to stop mold growth and exterminate insects, then placed in a freeze-drying facility at 28-30º F for several months.

Stage III Conservation and Restoration: Professional conservators at the Craig Preservation Laboratory will inspect the condition of the dried documents. Damaged documents will be restored whenever possible. When original documents can not be saved, the imaging staff, under the direction of the Head of the Craig Lab, will take necessary measures to capture and preserve their content.

Stage IV Description & Arrangement: Professional archivists, supervised by the Director of the Indiana University Archives, will inspect each document and restore the filing order described by Dr. Christopher Clapham during his 1979 visit to the W.V.S. Tubman Library of Presidential Papers. Finding aids will be written and prepared for Internet display via EAD (Encoded Archival Description) coding.

Stage V Microfilming: Once organized, the entire collection will be microfilmed, still the best method for preserving content for hundreds of years. Microfilming procedures following international guidelines will allow the microfilms to be digitized later.

Stage VI Return Tubman Papers to Liberia: The complete physical collection of the President W.V.S. Tubman Papers will be shipped back to Liberia. Additional sets of microfilms will be shipped for distribution to the University of Liberia, Cuttington University College, Center for National Documents & Records/National Archives and the Tubman family. The collection will reside at a location in Liberia that is acceptable to both the Tubman family and which meets the Endangered Archives Programme's conditions.

Participants

Verlon L. Stone, Indiana University (Project Coordinator)
D. Elwood Dunn, Sewanee-The University of the South
Daniel Reed, Indiana University
G. Narrison Toulee, Center for National Documents and Records/ National Archives, Liberia
Jacob Nadal, Indiana University
Philip Bantin, Indiana University

Outcome

Microfilm copies of the Tubman papers will be deposited with the University of Liberia, Cuttington University College, Center for National Documents and Records/National Archives, and the Tubman family to give local access to Liberians for the Tubman papers' content. International access to the Tubman papers' content will be via microfilms deposited at the Liberian Collections Project-Indiana University, the British Library, and with the Center for Research Libraries (CRL), which is the central repository for CAMP/Title VI.

For more information and updates, see also Indiana University's page at: http://www.libraries.iub.edu/index.php?pageId=2772

Return to CAMP Related Projects page.