This week, we’re polishing up our website and writing content for our presentation & paper. We are thinking about how to best showcase the work we have done and how to demonstrate the need for and usefulness of a full scale project. So we’re working on plans for next steps. In a way, thinking about the future helps us reflect on where we are and how we got here, which is useful as part of the praxis element of this project.
As part of this process, we’ve been asking around about HUAC testimonies–to see if we can figure out how many there are out there and where they might all be. Turns out, no one actually seems to know. The Wilson Center and John Jay Library said contact NYPL. NYPL has some stuff, but were not able to give us more than links to their holdings. LoC said contact NARA. NARA said, essentially, it is impossible to know, and in addition to whatever is published and in the world, they also have many boxes of closed executive hearings that are only barely indexed. What we do know is there is no one place where all the testimonies are, and certainly not online and not searchable. It’s sort of baffling that this is the case–one’s mind goes immediately to all of the other incomplete, sub-optimal, or dark archives containing important info that must be out there–though this certainly reinforces the value of our project.
Speaking of search, we’ve got a fancy new search interface. You can check it out and let us know what you think of it. o_O
