More than 72,000 items in Kent State University Libraries’ May 4 Collection will be digitally captured with the funding assistance of a $119,443 matching grant, provided by the National Historical Publications & Records Commission (NHPRC).
The digitization of these documents will allow users to explore these events and the context surrounding them through free, online access that will be located at Kent State's Special Collections and Archives. As the project progresses throughout the two-year grant period, announcements regarding new additions to the digital archive will be posted to the website.
This latest grant project follows the release of more than 100 reel-to-reel audio recordings that were digitized and released in April 2016. Learn more here.
The newest project, Kent State Shootings: Actions & Reactions, co-directed by Cara Gilgenbach, head of Special Collections and Archives, and Virginia Dressler, digital projects librarian, aims to digitally scan original materials from a variety of collections that are part of University Libraries’ May 4 archive to present a range of reactions to the events of May 1–4, 1970, which left four students dead and nine students wounded by Ohio Army National Guard troops.
Included in the project are faculty collections containing correspondence received from students whose coursework was cut short by the shootings; Kent State administrative records and community reactions, such as those represented in the papers of LeRoy Satrom, mayor of the City of Kent in May 1970; reactions from college students across the country and around the world; and artistic responses to this pivotal moment in United States’ history.
Learn more about Kent State University Library Special Collections and Archives