The Social Welfare History Project continued to serve the public as both an educational resource and a portal for reference questions related to the site’s materials. 

More than 1.5 million visits to the project  were recorded, most of which occurred during the school year. Undergraduates, public school students and researchers accessed hundreds of different articles. The most used article was “Jim Crow Laws and Racial Segregation,” which was viewed more than 44,000 times. 

Other frequently consulted entries included:

• “Current Issues and Programs in Social Welfare” 31,746 views; 
• “The Progressive Era”  18,981 views;
• “The Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965” (linked to by The Washington Post) 14,652 views;
• “American Social Policy in the Great Depression and World War II” 16,629 views.

Among the new articles posted this year, two were especially noteworthy. “Your Girl and Mine” recounts the story of a lost suffrage film that played in Richmond in March 1915. This piece also uncovered the names of 17 women appearing in a well-known photograph of the Equal Suffrage League of Richmond as they promoted the film. 

In October, guest author Breanna Schuetz, an M. S. W. student at UNC-Greensboro, contributed an article about social worker Alan Keith-Lucas. 

The project’s companion site, the Social Welfare History Image Portal, expanded significantly, welcoming four new partner institutions, and adding more than 150 new documents and photographs. Four “Discovery Sets” were created as introductions to topics for archival research. “Valuable connections between institutional collections became increasingly apparent,” said Alice W. Campbell, who manages the project. “This year, for example, Issues of The Southern Frontier (Stitt Library at Austin Seminary) and The Interracial News Service (Special Collections and Archives, VCU Libraries) greatly enhanced possibilities for study of pre-civil rights era efforts to improve race relations.” 

New Partners

Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary’s Stitt Library The Southern Frontier publication of the Commission on Interracial Cooperation. 

Tulane University Libraries, materials on job discrimination, LGBTQ activism, school desegregation, and a New Oreleans orphanage

Brandeis University - World War I posters, manuscript by abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, pamphlet signed by Louis Brandeis of his famous “True Americanism” speech

Virginia Museum of History & Culture range of materials dating as early as 1866, related to emancipation, public health, suffrage, labor and LGBTQ history. 

New Discovery Sets 

• Child Labor - examines the exploitation of children in factories and mines, and early efforts to regulate or elimate the practice beginning around 1900.

• The White Plague: Tuberculosis - Also known as consumption or “the white death,” tuberculosis remains one of the world’s most deadly infectious diseases. This set examines the history of efforts to prevent the spread of TB through public education and improved health care facilities.

• Annotating Suffrage - Using the non-profit browser extension, hypothes.is, this set creates a virtual discussion space around a collection of suffrage handbills in preparation for the upcoming centennial of the Nineteenth Amendment.

• Controlling the Vote. Rights. Registration. Representation. Lacking the power to control how people vote, the next best option for ensuring who gets elected is to control who can vote. “Controlling the Vote” looks at the complicated and contentious history of attempts to control suffrage, voter registration, and access to the polls. 

 Image Portal users responded with great enthusiasm for the Discovery Set “Comics on a Mission: Educational and Public Service Comic Books.” A tweet to this set from an Eisner Award winner immediately brought more than 1,000 visitors to the site. One comic collaboration between Marvel and the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, The Amazing Spider-Man vs.The Prodigy! was viewed more than 2,000 times in the past year.

Sharing the Story

Project manager Alice W. Campbell had a busy year getting the word out about these important online resources and how they might be used in the classroom. Campbell was invited to speak at the NASW Pioneers luncheon at the National Woman’s Democratic Club, Washington, D.C., and for the Jefferson Senior Living community in Arlington, Va. She gave numerous conference presentations and shared the Image Portal widely.

• Teach with Stuff Unconference, Library of Congress, Washington, DC
• Digital Archives in the Commonwealth Summit. George Mason University, Fairfax, Va.
• Virginia Library Association/College and Research Libraries, Williamsburg, Va.
• Virginia Forum, Longwood University, Farmville, Va.
• Museums and the Web Conference, Boston  

This outreach and infusion of new materials reaped benefits: The number of visitors to the Image Portal doubled from the previous year, with pageviews exceeding 28,117 for 2018-2019. Like its companion project, analytics reveal the highest usage during week days of the school year. While efforts continue in the long process of building an audience, the climbing statistics are very encouraging