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Transcript

[T. Bennett]: The IUPUI solution center is the campus’s front door for engagement to the community. We work with businesses, non-profits, and government agencies to put students and faculty together with their needs. The Crispus Attucks museum project was our 1000th solution.

[M. Gude-Bryant]: Well the museum was a welcome donor for a great artifact that came from Oscar Roberts, a famous alumnus of the school. We were contacted by IUPUI’s Steve Mannheimer and the Solution Center about collaborating on the possibility of having scrapbooks from Mr. Roberts converted into digital files to be able to use in the capacity to share with our various visitors that come to our basketball hall of fame to enjoy and re-live some of those years from 1953 to ’56 when the team was winning and breaking color barriers and any kinds of myths and stereotypes that are out there.

[S. Mannheimer]: The project arose out of other activities, actually that originated with the Indiana Pacers and their partnership with IUPUI earlier in the design and installation of the hundreds of historic artifacts and historic posters and images in Conseco field house. Last March he showed me some scrap books from his early years at Attucks.

[O. Robertson]: I hadn’t seen those things for 40 years or more; they were in the attic covered up and getting dust all over them.

[S. Mannheimer]: And I explained that we could have these scrapbooks digitally reproduced, beautifully printed out and bestow them as a gift upon Crispus Attucks. Mr. Robertson thoroughly approved of this and I said “wow” and so what happened? We found out what resources were here on campus, specifically at the IUPUI library, to create the digital files. And so we went to the Indiana Historical Society and they do beautiful work, not only beautiful work but probably the best paper conservators here in the state, or certainly in the city. And these scrapbooks, as you might imagine, are 50 year old scrapbooks are falling apart, they’re yellowed newspaper and old scotch tape and such and they did wonderful things to stabilize these old papers and old documents, worked with the files created by the IUPUI library to make these wonderful prints.

[M. Gude-Bryant]: We are happy to try and use our resources such as upcoming technology that we hope to be installing in the museum with the renovation that’s going to be happening in the building in 2007/2008 to show Mr. Robertson’s collection of scrap books in its entirety hopefully. The Crispus Attucks museum was opened in 1998 and it serves as IPS’s premiere museum to tell the Crispus Attucks High School story and to share African-American history as well as ancient African history.

[O. Robertson]: I just thought it was great; I thought it was wonderful to see that clean, and the pictorial exhibits are wonderful. There’s so many people there that some I recognized, some I did not, the unfortunate part is I wish all the people could go back and see the names. Everyone should have an opportunity to go through that museum.

[S. Mannheimer]: Well I think the idea of what a university should be as not simply a place where a young person goes, sits in a chair, and listens to learned professors deliver knowledge and test them and then they leave, but it’s more of the idea that the university be a true community partner and are bringing the expertise and sensibility and the resources.

[T. Bennett]: The campus’s community benefits in a number of ways. Students get the opportunity to work in companies, to work in non-profits, to work in government agencies that they wouldn’t otherwise, it gives them a chance to network and make connections and really try out their skills in a world environment. The faculty gets the opportunity to interact with businesses and seek their expertise or intellectual property. Our community in a whole benefits from the opportunity to really add to the economy of the Indianapolis and central Indiana area.

[S. Mannheimer]: We represent, in a sense, a workforce of community partners; all the hundreds of IUPUI faculty, the thousands of students who in their daily lives interact with the community because we are members of the community.