USF Libraries’ Special Collections Department to Hold City of Tampa Archives Awareness Week Presentation

Join the USF Libraries’ Special Collections this Thursday in the USF Libraries’ Grace Allen Room (4th Floor) at 2pm for a City of Tampa Archives Awareness Week presentation about the Progress Village digital collection and exhibit! Co-presenters for the event include Amber Dickerson and USF Libraries’ Associate Director for Digital Initiatives, Amanda Boczar.

The Hillsborough County Planning Commission partnered with the University of South Florida’s Master in Urban and Regional Planning Studio course taught by City Planner-in-Residence Amber Dickerson. The class used Fall 2024 to take a deep-dive into the archival collection housed in Special Collections at the USF Tampa campus. The Hillsborough County Planning Commission published a press release about the relationship in 2024.

Three students from the class received funding to work with Digital Initiatives to digitize and create metadata for the collection, available online now! The rest of the class worked closely with Dickerson to engage with the community and used the archives to create a Celebrating Progress Village StoryMap digital exhibit. Additional efforts to conduct digital preservation of the community through 3D scanning are underway.