VOTE TODAY To Support Funding For Student-Led Research On Flatbush History

Flatbush Branch of the Brooklyn Public Library at 22 Linden Boulevard. (Photo: Google Maps)

Cast your votes today and help Flatbush students win funding for an exciting student-library history research program!

We only have today to register our votes — via Facebook comments and “likes” — to win funding for the “Digging for Black Pride Urban Excavation Program,” which will make invaluable Public Library and other historical materials about Brooklyn available to high school students at the Erasmus School.

The “Digging for Black Pride” proposal comes from the Flatbush Branch of the Brooklyn Public Library, and it is competing with great ideas from across Brooklyn — librarians from 18 branches have submitted 26 possible programs. We have through TODAY (Wednesday, February 3) to share feedback and click “like” on the entries.

The competition has been organized by Bklyn Incubator, a new Brooklyn Public Library program that funds creative programming ideas developed in the system’s 60 branches.

“Digging For Black Pride” is an in-school research curriculum that plans to utilize the Brooklyn Public Library’s research resources and the archival collection at Weeksville Heritage Center to help Erasmus School senior-level students document the history of their community and “discover autobiographical memories.”

The curriculum will take place over the course of seven/eight weeks. It utilizes several amazing collections:

The Brooklyn Collection (housed at Central Library) through extension at the Erasmus School and the Flatbush Branch of the Brooklyn Public Library;
Our Streets Our Stories Brooklyn Oral History Project (Brooklyn Public Library);
Obituaries of local residents via EPOCH — Electronically Preserving Our Cultural Heritage (Brooklyn Public Library), and
The archival collection at Weeksville Heritage Center.

Winners will be announced in a couple of weeks, in mid-February, after a panel of Brooklyn Public Library staff evaluates the feedback.

Funding comes in part from a $25,000 Sparks Ignition grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services.