ALBA Website Updates: The Volunteer Database & More
After launching ALBA’s newly designed website at alba-valb.org, we are thrilled to announce further additions.
Volunteer Database
In August, ALBA’s data team completed the migration of the volunteer database to the new website. As part of this effort, the team also performed an initial update and loaded and completed quality checks on over 2,700 individual records. The team—Chris Brooks, Dennis Meaney, Elizabeth Yearsley, and Jeff Barckert—collectively put in more than 300 hours to complete the task.
The volunteers’ data is intended to provide information about the lives of Americans who volunteered to serve in the Republican armed forces and ancillary services during the Spanish Civil War. The objective is to provide both an overview of their service and a list of sources. The records are aimed at historians, educators, students, and the family members of the volunteers.
The database is an ongoing project. Near-term enhancements include:
- Additional records from the Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History (RGASPI).
- Passport information and photographs from ALBA’s passport project.
- Family background information from Ancestry.com.
- Links to oral histories posted online by NYU and other entities.
Featured Tamiment Collections
Updating our webpage gave us the opportunity to showcase our incredible partnership with NYU’s Tamiment Library. We have created a centralized page where visitors to our website can navigate to our ALBA collections at Tamiment which include the Harry Randall Collection, the Manny Harriman Video Oral History Collection, the John Gerassi Oral History Collection, the Arthur H. Landis Oral History Collection, and the Francis Patai Audio Collection. Visitors can also access the link to Tamiment’s entire digital collection, filled with incredible labor and radical histories.
Monument Page
In celebration of our new webpage and the completion of repairs to our San Francisco Monument, we have created a dedicated space online for this great memorial to the men and women of the Lincoln Brigade. The page features various images and press on the monument, directions on how to get to the monument at Embarcadero Plaza, as well as text and video of a moving speech giving by ALBA Board Member Peter Glazer given at the original dedication ceremony in 2008.
Invisible Heroes
To highlight the African American participation in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade we have created a special spotlight page for the documentary Invisible Heroes. Documentarians Alfonso Domingo & Jordi Torrent produced this particular film to highlight the African American contribution to the ALB, their fight for democracy, and fight for the civil rights that were denied to them in their own country. Visitors will be able to view the film’s trailer, several reviews of the film, and can contact ALBA if they wish to purchase it for themselves.
Event Videos
As COVID-19 has forced many of our in-person events online, we have begun to record them for later viewing. Visitors to the home page of our new site will notice that a recording of our Special Online Gala Event is available for viewing. We hope to continue to add event videos from future programs as well as adding older footage from ALBA’s storied past to our place online.
