Lawrenceville Housing Authority Archiving Project

GGC’s Digital Humanities Lab is assisting GGC History professor and public historian Dr. Carey Shellman to digitize and archive historical documents for the Lawrenceville Housing Authority. The Lawrenceville Housing Authority was established in 1950 and since then has built 212 housing units within 10 housing sites.

The lab is a crucial part of this project since Dr. Shellman and her intern, Eldina Husic, had been using the scanners at the lab during Summer 2023 to digitize these documents, which include newspapers, photographs, and resident cards. These records are significant because they document the history of public housing in Gwinnett County. 

“When we took on this project, we knew that Lawrenceville Housing really wanted to get these records digitized,” said Dr. Shellman. “And that’s where Atlanta History Center would have the one up on us because I didn’t realize at the time that we had the ability to do that. After meeting with Dr. Daniel Vollaro, we found out we did.”

Dr. Shellman and Eldina Husic started their process by inventorying everything they received from the Lawrenceville Housing Authority and then organizing it. This was a challenge in itself because there were many unlabeled documents and some contained sensitive information about the residents who benefitted from the housing projects; many of those people are still alive and their children might still be living at those facilities.

“If this was a project where a collection had already been established, we would have to worry about original order but we did not with this project,” said Dr. Shellman. “There was no original order, everything was just dumped in boxes. So, we sort of had the luxury of organizing it ourselves.”

Their process to preserve these documents began by scanning the resident cards at the Digital Humanities Lab. Eldina scanned more than 100 cards, front and back, and now these records will be stored digitally since the originals might get fragile as time passes.