UT Libraries' Human Rights Documentation Intiative (HRDI) partners with Texas After Violence Project

The Human Rights Documentation Initiative (HRDI) of the University of Texas Libraries works to preserve fragile human rights documents, as it also highlights previously archived human rights materials at UT Austin. The new HRDI website went online in mid-November. HRDI also partners with the Kigali Memorial Centre in Rwanda and the Free Burma Rangers. We are honored to be in this company of human rights advocates.

The HRDI partnership is a tremendously promising development for the Texas After Violence Project. We listen to and record deeply moving testimonies and wish to share these stories, but knew from the beginning that keeping the oral histories in libraries would mean that only people with time and resources would be able to access the entire range of interviews. The HRDI will allow anyone in the world to be able to access the full videotaped interviews and transcripts, when released by the interview narrators. The Texas After Violence Project will only edit the interviews to the extent and in the manner that the people we interview direct; many of the interview tapes will be presented with virtually no editing.

Thanks to the HRDI, people from around the world-- anyone with access to the Internet -- will be able to access and use these rich interviews to understand the experiences of people directly touched by tragedies and by the criminal justice system in Texas.

Who should listen? Anyone interested in the causes and effects of violence. Policy makers. Neighborhood groups. Poets. Clergy and grief counselors. Historians, anthropologists, sociologists, and educators. Visual artists. Police officers, judges, lawyers, and emergency medical personnel, and anyone who is a first-responder to violent tragedies.

How may people use these materials? For any educational and non-commercial purpose, including training.

We are enormously grateful to T-Kay Sangwand, human rights archivist, and Christian Kelleher, project director, and all the staff of the UT Libraries who are facilitating our participation in the HRDI. The Texas After Violence Project is also indebted to its own participants and consultants -- Kimberly Bacon, Antony Cherian, Sabina Hinz-Foley, and Gabriel Daniel Solis, and Mark Westmoreland --- for their work, technical skills, and especially foresight.

Stay tuned!