Hayley Johnson and Sarah Simms obtain funding for the second phase of World War II project
Hayley Johnson and Sarah Simms were awarded the ALA Carnegie Whitney grant and the NewsBank/Readex/GODORT/ALA Catharine J. Reynolds Award again to fund the second phase of their project, “Through an Extended Lens: Louisiana, Internment, and the Geography of Chance.”
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“These grants will be funding the second phase of our project ‘Through an Extended Lens: Louisiana, Internment, and the Geography of Chance’ which will be investigating the links between religion and internment during World War II,” Simms said. Johnson and Simms received the grants for the first phase of the project as well. The project is an interactive online research guide about Camp Livingston, Louisiana, and the camp’s role in Japanese-American internment.
Johnson and Simms presented their findings thus far at the National World War II Museum in New Orleans. The presentation was recorded live and is on The National WWII Museum Facebook page. They also went to the Rohwer/Jerome reunion at the WWII Japanese American Internment Museum to speak about the project and sat on a panel at the Alexandria Museum of Art as part of the programming associated with the exhibit Witness to Wartime: Takuichi Fujii.
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Simms joined LSU Libraries in the spring of 2017 after leaving Nicholls State University where she and Johnson were colleagues. Johnson joined LSU Libraries in the fall of 2017. The pair anticipates the project to be completed by the spring of 2019.