Advocating for Ourselves: Working in Underrepresented and Multicultural Archives and Libraries

Using decolonial methodologies, Advocating for Ourselves aims to provide a practical guide to assist cultural heritage workers to practice and improve their advocacy skills related to: developing collections and exhibits for/about underrepresented communities, organizing community outreach, establishing post-custodial archival methods, becoming mentors, attaining financial support, and other activities related to under-represented communities and Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) practitioners. This project comes out of the Rare Book School’s (RBS) Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship for Diversity, Inclusion, and Cultural Heritage working group.

The goal of this book project is to provide our colleagues facing similar challenges with specific examples and resources. We hope to reach a larger audience outside of the RBS Cultural Heritage fellows cohort and to prompt conversations for further discourse and resources with specific attention to the challenges faced when working with historically marginalized collections, such as overcoming the under- and mis-representation of minority communities, acquiring financial and personnel support, developing trust and relationships with the community, and providing fair and democratic ways of knowing and accessing these collections. The book project highlights the work of the fellows in this group and the ways they have approached community outreach and engagement, postcustodial archiving, description and access of BIPOC collections, mentoring, and more.

Contributors

Advocacy Working Group Fellows

Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship for Diversity, Inclusion, and Cultural Heritage at Rare Book School 

Meaghan Alston, Wilson Special Collections Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Ellen-Rae Cachola, University of Hawaii Law Library, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa

Azalea Camacho, Special Collections and Archives, University Library, California State University, Los Angeles

Yao Chen, University of California Santa Barbara Library, University of California, Santa Barbara

Clinton Fluker, Stuart A. Rose Manuscripts, Archives, and Rare Book Library, Emory University

Lorena Gauthereau, Recovering the U.S. Hispanic Literary Heritage, University of Houston

DeLisa Minor Harris, John Hope and Aurelia E. Franklin Library, Fisk University

Rosa Peña, Los Angeles County Library and La Historia Historical Society

Jasmine Sykes-Kunk, John Hay Library, Brown University

Margarita Vargas-Betancourt, Latin American and Caribbean Special Collections, Department of Special and Area Studies Collections, University of Florida

Further Reading and Resources

Visit the RBS-CH Fellows Advocacy Zotero Group to learn more about advocacy in underrepresented and multicultural archives and libraries or join the Zotero group to add more resources.