Takin’ It To The Streets: Prioritizing outreach and sustainable relationship building to BIPOC communities outside of the archive (A BIPOC Perspective)

With the overwhelming amount of work that special collections librarians and archivists take on to keep our departments running, outreach can often be neglected. Post-COVID and in response to burnout in the workplace, it is understandable that many of us have withdrawn back into the archive. However, outreach is a crucial component to the work that we do, especially when engaging with marginalized communities. Special Collections can be a place where hope is fostered and relationships can be built on respect and trust for communities of color whose past experiences with PWIs may have led to a culture of mistrust and erasure. While this work can seem overwhelming and intimidating for those inheriting broken relationships, there is opportunity for mending, and trust can be earned through conscious outreach and engagement.

This panel is intended for librarians and archivists who also believe the future of archives relies on community-based praxis and/or are interested in learning about outreach through community and relationship building outside of the traditional curriculum-based context. It will also address the importance of outreach to communities that are being met by hostility in the current political environment. Three BIPOC librarians and archivists will share how they have prioritized outreach within their work and developed sustainable community relationships outside of their institutions.

This panel directly highlights the outreach work of BIPOC archivists and special collections librarians. We are three archivists who are first and second generation college students that feel that outreach to marginalized communities is at the center of the work we do for our institutions. We work at state public universities based in the West Coast, Southwest, and Midwest. Our positions and roles were created in direct response to our institution's attempts to support diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives. We are directly responsible for BIPOC collections.

Panel Discussion