In the wake of the George Floyd and Breonna Taylor murders, and in the spirit of protest that followed, the ArchivesSpace community began a conversation about what it could do to promote diversity and inclusion while combating systemic racism in our field. That continuing conversation has led to a series of initiatives that we will undertake in the coming years, including the ArchivesSpace Diversity Partnership.
The ArchivesSpace Diversity Partnership is a new three-year program that offers support for implementing the ArchivesSpace application to institutions that are themselves or primarily serve communities underrepresented in the ArchivesSpace community. Each participating institution is eligible for resources like membership, hosting, training, and user and technical support. This program will launch launched with a small cohort of institutions for a three-year term beginning on July 1, 2021. The three-year term will conclude on , and concluding on June 30, 2024.
Our Inaugural Cohort (July 1, 2021-June 30, 2024
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For the duration of the program, each ArchivesSpace Diversity Partner will receive, at no cost to them:
ArchivesSpace membership
ArchivesSpace hosting and technical support from a Registered Service Provider
introductory and specialized training
ongoing user support
These commonly used resources for implementing ArchivesSpace are being offering as a package for the purposes of this program, but participating institutions may decline individual items if they are not wanted. All ArchivesSpace Diversity Partners will be ArchivesSpace members for the duration of the program.
Eligibility
Eligible organizations include:
academic Minority-Serving Institutions such as Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSIs), and tribal colleges
non-profit or community archives primarily run by or serving BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color)
tribal archives
Eligible organizations cannot already be an ArchivesSpace member or client of a hosting provider. An organization also cannot be a unit of a parent institution that does not meet these criteria.
Responsibilities of ArchivesSpace
Provide, at no cost to the Partner, the implementation resources selected by the partner institution, which may include membership, hosting, training, user support and technical support. Resources will be provided according to the standard terms of these offerings.
Provide opportunities for partner institutions to connect with each other and others in the ArchivesSpace community.
Responsibilities of Partners
Actively work to implement ArchivesSpace at their institution.
Attend occasional ArchivesSpace Diversity Partnership meetings and provide feedback about their experience implementing ArchivesSpace and participating in the ArchivesSpace member community. It is anticipated that all meetings will be online; travel support would be provided if a meeting were to be held in person.
All information held within a Partner’s ArchivesSpace implementation remains the sole property of the Partner, to be used or shared at their discretion only. Any information about progress of individual implementations of ArchivesSpace and any institution-specific data collected in meetings or feedback opportunities will be kept confidential.
To Apply
There is a short Expression of Interest form to complete. The Expression of Interest asks for some information about the applicant institution and why becoming an ArchivesSpace Diversity Partner is of interest to them.
Expressions of Interest should be submitted to ArchivesSpaceHome@lyrasis.org by March 15, 2021.
All applications will be evaluated by outside peer reviewers and a subset of the planning group according to the criteria established by the planning group. Some applicants may be contacted for further discussion about the program and their interest as part of the evaluation process.
We expect to select and notify the cohort of Partners by May 1, 2021.
To Learn More
Members of the planning group are happy to talk about the program at any time - please contact us at ArchivesSpaceHome@lyrasis.org. Potential applicants who are interested in the experience of using ArchivesSpace at an underrepresented institution can contact Brittany Newberry (bnewberry@auctr.edu). She is happy to talk about Atlanta University Center’s experience implementing ArchivesSpace as an HBCU.
We are also holding an informational webinar on February 10 at 2:00 p.m. ET/11:00 a.m. PT. Registration for the webinar is available at https://lyrasis.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_f6s6-6JeT_6q6I_TgIqWVA.The webinar will be recorded.
Planning Group
Jessica Crouch, ArchivesSpace Community Engagement Coordinator
Christine Di Bella, ArchivesSpace Program Manager
Brittany Newberry, Atlanta University Center and ArchivesSpace User Advisory Council Chair
Sean Quimby, University of Pennsylvania and ArchivesSpace Governance Board Vice Chair
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Black Cultural Archives – a unique community archive based in the heart of Brixton, South London, that was established in 1981 to collect contemporary records of Black communities and seeks to transform the understanding of local, national and global Black history.
Detroit Sound Conservancy – deliberately rooted in and informed by Detroit’s community activism, a community-based archive that tells Detroit’s story through the experiences of its musical people.
Spelman College – a liberal arts college in Atlanta that is one of the only two remaining HBCUs founded to educate women of the African diaspora. In addition to being the official college repository, the Archives also documents women of the African Diaspora broadly, and houses the Audre Lorde and Toni Cade Bambara papers.
Weeksville Heritage Center – a historic site, house museum, and cultural center in Brooklyn, New York, whose mission is to use education, the arts and a social justice lens to preserve, document and inspire engagement with the history of Weeksville, one of the largest free Black communities in pre-Civil War America.
Xavier University of Louisiana – the only Catholic HBCU in the country, with historic collections that focus on Black history, New Orleans and Louisiana history, Black Catholics, and the Gulf Coast region, in addition to XULA institutional history.
Our New Cohort (July 1, 2024-June 30, 2027)
Cherokee National Research Center – based in the tribe’s capital city of Tahlequah, Oklahoma, the research center serves as the official repository for the Cherokee Nation, the largest federally-recognized Native American tribe in the United States. The state-of-the-art facility is home to the tribe’s collection of historic documents and cultural artifacts from the 1700s through present day.
CUNY Haitian Studies Institute – an academic unit within the City University of New York with a threefold mission to contribute to knowledge about Haitians and the Haitian Diaspora, facilitate a community of collaboration among scholars and learners of all ages conducting research or serving the Haitian community and community-based organizations, and engage in analysis and research practices to better understand policy and programs directed at Haiti and the Haitian community.
Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe – based in Massachusetts, the mission of the tribe’s archives is to collect, preserve, and make accessible the material culture and historical record of the Wampanoag people and illuminate the long history of the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe, their rich indigenous culture, and the historical significance of their persistent survival in the face of centuries of contact and conquest.
Soomaal House of Art - a Minnesota-based Somali artist collective and arts organization whose mission is to document and preserve contemporary Somali art, the lived experiences of Somali Minnesotans, and the historical archive of Somalia and Somalis.
Texas Southern University – one of the nation’s largest historically black universities, with the Traditional African Art Gallery, the Charles F. Heartman Collection, Barbara Jordan and Mickey Leland Archives and other special collections that are related to the black experience in the United States and the world, the history of the university, and the City of Houston.
We’re really excited to work with our cohort members in the coming months and years. We’ll provide more information about the program as this work proceeds.
Hosting for the ArchivesSpace Diversity Partners is being generously provided by our Registered Service Providers Atlas Systems and Lyrasis.