The Creative Reaction Lab is a community and equity focused project in St. Louis, Missouri, that develops training materials to work collaboratively with communiy members to design “healthy and racially equitable communities.” The Lab has created an Equity-Centered Community Design Field Guide as well as a Community Design Apprenticeship program, among other resources, to support this work.
The Digital Library Federation’s Organizer’s Toolkit is a wiki-site with general organizing strategies and procedures for establishing and promoting a working group, as well as information about how to start a new initiative or group within the DLF. The Organizer’s Toolkit builds upon the DLF’s commitment to building effective communities of practice.
This Digital Library Federation Cultural Assessment Working Group works to develop tools for the measurement and analysis of cultural biases and assumptions in GLAM (Galleries, Archives, and Museums) institutions. Other projects include a workflow for inclusive curation and metadata practices, and the maintenance of an ongoing annotated bibliography of sources.
Foxfire Magazine developed out of a high school English course at Rabun Gap-Nacoochee School in Northeast Georgia’s Appalachian mountains in the late 1960s, and is an example of a long-term community-driven history and archive. The students and teacher chose to create a magazine, honing their writing skills on stories gathered from their families and neighbors, and producing articles about the pioneer era of southern Appalachia as well as living traditions still thriving in the region. This project has led to multiple books and publications, as well as the development of a museum and cultural center devoted to supporting and making accessible the history of the region as documented by students.
The Association of Tribal Archives, Libraries, and Museums (ATALM) is one of the largest organizations for Indigenous cultural heritage practitioners and those working with indigenous materials in North America. It is an international non-profit organization that maintains a network of support for indigenous programs, provides culturally relevant programming and services, encourages collaboration among tribal and non-tribal cultural institutions, and articulates contemporary issues related to developing and sustaining the cultural sovereignty of Native Nations.
The ATALM also maintains a helpful resource list and advocates for digital inclusion and access in Indigenous communities, including the Digital Inclusion in Native Communities Initiative
The Community and Museum collaboration guidelines were developed over a three-year period of collaboration between Native and non-Native museum professionals, cultural leaders and artists. The guidelines are intended as a resource for community members who are working in collaboration with museums. This is not a set of rules; instead, it offers ideas to consider when working with museums.
Your work with a museum might consist of viewing the collections to learn what the museum has from your community; sharing information about items from your community that are part of a museum’s collection; helping to develop museum exhibits; or if you are an artist, you might use a museum’s collections for artistic inspiration. These are just a few of the ways you might engage with a museum.
This working group is focused on discussing new Library of Congress Subject Headings in a collaborative platform. Cataloging Lab provides a space for catalogers and other interested folks to discuss and navigate the complex process of proposing new subject headings, and tracking proposed changes already in progress.
Fox, V. (2018). Cataloging Lab – experiment with controlled vocabularies.
Design Justice in Action (2017) rethinks design processes, centers people who are normally marginalized by design, and uses collaborative, creative practices to address the deepest challenges our communities face.
Created by librarians and archivists with a history of handling, cataloging, and preserving zines in an effort to help other do the same. Serves as a guide and a platform to discuss this relatively new form of media very often created by historically silenced groups, and how libraries and archives can form more ethical partnerships with zine creators.
“This document emerges from years of challenging and joyous conversations about the work we do with zines. As caretakers of these materials, in our roles as librarians and archivists —independent, public and academic alike—we believe in a set of core values that inform and guide our work. We disseminate those values here in order to communicate openly and build trust.”
A How-To Guide for People of Color Charting New Strategies for Social Justice Organizing.
Bailey, M., Bailey, V., Green, K., & Johnson, J. M. (2015). “Dismantling The Ivory Tower: A How-To Guide for POC Charting New Strategies for Social Justice Organizing“. Detroit, MI: Allied Media Conference.
