Faculty Organizing for Community Archives Support (FOCAS) is a three-year, nine-university collaborative (Mellon) grant concentrating on community-partnership-based archival work. Components of the grant support curricular and pedagogical development, along with archival development and project planning. This session brings together three perspectives of experiences within the first two years of a three-year Dominican University (DU) FOCAS grant: the community partners, the student interns, and the Dominican faculty. These experiences highlight that archival access and discoverability are not only technical goals but also relational practices built on trust and shared purpose.
You will learn about and engage with the realities related to the vulnerability of archiving and cultural heritage work from a community-advocacy/community-partner perspective. The community-partner discussion also will illuminate aspects of power, empowerment, privilege, and purpose. In turn, student interns will discuss how training in community archives work has influenced their understanding of archival ethics, care, and social responsibility. The faculty moderator will facilitate the session and offer nuances of leadership approaches that maximize community and intern engagement.
By utilizing a 360 perspective, the session offers insight into how universities can prepare emerging professionals to engage responsibly with community partners. It argues that to truly “find it here,” we must build together and create infrastructures of access, stewardship, and respect that make (community) archives discoverable, usable, and cared for over time.
Speakers Anthony W. Dunbar, Dominican University (Session Chair) Kaitlyn Griffith, Dominican University
