Reframing Digital Preservation Through an Anti-Racist Lens

The School of Information Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Committee is pleased to invite School of Information students to a workshop, Reframing Digital Preservation Through An Anti-Racist Lens on Friday, April 29, 2022 from 1:00-3:00pm ET.

About the Workshop

As digital preservation and curation practices reach operational maturity among cultural heritage institutions, discussion about anti-racism and digital preservation seems to be at its nascent stages. From the systems archivists use to capture content for long-term care, to the ways we provide access to born-digital materials, digital preservation practices when left unchecked can replicate the same harms witnessed in the physical realm. What are some practical ways archivists can apply anti-racist frameworks to digital preservation activities and approaches?

This two-hour workshop is designed to provide an understanding of how white supremacy underpins library and archive systems and practices and offers an introduction to anti-racist frameworks as groundwork for better practices in digital preservation. Attendees will learn about current projects, related literature, and case studies in the field.

This workshop is designed for emerging professionals who will go on to acquire, maintain, or provide access to born-digital and digitized archival materials.

About the Instructors

Sofia Leung

Sofia Leung (she/her) is a first-generation Chinese American librarian, facilitator, and educator and the principal of Do Better, Be Better LLC. Her work attempts to center the experiences and knowledges of Black, Indigenous and People of Color. Sofia is a founding editor at up//root: a we here publication and the co-editor of Knowledge Justice: Disrupting Library and Information Studies Through Critical Race Theory (2021). You can find out more about Sofia at her website: https://www.sofiayleung.com/ .

Elvia Arroyo-Ramírez

Elvia Arroyo-Ramírez (she/her) is a queer Latinx daughter of immigrants working in the field of archives. She is the co-editor to an upcoming special issue on “Radical Empathy in Archival Practice” in the Journal for Critical Library and Information Science (JCLIS). Her practice and scholarship are grounded in a feminist ethic of care, and works to expose and repair archival practices rooted in systemic biases that perpetuate harm to BIPOC and other marginalized communities.

Register to attend via Zoom

The development of this workshop was made possible by the Digital Preservation Outreach and Education Network based at Pratt iSchool funded by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.