From Power to Partner: Harnessing Institutional Digital Collections for Community Archives Projects

Archival professional dialogue increasingly includes discussion of the power and responsibility of archivists to challenge outdated modes of collection development that focus on documenting the history of the privileged. While these discussions can be uncomfortable for some, the energy they spark is undeniable. In this presentation an archivist and digital collections librarian in a mid-sized university discusses how she has leveraged her power and privilege to develop a more inclusive digital collection development policy, which empowers collaboration and aims to diversify the perspectives present in the library's digital primary sources. The presentation covers the development of a new policy as well as a number of collaborative digital collection projects undertaken by GVSU Libraries in the past few years, which document diverse communities in West Michigan.