Dear all,

Please join us on April 14 at 12–2pm (Eastern) for a virtual panel on the topic of anti-racist metadata practices as part of the “Information, Algorithms, and Justice” speaker series.

This two-hour virtual event brings together four leading scholars and archivists for a conversation on anti-racist metadata practices in digital archives. The panel highlights the important work now being done to revise archiving practices and knowledge systems. How is racism embedded in knowledge organization systems and how can we change our ways of preserving and accessing knowledge to eradicate racism? We will open with a brief talk from each speaker on current issues in the field, followed by a discussion of several Northeastern projects, to explore how leading-edge conversations may be taken up by active digital humanities projects. The last segment of the event will be an open Q&A with the audience.

This virtual event is free and open to the public, but registration is required. For more details see the event page. To RSVP, see here.

This event will feature these panelists:

• Dorothy Berry (Harvard University)
• Zakiya Collier (Schomburg Center)
• Valencia Johnson (Princeton University)
• Jessica Tai (Yale University)

Following the panelists' presentations, we will have a dialogue with several Northeastern projects and institutions:

• The Women Writers Project, represented by: Cailin Roles (English, Northeastern)
• The Early Caribbean Digital Archive, represented by: Alanna Prince (History, Northeastern)
• The Digital Transgender Archive, represented by: Eamon Schlotterback (English, Northeastern)
• The Northeastern University Library, represented by Amanda Rust (University Library, Northeastern)
• Apartheid Heritages, represented by Vanessa Torres (History, Northeastern) and Cassie Tanks (Information and Library Science, UNC Chapel Hill)

Speaker Biographies:
Dorothy Berry currently serves as the inaugural Digital Collections Program Manager at Houghton Library, Harvard University. Her work focuses on the discoverability of African American history in special collections, through research, description, and digitization. She is a graduate of the Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology, and the School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering at Indiana University, with an MA and MLS respectively. She was honored with Library Journal’s “Movers and Shakers” award, and the Society of American Archivists’ Mark A. Greene Emerging Leader award. Outside of libraries, her work can be found in JSTOR Daily, the Public Domain Review, and Lapham's Quarterly.

Zakiya Collier (she/they) is a Brooklyn-based, Black, queer archivist and memory worker. Her work and research explore the role of cooperative thought and improvisation in the sustainability of im/material cultural memory, particularly in marginalized communities and cultural heritage institutions. Before joining Shift Collective and Documenting the Now (DocNow) in 2022, they have centered African-diasporan, queer, and community-based organizations. Her previous experience includes the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Weeksville Heritage Center, SafeWordSociety, Marilyn Nance’s FESTAC ’77 collection, and other private archival collections. She holds a BA in Anthropology from the University of South Carolina, an MLIS from Long Island University, and a MA in Media, Culture, and Communication from New York University. In September 2020, Zakiya became a Certified Archivist through the Academy of Certified Archivists (ACA). Zakiya is an affiliate of the Center for Critical Race and Digital Studies (CR+DS) at New York University, an Interim Board Member of the Archival Education and Research Initiative (AERI), and a guest co-editor of a forthcoming special issue of The Black Scholar on Black Archival Practice.

Jessica Tai is the Resident Processing Archivist at Yale’s Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library where she is a member of the Manuscript Unit’s accessioning team. She currently chairs Yale’s Reparative Archival Description Working Group, which was formed to develop reparative workflows in response to euphemistic, oppressive, outdated, and harmful language in Yale’s archival description. She is an MLIS graduate of UCLA’s school of education and information studies. Prior to her time at Yale, Jessica was a Project Archivist at UCLA Library Special Collections, and a Research Team Member for the Community Archives Lab at UCLA.

Valencia L. Johnson is the Archivist for Student Life at Princeton University. In addition to being a certified archivist, she holds a Bachelor of Arts in American Studies and History from the University of Kansas and a Master of Arts in Museum Studies from Baylor University. She engages with student organizations on managing and preserving their records, in analog and born-digital formats. As the creator of Amp Up Your Archives program, she works to create records management and archival initiatives to inspire students to view their records and materials as important documentation that is an equal to the administrative record of the university. She is a co-author of the Project STAND’s Archiving Student Activism Toolkit and the Archives for Black Lives in Philadelphia’s Anti-Racist Description Resources.

We will be including automated live captioning during the event. To make space for informal discussions, this event will not be recorded for public distribution. If you have questions, please contact [log in to unmask].

Please also share this information with anyone who may be interested.

Kind regards,

Javier

Javier Rosario
Graduate Fellow
NULab for Texts, Maps, and Networks
Northeastern University