Dear colleagues,

Please consider attending the upcoming virtual panel, "Advocating for Ourselves: Working in Underrepresented and Multicultural Archives and Libraries Book Launch and Panel Discussion"

Registration link: https://bit.ly/rbsadvocacy

Date: March 22, 2022

Time: 2:00 p.m. – 3:30 p.m. ET

Location: Zoom (The Zoom link will be emailed to registered participants the day of the event.)

Presented by: Rare Book School Andrew W. Mellon Cultural Heritage Fellows

The Advocacy Working Group Fellows in the Andrew W. Mellon Cultural Heritage Fellowship at Rare Book School are hosting a panel discussion and launch of an open-source book, Advocating for Ourselves: Working in Unrepresented and Multicultural Archives and Libraries, and an accompanying panel discussion. Advocating for Ourselves is a practical guide that aims to develop and improve the advocacy skills of those working in the cultural heritage sector. The book includes resources on topics such as: developing collections and exhibits for and about underrepresented communities, organizing community outreach, establishing post-custodial archival methods, becoming mentors, and attaining financial support for special collections. The Advocating for Ourselves book launch and panel will highlight the importance of Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) cultural heritage work.

This event features presentations by

• Lauren Cooper (Center for the Black Digital Research Librarian and Managing Director, Pennsylvania State University Libraries): “Visual Representation: Breaking Practice, Shifting Focus, and Centering Communities.”
• Jonna Paden (Librarian and Archivist, Indian Pueblo Cultural Center, New Mexico): “Responsibility, Representation and Respect in a Tribal Archives & Library.”
• Mario H. Ramirez (Head of Special Collections and Archives, California State University, Los Angeles): “From Margin to Center: Mobilizing Community Partnerships through Reciprocity and (Self-)Representation.”

A moderated discussion will follow the presentations, and a brief Q&A session with registered participants.

This event is free and open to the public, and everyone is invited to attend. To participate, register at https://bit.ly/rbsadvocacy

Speaker Bios

Lauren Cooper (she/her) is the Digital Scholarship Librarian and Managing Director for the Center for Black Digital Research/#DigBlk at Penn State University. Lauren works with students, faculty, librarians, and partners to implement, develop, and manage digital scholarship and publishing projects that bring nineteenth-century Black organizing to digital life. Lauren has a MLIS degree from the University of Maryland, College Park, with a specialization in archives and digital curation and a bachelor’s degree from the University of Redlands in Visual Sociology: Struggle and Resistance. Prior to becoming a librarian, Lauren worked in publishing and education at social justice organizations for more than 20 years to promote underrepresented voices, communities, and histories.

Jonna C. Paden (Acoma/Laguna Pueblo; she/her) is Librarian & Archivist at the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center Library & Archives in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where she has been previously a student and a community intern. She has worked as an independent library and archives consultant. Since 2020, she has been a chair of the New Mexico Library Association’s Native American Libraries Special Interest Group (NALSIG). She holds an MLIS in Archives Studies and Records Management from San José State University and was part of the Circle of Learning cohort.

Mario H. Ramírez (he/him) is the Head of Special Collections and Archives at the California State University, Los Angeles. He received a PhD in Information Studies and a Certificate in Experimental Critical Theory from the University of California, Los Angeles in 2017. Previously, he has held appointments as Project Archivist at the Bancroft Library at the University of California Berkeley, and at the Center for Puerto Rican Studies at Hunter College, CUNY. He was a 2018–2019 CLIR Postdoctoral Fellow in Data Curation for Latin American and Caribbean Studies at Indiana University, Bloomington.