C-CAP TEACH will cultivate commitment among higher education institutions to community-centered archives approaches, simultaneously solidifying the ability and responsibility of academic libraries to engage critically and contribute to social justice-focused scholarship, training, pedagogy, and partnerships in their communities. The 48-month project features several interconnected components:
- Training and compensating students for intensive educational experiences in archival stewardship and working on community-centered archives projects;
- Providing direct payments to community-based organizations in the Orange County, California region that participate in community-centered archives partnerships;
- Implementing two assessment projects to identify actionable strategies to support ethical and responsible representation of marginalized histories in digital collections;
- Redistributing funding to academic libraries to apply Community-Centered Archives Practice (C-CAP) models to collaborative community history work;
- Developing a comprehensive Community-Centered Archives Practice (C-CAP) Hub website; and
- Building a coalition of community-centered archives practitioners in the United States, including a National Summit.
The C-CAP TEACH initiative will elevate these values to a wider network, ensuring broad, community-centered access to and representation of community histories; provide evidentiary models for sustaining infrastructure tied to staffing, budgets, and technology; and ultimately leverage the impact and influence of Foundation funding that makes authentic partnerships an everyday practice. Applying this model and the anticipated recommendations of a national scale initiative, we will ensure an ongoing, operationalized commitment to community-centered archives partnerships.
Led by the UCI Libraries Department of Special Collections & Archives — Orange County & Southeast Asian Archive Center.
This initiative is generously funded by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation from 2022-2025.
Project Goals
Year 1
In Year 1, we will focus on Orange County and the Southern California region, reinforcing community-centered archives partnerships at the local level. We will begin assembling advisors across the US. Project goals include:
- hire a project coordinator
- assemble groups of advisors with prior experience in developing ethical community-based approaches and coalition building to work with the team through the life cycle of the project
- design activities and objectives with Orange County community partners for Summer/Fall 2022 projects
- initiate digital collection assessment (project #1) with California Digital Library, to explore opportunities for regional and national digital collection aggregators to evolve service models, to more directly support community-centered archives and other organizations beyond the academic and public library sectors
- recruit and teach a cohort of 6 undergraduate and 2 graduate students on the principles and practice of community-centered archives partnerships, advised by community partners
- initiate digital collection aggregation assessment (project #2) with California Digital Library, to explore the creation of sustainable digital exhibition curation and development models, to amplify the voices of historically marginalized perspectives and also serve as resources for social justice and ethnic studies curricula
- develop a toolkit for developing community-centered archives partnerships between academic institutions and community-based organizations, to be part of a larger C-CAP Hub website
Year 2
In Year 2, we will gather and convene those stakeholders identified in California, the Pacific Northwest, the Southwest, and some nationally for virtual meetings to map out priorities for building a C-CAP coalition. Project goals include:
- facilitate discussions that explore resource advocacy, discovery and access to histories, structural barriers, and finding common ground in C-CAP strategies in an effort to cultivate transformative change
- design activities and objectives with Orange County community partners for Summer/Fall 2023 projects
- complete project #1 with California Digital Library and disseminate initial findings
- complete project #2 with California Digital Library and disseminate initial findings
- recruit and teach a cohort of 6 undergraduate and 2 graduate students on the principles and practice of community-centered archives partnerships, advised by community partners
- continue development of the C-CAP Hub, incorporating user feedback and community partner testing
Year 3
In Year 3, we will distribute funding to regional and national institutional partners, including academic libraries to redistribute and apply C-CAP models to collaborative community history work. Project goals include:
- provide subawards or direct payments to other academic libraries with a requirement that they pay student employees and compensate non-profit organizations in their region for community archives partnership projects
- design activities and objectives with Orange County community partners for Summer/Fall 2024 projects
- recruit and teach a cohort of 6 undergraduate and 2 graduate students on the principles and practice of community-centered archives partnerships, advised by community partners
- plan and implement an in-person National Summit with two primary goals: to build connections between practitioners and communities; and to identify and plan around shared opportunities and challenges
- in consultation with stakeholders identified in Year 1 and convened in Year 2, improve the C-CAP Hub
Year 4
In Year 4, we will officially launch and promote the openly accessible C-CAP Hub, including: the toolkit with models and modules, a community and campus partner directory, research resources, curriculum guidance, and other resources contributed by and accessible to the public. Project goals include:
- conduct user testing for the C-CAP Hub, make revisions, and implement a sustainability and maintenance plan for the resource
- work with our partner community-based organizations to outline objectives for ongoing student projects and activities beyond the terms of the grant
- address any additional work, concerns, or recommendations that have arisen during ongoing conversation and collaboration with our partners, advisors, and stakeholders
- disseminate project findings through various conference presentations and workshops, compiling a sustainability plan, and writing a final report
- select a consultant to provide assessment and evaluation of project findings to the C-CAP TEACH team, write an independent report, and design long-term assessment tools for ongoing use