The Community-Driven Archives (CDA) team here at Arizona State University is what we proudly call the “dream team”. With a background as diverse and community oriented as the CDA team is, we are excited to have this opportunity to serve the diverse communities across Arizona. ASU Library is proud and excited to continue with the community based partnerships we have with organizations like Phoenix Pride and Chicanos Por La Causa, as well as creating new partnerships with communities like the Pascua Yaqui Tribe, Salt River Pima-Maricopa Communities and the Hopi Tribe. We also have established connections with organizations like Palabras Bilingual Bookstore and the Sigma Beta Club, a youth auxiliary group associated with the Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity.
Through the Mellon grant funded project the team at ASU is engaged in and committed to the work of what the Arizona Matrix research study found. By engaging the communities identified within this study, we hope to change the tide and begin to address this most fundamental need of documenting historically marginalized communities within Arizona.
Let’s meet the team:
Nancy Godoy (Project Lead)
Lorrie McAllister (Co-Project Lead)
Alana Varner (Project Archivist)
Jessica Salow (Archives Specialist)
Myra Khan (Student Worker)
Preetpal Gill (Student Worker)
Denise Mosso Ruiz (Student Worker)
Kenia Menchaca-Lozano (Graduate Student Worker)
Kate Saunders (Graduate Student Worker)
Elise Daniells (Graduate Student Worker)
Heather Boardwell (Intern)
This team looks to be an example to other institutions and community-driven archives that are committed to traditional community-driven partnerships as well as partnerships that go beyond the conventional preservation model. Our goal is to not only engage more archivists in this work, but to correct the erasure of marginalized narratives in archival records.
Contact me, Jessica Salow, with feedback at Jessica.Salow@asu.edu, as I would love to hear from you your thoughts regarding the work we here at ASU are doing in community archiving around Arizona. We also want your feedback on what you would like to see from us in future blog posts. In the subsequent weeks, we will take an in-depth look into the work of the CDA team here at ASU as well as talk about the concept of a community archivist and the role of radical empathy in community archiving. We will also touch on how community members can become community archivists. See you next week!