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Project Correspondence:
benjamin.walsh@utoronto.ca
Project Team:
Eva Jurczyk, Coordinator, Humanities Collections, University of Toronto
Benjamin Walsh, Selector for English Language Literatures, University of Toronto
Chad Crichton, Liaison to the Department of English, University of Toronto at Scarborough
Jeff Newman, Selector for African Studies, New College, University of Toronto
Nelly Cancilla, Liaison to the Department of English & Drama, University of Toronto at Mississauga
Lo Humeniuk, Graduate Student Library Assistant
Accessible PDF:
Expanding Digital Access to Literature by Black Canadians - Click for Access
Conference Poster Abstract:
Academic library collections serve each broad discipline as either the raw material for research or the overarching structure that places its scholarly production in context.
Within the humanities, the raw materials of research that are available to scholars are often biased towards a Western literary canon. This is especially true of the digital humanities where scholarship can only reflect what it is possible for scholars to see. Historian Kim Gallon (Making a Case for the Black Digital Humanities, 2016) describes a digital humanities that frames human culture and society through digital library collections that lack equity in their representation of Black experience. Black studies, she argued, cannot leverage the opportunities digital humanities affords if this problem with digital collections remains.
This poster will first present an overview of the methods library staff used to assess the digital collections at a large Canadian university library to identify the gaps that exist in its holdings of the literature of Black Canadians. Next this poster will describe how these gaps need to be addressed both through traditional commercial acquisition and through direct partnerships with publishers and authors to ensure this important work can be digitized, preserved, and shared.
Connection to Conference Subthemes:
A commitment to provide access to information, ideas, and works of imagination should not be limited to that which seeks to reflect fully only the dominant culture of any society. It is only in a commitment to provide access to works created by and representing the experience of marginalized peoples that a library can claim a commitment to IFLAs Core Values and Article 19.
While this poster provides a model library workers anywhere can use to expand the digital availability of the information, ideas, and works of imagination of marginalized peoples, the goal of the described project was to examine a library collection at a large university for gaps in the digital representation of the writings of Black Canadians. For scholars of colour, especially those born into a digital landscape, access to this work is an expectation. And if we are unable to meet that expectation, libraries will be seen to contribute to, rather than to counter, racial inequity.
UTL Central Libraries Collections Diversity Plan:
Informing this project is the University of Toronto Libraries Collections Diversity Plan published on June 16, 2022. This document is intended to serve as an actionable plan for collections services to meet the University of Toronto Libraries’ (UTL) commitment to creating a safe, welcoming, and inclusive environment that supports learning, teaching, research and work. In accordance with UTL’s Inclusion, Diversity, and Equity Statement, the libraries pledge to increase staff diversity, to provide opportunities for staff and resources to develop cultural competencies and awareness of systemic biases, to build and improve relationships with Indigenous communities, to incorporate the principles of the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act in our work and services, and to work with the University’s Equity Offices in removing barriers to support our community members in fulfilling their academic, research, and employment goals.
Expanding Digital Access to Literature by Black Canadians is a project guided by some of the elements of this organizational plan.
Poster Citation:
Walsh, B., Jurczyk, E., Crichton, C., Newman, J., Cancilla, N., & Humeniuk, L. (2022, July 26-28). Expanding Digital Access to Literature by Black Canadians [Poster presentation]. IFLA World Library and Information Congress (WLIC), Dublin, Ireland. https://2022.ifla.org/