Affiliated Fellows: Amal Ahmed
FOCAS: Faculty Organizing for Community Archives Support is a collective of faculty members representing nine academic institutions across Canada and the United States who are training masters of library and information science (MLIS) students to respond to the needs of community archives. Positioned at the forefront of archival education, our collaborative work will provide a model for cultivating the next generation of information workers as community archives partners and stewards; support community archives of historically underrepresented groups across North America in preserving and making accessible their important histories; and reinvent archives curriculum resources for Library and Information Science (LIS) educators across North America to better respond to the needs of BIPOC, LGBTQIA+, disabled, and other minoritized communities.
Since forming FOCAS in 2022 to explore the challenges of and possibilities for a larger-scale North American effort to support paid internships at community archives, our findings have shown that any internship program focusing on community archives needs to be accompanied by significant curricular changes that decenter dominant archival paradigms and better prepare students for the realities of community-based and community-centered archival work. While MLIS programs are responding to changes in the field, these changes have been slow to occur and do not yet meet the needs of many students and faculty, especially those from historically underrepresented communities. FOCAS faculty believe that curricular transformation in tandem with practical experience at community archives can transform archival theory and practice. Positioned at the forefront of archival education, our collaborative work will provide a model for cultivating the next generation of information workers as community archives partners and stewards; support community archives of historically underrepresented groups across North America in preserving and making accessible their important histories; and reinvent archives curriculum resources for Library and Information Science (LIS) educators across North America to better respond to the needs of BIPOC, LGBTQIA+, disabled, and other minoritized communities.
At CUNY, we are working with the Lesbian Herstory Archive, WFMU Archive, The LGBT Community Center National History Archive, Queens Neighborhoods United and other community archives.
