Stakeholder Interviews and University Collections: An Exploratory Methodology

Abstract

This essay provides an overview of how four MA students in Public Humanities centered the use of local stakeholder interviews to design a collecting plan for the LGBTQ collections at Brown University’s special collections library, the John Hay Library. The authors discuss both the stakeholder interview process and the pedagogical benefits of using a methodology that asks institutions to reflect on how they orient their holdings to various publics.

Keywords:

• collection plan
• stakeholder
• special collections

Acknowledgements

We would like to extend our sincere thanks to Heather Cole, Christopher Geissler, Professor Steven Lubar, and our many stakeholders for their time, commitment, and creativity. It was a privilege to learn from them.

Notes

1 Nina Simon, The Art of Relevance (Santa Cruz: Museum 2.0, 2016), 22.

2 Aaron D. Purcell, Academic Archives: Managing the Next Generation of College and University Archives, Records, and Special Collections (Chicago: Neal-Schuman, 2012).

3 Joan M. Schwartz and Terry Cook, “Archives, Records, and Power: The Making of Modern Memory,” Archival Science 2 (2002): 7.

4 Mario H. Ramirez, “Being Assumed Not to Be: A Critique of Whiteness as an Archival Imperative,” The American Archivist 78, no. 2 (2015): 342–3

5 Stages of Freedom, “Mission”, n.d., https://www.stagesoffreedom.org/mission (accessed March 26, 2019).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Kristen Iemma

Kristen Iemma holds an MSLIS from Pratt Institute and was a 2016–2017 Archives Fellow in the Brooklyn Museum Libraries and Archives. She is currently a Masters Candidate in Public Humanities and a PhD Student in American Studies at Brown University. Her research interests include critical archival studies, STS, critical data studies, privacy, infrastructures, libraries, and queer theory. Some of her work can be found at kiemma.github.io.

Maddie Mott

Maddie Mott is a Masters Candidate in Public Humanities at Brown University. Her interests revolve around the central theme of making small and local history institutions inclusive of multiple views, accessible to their neighbors, and socially and politically engaged. She serves on the board of the American Alliance of Museum’s Small Museum Administrators Committee and works in fundraising at the Boston Atheneum.

Julia Renaud

Julia Renaud is a second-year Masters Candidate in the Public Humanities program at Brown University. She first encountered special collections as an undergraduate at Harvard University (A.B., summa cum laude, 2009), where she worked at Houghton Library and Harvard Theater Collection. After graduation, she spent three years as an archivist at the Calder Foundation in New York. Julia currently focuses on collaboratively researching, interpreting, and amplifying underrepresented and contested histories with and for publics.

Nicole Sintetos

Nicole Sintetos holds an MA in Public Humanities from Brown University. She is currently a PhD student at Brown University in American Studies and a 2017–2018 Mellon Graduate Fellow in Collaborative Humanities. Her research sits at the intersection of environmental history, labor history, comparative ethnic studies, and memory studies. As a prior high school teacher, Nicole is invested in bridging the divide between high school curriculum development and university research.