Chair Williams asks about underrepresented histories; library directors respond

Okay, what significant parts of New York City's history do you believe are inadequately represented in your holdings today?

Although I feel like it was very diverse, and I love the Puerto Rican innuendos and all the different libraries.

I was like, that's so cool and so relevant today.

So if you could just share if there are any communities, neighborhoods, languages, industries, movements, or periods that you might be actively trying to document.

I know Brooklyn Public Library talked a lot about like archiving the now, but just wanted to know if there's any other folks and histories that you feel are not represented.

I'm trying to think of how to best answer the question because I feel like it could go a few different ways.

I think that despite being more than half of the population, women are always underrepresented in our collection holdings.

And for the last five years here at the Schomburg, we've been actively pursuing female creators and trying to address that gap within the collection.

Once you start to address one gap, then you notice where the other gaps are, right?

Because if we are to really kind of fully address

For the Schomburg African diasporic history, you start to notice where and what is missing.

So for the last few years, we've really been looking at how are we collecting women, women's work, women's artwork.

And that is, you know, fortunately, we have an opportunity to represent that in an exhibition that we just opened, the Forging Ahead exhibition that I mentioned earlier.

But I think

There are a lot of different communities that are not necessarily represented in any of our holdings, and we have our spidey senses up.

And then that creates new work to do, new communities to pursue.

And I think each of us could probably speak to probably two or three that we would really like to pursue into the future.

So we've started that here.

That will kind of spawn different new collecting into the future.

Once new curators and new subject specialists are coming into our fray, they will bring different eyes to this work as well.

So yes, we all have gaps in our collections, in our holdings.

Yeah, one of the things that we actually wrote into our policy that we use to develop our collection are our known gaps.

So we're pretty knowledgeable of what those are.

So LGBTQ communities, indigenous communities, neighborhoods in Brooklyn, Flatbush, Sunset Park, Latinx communities, Asian communities.

So we're very aware of what they are and we're actively working towards filling those gaps.

A lot of the work that we want to do, you know, you want to collect about these neighborhoods and these people, but you also want to be doing it in a way that it is collaborative with those communities.

So that's something that's also really important for us.

We don't want to just go and be like, here, give us your stuff.

We want to be working with our community members.

So that's really, really important for us.

Biggest ways that we find out what people are asking for is our reference team, our team of archivists and librarians who are constantly meeting with the public

and can answer these questions, check to see what we have in our collections that can answer those questions, and we can flag it when we don't.

So that's how we approach that.

I agree.

And what Joyce said, every time you open up something new, it's just more and more stories that you're missing.

But if I had to choose one for today's conversation, I'm going to say the disabled population.

I feel for me specifically that, you know, we tend to do better when things are in our face and it's very easy for things to be forgotten about.

And I have an amazing employee and she's 100% deaf.

So working with that and being able to accommodate her and she's introducing us to her culture to be able to explain to us, I can do everything you can do.

And sometimes we overlook that.

So I would really love to delve deeper into a disabled collection and being able to make sure their voices are amplified as well.

I wanted to say one more thing about this.

And we all have the privilege of being part of research collections that are also associated with branches that represent all the diversity of the neighborhoods of New York City.

Our collections should always strive to be as diverse as our city.

And so we have this opportunity, per what Ntiba said, to partner with colleagues and neighborhoods.

Not to say, oh, let us take your stuff, but to say, how can we support your own preservation?

How can you weigh in on the ongoing preservation of your collections?

And I think that is the special sauce of being a research library associated with a branch system, is that we get to serve our communities on the everyday and then

work to preserve their history until the world stops moving.