mac2019detroit

Teamwork makes the dream work.  Archivists and special collections librarians can build successful partnerships with allied professionals or community groups to work together toward a common vision to ensure preservation, provide access, and increase usage of our holdings.

The purpose of the session is to demonstrate how archivists have formed (sometimes unlikely) partnerships and innovative collaborations to bring in new collections, develop new outreach and instruction initiatives, or to create new processes. Panelists will share successes and challenges in working with unlikely partners. With regard to intended outcomes, we hope that our panel can serve in part as a brainstorming session where ideas are sparked and the audience will leave with concrete takeaways for how they can begin to grow their own collaborations and become more ingrained in their local communities.
 
Content for this lightning round session will include presentations on collaborating to develop a course, create a video game for outreach, train students to process archival materials, create a formula for estimating processing costs, preserve the history of a university’s athletic department before it was lost, and create a long distance partnership between a university-based archives, community-run theater archives, and a digitization vendor in different corners of the country.

The intended audience includes archivists and special collections librarians of all skill levels, experience, and areas of practice who are searching for creative ideas for reaching out to different college or university units, community groups, and other repositories