DEIA Informed Curriculum for Archival Education

The SAA Graduate Archival Education Subcommittee is making available this list of DEIA informed curriculum resources for the archival education community. Below is a description of the process we undertook to compile these resources.

As part of the SAA Strategic Plan and DEIA Work Plan, the Graduate Archival Education Subcommittee of the Committee on Education (“GAES”) was tasked from Fiscal Years 2022-2025 with “advocat[ing] for DEIA informed curriculum at graduate archival programs [Strategic Plan Item 3.3.B; DEIA Work Plan - 3.4]. To contribute to this goal, GAES collaborated with the SAA Archival Educators’ Section steering committee (“AES”). Together, we identified a need to compile DEIA-informed teaching resources appropriate for archival education. We hoped for this to be a quick reference guide for all archival educators, including contingently employed instructors. In support of this strategic goal, GAES decided to develop a resource kit that organizes curricular resources focusing on DEIA concepts into categories corresponding to the core areas of archival knowledge in the Guidelines for a Graduate Programs for Archival Studies (GPAS) curriculum standard.

• The Nature of Records
• Appraisal for Selection and Acquisition
• Arrangement and Description
• Preservation
• Reference and Access
• Outreach, Instruction, and Advocacy

Through initial brainstorming sessions with GAES and AES in late 2022 and early 2023, we brought together a number of resources that would help archival educators integrate DEIA concepts into all manner of archival courses. At the same time, we recognized that there are likely more relevant resources that the GAES is not aware of. We also wanted to ensure that the resulting resource kit represented the perspectives beyond the GAES, which is currently exclusively composed of white archivists and educators. To move forward with this project, we invited several SAA sections to the Summer 2023 GAES business meeting and discussed circulating an open call to various SAA sections to solicit a broader range of curricular resources. These sections included SNAP, Archival Educators, Archival Management, Diverse Sexuality and Gender, Archivists & Archives of Color, Women Archivists, Native American Archives, and Accessibility and Disability. During Fall 2023, we created an open submission form soliciting curricular resources corresponding to the core categories of archival knowledge and circulated that form to the general SAA listserv and the listservs for sections invited to attend the business meeting, as well as the Accessioning, Acquisitions & Appraisal Section, the Collection Management Section, the Description Section, the Preservation Section, the Reference, Access, and Outreach Section, and attendees of the Archival Education Research Initiative institutes (or AERI).

We appreciate and acknowledge the help of the GAES and AES members who compiled the initial list. Contributors outside of these groups are credited individually in the resource document.

Graduate Archival Education Subcommittee Members 2022-2024

Karen Gracy (vice chair)

Jesse Johnston

Sarah Meidl

Colin Post

Weatherly Stephan (chair)

Participating Archival Educators Section Steering Committee Members 2022-2023

Meghan Courtney

Rebecca Frank

Jesse Johnston (chair)

Adam Kriesberg