AIC's 51st Annual Meeting

This is a ticketed event - Cost $31

Contributing to our profession's larger conversation about conservation in the age of social change, this panel will look closely at the highly successful Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) Library Alliance's Preservation Internship Program through different lenses to examine its evolution and success as a model for diversity, equity and inclusion efforts in conservation education.

Established in 2002 and incorporated in 2006, the HBCU Library Alliance (https://hbculibraries.org/) is the only membership organization among White House-designated HBCUs with a mission to develop library leaders and preserve collections now and in the future. As an organization with the capacity to meet member needs, it is a voice for advocacy, providing a body of knowledge for member institutions. Executive Director Sandra Phoenix will highlight the history, programming, and partnerships of the Library Alliance, with particular attention focused on the impact of student success through the Kress Foundation-funded Preservation Internship Program.

In partnership with Sandra Phoenix, Dr. Melissa Tedone will explain the Program's evolution. Designed initially for on-site internships in 2018 and 2019, the HBCULAPIP was re-envisioned in 2020-2022 as a virtual, distance-learning opportunity in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The move to an online internship program allowed us to maintain engagement with the HBCU community and momentum for this Program, which continues to attract a strong pool of applicants. The move to a virtual environment allowed us to enhance and improve the Program by providing a more consistent core curriculum across host sites, creating a more robust cohort of interns, and connecting the interns to a broader learning community. In addition, we plan to apply these lessons to a hybrid (virtual + on-site) Program in the summer of 2023. To date, 37 interns have completed the Program, with over 35% expressing a strong interest in continuing to pursue cultural heritage work in libraries, archives, or museums.

At different stages of their education and career trajectory, HBCULAPIP interns and site hosts will speak about their summer internships, projects, and experiences, both virtual and in-person. In addition, they will share insights about both being and hosting a young Black student in a primarily white institution and the profound influence these short internships have had on their lives, futures, careers, and communities. These observations are also shared in the May 2023 AIC News lead article on "Centering Voices: Undergraduate Conservation/Preservation Internships for Students of Color."

Finally, we will examine how one participating institution worked with a DEI consultant to overhaul its approach to hosting interns. On behalf of Yale University Library's Preservation Department, Laura O'Brien Miller commissioned Dr. Nicole Robinson to help the conservation staff work together to reconceptualize how we host interns in a highly collaborative format. A cohort of 15 conservation staff members worked with Dr. Robinson in one of Cultural Connections by Design's premier programs, The Project©, a five-month, project-based program designed to help organizations design, implement, and launch specific equity-based initiatives. In addition to building the nuts and bolts of the internship project, the team approached the work using Dr. Robinson's proprietary framework to ensure belongingness in the Program, including (Re)Valuing People, (Re)Designing Place, (Re)Evaluating Processes, and (Re)Aligning Power. As the Yale cohort worked through each aspect of the framework, they developed a program to foster a culture of belonging for current and future interns.

A blog post is planned to document the outcomes of this discussion.