Schomburg's State of Black Research Collections

Institutions collecting African American and African diasporic materials play a critical role in facilitating research on the Black experience and supporting study in the fields of African, African American, and African Diaspora studies as well as the humanities overall. Properly preserving and providing access to African American and African diasporic materials is essential to the sustainability of higher education and scholarship in these areas. Dwindling institutional budgets have significantly curtailed funding for the care, servicing, and development of these collections, creating a high-risk environment for collections to become outdated an insufficiently accessible to researchers.

The State of Black Collections Conference will take place over two days and provide a much-needed opportunity for discussion and exchange among African American and African diasporic collecting institutions. In addition to encouraging dialogue, the Conference will produce a white paper which will provide evidence of these multi-faceted problems and include the conference papers prepared by leading scholars on the issues as well as an overview of Conference discussions and a compilation of the strategies and solutions proposed to mitigate the issues.

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