Choose Your Own Adventure: Diversity Stories: A StoryCorps Project
At this Choose Your Own Adventure session, RBMS Diversity Committee members will promote a diversity-oriented oral history project, for which individuals (or pairs of individuals) can record their stories at a time and place of their choosing, using their own mobile devices.
The Choose Your Own Adventure event is not planned primarily as a recording session. Rather, the session will publicize the oral history project, provide examples of stories that have already been submitted, and offer advice on participating at a later time. All interested conference attendees are welcome at the Choose Your Own Adventure Session. The target group for submitting stories is special collections librarians and archivists from underrepresented racial and ethnic groups, as well as individuals who have worked to promote diversity as part of their professional activities. Those submitting stories will use the StoryCorps app and StoryCorps’ new “community” feature. Attendees at the session can record their stories at a later time, or invite others to do so.
The Diversity Committee is hoping that this project will help document how diverse professionals came to be special collections librarians and archivists, and how they have navigated their professional lives. Invitations to participate in the oral history project will be sent out to RBMS members in advance of the conference in Iowa City.