UC Riverside

My research demonstrates how Black memory workers leverage their cultural and racial identities to inform the decisions they make when building archives about Black people. This dissertation proposes an insider-affirming method for undertaking collection development. Insider-affirming collection development (IACD) establishes that Black memory workers possess the autonomy to infuse their cultural and/or racial experiences into the process of building archives. IACD is an alternative to professionally rigid systems of theorizing and practicing collection development when building archives. As opposed to professional archives practice in the United States that has historically prioritized a neutrality-based model of collection development, IACD rejects neutrality and prioritizes the standpoint of the Black memory worker as a vital part of the collection development process. Considering the lack of racial diversity in the archives profession, and the dearth of available archives documenting the lives of Black people, IACD encourages Black memory workers to embrace their cultural and racial backgrounds, to value these experiences as competencies, and to leverage them to build more representative collections. In asserting this positionality-based authority when building archives, Black memory workers employ a more fulfilling and enjoyable practice while developing collections that more effectively serve their needsSome goals of this research include making the case for IACD as a valid and appropriate collection development method that can be adopted in the broader archives field; to demonstrate that IACD can aid in filling existing gaps in archives collections about Black history and culture; to influence web archiving by highlighting the value and innovation of Black memory workers’ collection building practices; to illuminate pathways that can legitimize marginalized voices in archives and encourage them to develop new standards for the profession; to offer Black people working in archives a justification for bringing their full selves into their work; and to demonstrate the potential value of IACD to positively impact the hiring and retention Black memory workers.