School of Information Studies Receives Mellon Foundation Grant for History Preservation

A grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation will allow students from Dominican University’s School of Information Studies to help diverse communities and organizations document, preserve and share their rich histories. 

Over three years, the $750,000 grant from the Mellon Foundation’s Public Knowledge program will provide several Master of Library and Information Science (MLIS) students with paid internships to help create local community archives using culturally responsive archival practices. 

With the skills they have learned in class, the students will help select, appraise, arrange, describe, preserve, digitize and exhibit materials, records and other archival pieces that tell a community or organization’s story, history, culture and heritage. Students may help to collect and record oral histories as well. 

Funding from the grant will also cover the cost of tools and equipment necessary to carry out the project.

Leading the initiative are Dr. Cecilia Salvatore, coordinator of Dominican’s archives and cultural heritage certificate program, and Dr. Anthony Dunbar, associate professor in the School of Information Studies. 

Several partners interested in building a historical archive have been identified, including a suburban municipality, an ethnic community cultural center and a community organizing coalition, Salvatore said. 

“The whole purpose is to help groups and communities preserve and tell their stories and share their heritage,” she said. “This will also ensure that when students learn about history, they will have access to materials that tell another side of that history.” 

“The opportunity to bring the practice of archiving and the expression of cultural heritage—particularly within communities often disenfranchised from heritage-preserving resources—is profoundly inspirational,” Dunbar added. 

While Dominican students apply what they learn in the classroom, they will share standard archival practices that the partnering communities or organizations can use themselves going forward.

Dominican University is one of eight institutions of higher learning across the United States to receive a Public Knowledge program grant for local archival work. Each college or university is involved in the Faculty Organizing for Community Archives Support (FOCAS) Internship and Resource Development Project, which represents faculty who are training MLIS students to respond to community archival needs through their institutions.