In 1998, Northeastern University announced that it had received a two-year federal grant to “identify, locate, secure, and make accessible the most important and at-risk historical records of Boston’s African American, Chinese, gay and lesbian, and Latino communities.” Later that year, I met Joan Krizack, Northeastern’s University Archivist and Head of Special Collections, who had conceived the “Documenting Diversity Project.” I could see immediately that this diminutive woman (who has been a member of the Jewish Women’s Archive Technical Advisory Committee since 2006) had a “tiger by the tail” and was not about to let it go.
Sure enough, even when the outside funding ended, Joan and her team continued their work. They established documentation priorities, developed a database, and produced a brochure for each of the four communities—all designed to raise awareness of the importance of preserving historical records.
Read More: @ jwablog.jwa.org
You might also like: