Preservation Week – a collaborative effort supported by the American Library Association and many organizations – is a public awareness initiative that aims to promote preservation and conservation in communities with the help of libraries, institutions, and museums.
This year’s honorary chair is Nikole Hannah-Jones – creator of the 1619 Project, Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter, and New York Times Magazine journalist – and this year’s theme is Preserving Community Archives.
Preserving community archives is essential to the work of the Center for Mason Legacies, as we explore the various legacies of our nation’s founding and troubled history with enslavement and displacement of indigenous peoples. It is within these community archives that we find the hidden stories so integral to our work of telling the fuller story.
In addition to the community archives of the past, we are concerned with preserving the community voices of the present, with creating our own archives for the future (as we are currently doing with our Racial Reckoning project). As one of our associate directors, Wendi Manuel-Scott, eloquently asked, “If we do not gather our stories, who will?”
Preservation Week 2021 runs April 25 – May 1. During this week, ALA is offering free webinars on “Collecting and Preserving after Tragedy” and “Introduction to Community Archiving” – available here. The Library of Congress is also offering a daily webinar series this week, covering a range of topics.