The physical and digital collections curated by UCI librarians over the decades hold a treasure trove of information from people representing a plethora of voices. Due, in part, to national cataloging rules and policies that were in place for decades, it can be difficult for the novice—and even experienced—researcher or casual browser to locate materials that do not reflect white, masculine, heteronormative viewpoints. In a September 2020 meeting, members of the Collection Strategies Department brainstormed ways to highlight diverse voices already held in our collections to help library users discover these wonderful materials and encourage them to dig deeper.
Librarians chose to focus their efforts on streaming videos due to the shift in online teaching and subsequent reliance on digital materials. Why videos and not books? Videos can be a much more approachable format for many undergraduate students to learn the basics of a new topic, that then empowers them to take this introductory knowledge with them as they approach other resources like books and scholarly journal articles.
This project, titled ReWatching History: Uncovering Diversity in Our Past, helps Libraries’ users to discover, learn about, and celebrate people and ideas that history has overlooked because of the color of their skin, gender identity, or sexual orientation. Each month videos are selected by research librarians specializing in all disciplines—arts and humanities, social sciences, engineering, medicine and sciences—to fit into an overall theme. The first theme, Creators, went live in October with thirty-five videos carefully chosen from the Libraries streaming video resources such as AVON, Kanopy, Medici.tv, Digital Theatre Plus, and DocuSeek. Upcoming themes include Anti-Racism, Leaders, Obstacles, and Advocates.
Choosing a theme—has proven to be one of the more challenging aspects of this project. Rather than focusing on a particular voice, for example, Black women, queer, or Latinx, as might traditionally be done in projects like this, librarians wanted to focus on broad commonalities that could be viewed through the differing lenses of all disciplines and personal experiences.
Scott Stone, Research Librarian for Performing Arts and project manager, encourages members of the UCI community to “explore the titles we have highlighted, and stop back regularly as we approach a new theme each month.”
For more information, please contact Scott Stone, Research Librarian for Performing Arts at stonesm@uci.edu or 949-824-8351.