Expanding Access to Indigenous Publications through COPPUL

Tuesday October 04, 2022

From 2:30pm to 3:00pm

In 2021, discussions between the Council of Prairie and Pacific University Libraries’ (COPPUL) Digital Preservation, Indigenous Knowledge, and Shared Print programs led to the formation of the Indigenous Historical Publications Working Group (IHPWG). Made up of members with expertise in Indigenous Studies, collection development, digitization, and digital preservation, this group is guiding efforts within COPPUL to improve discovery of, access to, and preservation of publications by and about Indigenous communities on whose lands our members live and work. These publications include newspapers, newsletters and various forms of grey literature.

In this presentation, we will discuss the working group’s current areas of focus, including identifying barriers to the digitization of Indigenous newspapers held by member institutions, fostering collaboration with allied organizations, building capacity for community outreach, developing a list of candidate titles for digitization, and exploring infrastructure solutions that can support community-centered access and discovery and enable collaborative co-stewardship of material.