Expanding Digital Access to Literature by Black Canadians

Monday October 03, 2022

From 3:00pm to 3:30pm

Within the humanities, the raw materials for research are often limited to the traditional Western canon. This creates a tension for scholars when their research interests fall outside that traditional scope. The project being presented sought to expand the availability of the creative, political, documentary and scholarly writings of black Canadians that have been insufficiently studied due to the difficulties scholars have encountered in accessing the works in question.

The project team used the work of a renowned scholar in the area of Black Canadian literature, Odysseys Home: Mapping African-Canadian Literature by George Elliott Clarke, as the basis for assessing the library collection and identifying gaps.

Considering the diversity of a library collection must be done in partnership with the library’s users, but at the same time, diversity work should not put additional labor on members of our library user community. Relying on the scholarship created by our faculty allows these scholars to point to the voices that are missing from the library collection and the use of more modern tools and approaches ensures that the gaps, once identified, are filled.

To date, the project team has purchased $30,000 worth of material identified by the gap analysis, with an additional $100,000 targeted for acquisition. Some material was purchased through traditional commercial avenues while other materials required direct partnerships with publishers and authors to acquire, digitize, and preserve their important work.