Historical Inquiry as Library Staff Development

In the summer of 2016, the Florida A&M University Libraries launched a long-term staff development initiative to promote research, instruction and digitization efforts in the libraries. The completed project will contribute to historical scholarship by preserving, digitizing, and archiving special collections relating to African-American history that are housed in the Florida A&M University Libraries. Before the project launched, a lack of familiarity with historic documents and digitization workflows among the libraries’ staff left the collections to languish. To generate interest in a voluntary training program, coordinators Pamela Monroe and Alvin Lee held a series of public workshops aimed at developing research skills through genealogy. The workshops were wildly successful! In the summer of 2017, a second series of workshops will develop archival preservation and digitization skills by teaching library staff how to digitize and preserve family photos and documents, thus building upon their genealogical knowledge. The final stage of the program, slated for summer 2018, will train library staff to digitize the library’s special collections and save them to the Florida A&M University digital repository powered by Islandora. In this poster presentation, project coordinators will demonstrate that historical inquiry in the form of genealogical research is a powerful motivator for staff development, and can be harnessed to promote the preservation, digitization and dissemination of historical resources.