The Libraries celebrated their first year as host institution for the Association of Research Libraries (ARL)/Society of American Archivists (SAA) Mosaic Program at the end of the spring semester. Mosaic fellow Ayoola White, a student at the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at Simmons College, worked with the BCL staff throughout the academic year to expand her knowledge of research libraries and special collections in general, and to focus on particular learning objectives within archives and digital initiatives.
The Mosaic Program is designed to promote diversification in the archives and special collections professional workforce, and “provides financial support, career placement assistance, and leadership development, in addition to the practical work experience and mentoring offered by the host institution, to emerging professionals from traditionally underrepresented racial and ethnic minority groups”. We were thrilled to be invited to be a host institution for Ayoola’s fellowship. On a broad level, we were keen to contribute to the aims of the Mosaic program supporting diversity in the profession, and locally, we benefitted from working together across the libraries to design an experience that would introduce the numerous functions and issues that can be expected in a career in libraries and archives.
Because Ayoola’s interests centered upon archives management combined with digital methods, we teamed up across departments to design a program focused on those areas, but which also offered an introduction to the overall functions of academic libraries. Over the course of the academic year Ayoola worked in the Archives Department, the Digital Libraries Program, Assessment & Outreach, and Digital Scholarship.
At the John J. Burns Library, Ayoola acted as part of the archives team. She learned to arrange and describe manuscript collections, providing her with the opportunity to move clearly stated library school theory into real life experience replete with complexity. Ayoola rehoused materials for preservation, researched the history and biography of records-creators, applied archival metadata standards, and learned to write comprehensive-but-neutral contextual information. In total Ayoola’s work improved the physical and descriptive state of thirteen archival collections, and she advanced from providing assistance in September to working autonomously by spring.
Her work with the Digital Scholarship Team, and the Assessment & Outreach department, included selecting and assembling digitized material for online and digital displays, capturing and reformatting metadata, working with XML, and conducting user testing. Using digital collections, Ayoola curated displays for the Libraries’ touch tables, and worked with Digital Scholarship team members to create and standardize metadata for digital exhibits. She was given practical exposure to other essential work, including reference, hiring, and professional development.
On April 28th, Ayoola’s final day, a luncheon was held to collectively bid her farewell and good luck, and to share the outcomes of the program with libraries staff and campus community members. Ayoola delivered a presentation describing the projects and activities she contributed to over the academic year, followed by her paper “Early Recruitment of Students from Underrepresented Backgrounds to the Archives Profession” (initially delivered at Diversity, Equity, Race, Accessibility, and Identity in LIS (DERAIL) Forum at Simmons College, March 4-5, 2017).
Through participation in the Mosaic Program, the BC Libraries demonstrated their commitment to developing the expertise and knowledge of the next generation of library professionals, while improving the career prospects of a more diverse pool of professionals for the archives and library fields.
We thank Ayoola White for her contributions to the BC Libraries and wish her all the best in her career.