Authors
This archive was created by graduate students Camille Jackson, Mads Terpstra, and Nazelie Doghramadjian in the Fall of 2022 as part of the Records and Archives class at the University of Michigan’s School of Information.
Each author contributed invaluable insight into acquiring these records and brainstormed what kind of criteria would be used to sift through various institutions to use as records for the project. Each author contributed equally to the various class discussions and the final archive presentation.
Nazelie was mainly in charge of searching for, describing, assigning metadata and photography to the Southwest Asian North African (SWANA)/Arab archives. She also organized meeting minutes, notes, the metadata spreadsheet, and action items for the group. She contributed various records and descriptions to other sections of the archive as well (i.e. Braille & Talking Book libraries, and LGBTQ+/Queer libraries) and wrote the project description with the help of teammates.
Mads located many of the libraries based in the West and East Michigan areas during the initial investigation process, and assisted teammates with defining the archive and its purpose, as well as the guidelines which would determine the libraries selected for the collection. Additionally, Mads visited the Edward Said Lounge, the Mads R. Terpstra LGBT Resource Center Library, and the Spring Lake chapter of the READ Ottawa program in order to obtain photographs of the respective libraries, as well as gain insight as to the access requirements for each library. With their teammates, Mads also worked on the description template and the tagging system for the archive. Mads wrote metadata for several items within the Southwest Asian North African (SWANA) Libraries, LGBT+/Queer Libraries, and the Book Clubs and ESL Libraries pages.
Camille located the libraries within the Black Libraries Section through community organizing, collaborating and co-hosting events at several of the spaces in Detroit and encountering others through rare book collecting in East Michigan. She as well contributed to the Braille and Talking Book Libraries Section, introduced to these libraries and services through her mother.