The building was state-of-the-art—it even had a computer center on D Level!—but of course time and technology never stand still. Now, 61 years later, the Eisenhower Library is in the middle of its long-awaited renovation.   

The MSE Library Modernization is an ambitious renovation and redesign of the 182,000-square-foot building. It includes overdue critical upgrades to comply with modern building, safety, and accessibility standards, plus some eye-catching new architectural features and purpose-driven spaces, which will reinvent the library as an inspiring and welcoming space for 21st-century learning and research.

Sixteen months into the construction phase of the project, here’s the latest progress to celebrate.

The visual highlight remains the glass-enclosed wishbone staircase, lit by a walkable, quad-level skylight that will allow natural daylight to penetrate into subterranean study spaces. It also serves a practical function during construction, as the staircase cut-through can be utilized to remove debris and deliver materials via crane.

Speaking of debris, D Level is where so much essential work is happening. The building’s mechanical room will be housed on D Level, and it is where the underground utilities from the city will connect. Though not the most glamorous or photogenic part of the process, making sure the building’s mechanical, electrical, and plumbing systems work seamlessly are critically important to the function of such a high-use space.     

But back to the fun stuff. The renovated MSE will still have two main exterior entrances: one from the Beach and one from Keyser Quad. When entering from the Beach, users will now walk in directly on M-Level, without the platform that once required users to descend a small flight of stairs to get from the entrance to M-Level.

On the new Q-Level will be a Graduate Student Commons and an Event Space that can host both internal gatherings, like meetings and workshops, and external convenings, like lectures, seminars, or performances.

Stay tuned for more updates as MSE enters its final year of renovation.

The post MSE Milestones: Turning 61 and Renovation Progress appeared first on The Sheridan Libraries & University Museums Blog.

Housed in 290 record cartons and spanning more than a century of scholarship, the collection chronicles the evolution of modern languages and literatures as an academic discipline. Materials include committee minutes, reports, correspondence, conference proceedings, and editorial records from MLA’s executive, publication, and governance committees. The archive also contains foundational documents related to the MLA Handbook and Style Manual, one of the “big three” academic style guides alongside APA and Chicago/Turabian.

“The MLA’s records are a rich source of information for anyone studying intellectual history, disciplinary development, and the institutional structures that shape scholarly communication,” said Katie Carey, Hodson Curator for the Ferdinand Hamburger University Archives at the Sheridan Libraries.

Among the collection’s highlights is a detailed biography of philologist and MLA founder Aaron Marshall Elliot, an early faculty member in Hopkins’ romance languages department. Elliot edited MLA publications for more than 25 years and founded Modern Language Notes (MLN), the first technical journal in the field. Published by Johns Hopkins University Press since 1903, MLN became the property of the Hopkins Press upon Elliot’s death in 1910. The journal later benefited from the editorial leadership of renowned Hopkins professor Richard Macksey, who served for many years as its Comparative Literature editor.

The archive also holds materials related to the Publications of the Modern Language Association (PMLA), which Elliott helped establish, and documents the development of the MLA Handbook and Style Manual, resources that have shaped generations of academic writing.

“As institutional history becomes increasingly important to humanistic inquiry, it’s exciting to center the MLA archive at the university where it began,” said Mack Zalin, librarian for modern languages and literatures at the Sheridan Libraries. “Scholars from around the world will be able to study and contextualize this remarkable collection.”

Zalin learned of the collection from Paula Krebs, executive director of the MLA, and collaborated with Derek Schilling, a professor of French and director of the Centre Louis Marin at JHU’s Krieger School of Arts and Sciences, to bring it to the university.

“The MLA was founded at Johns Hopkins in 1883, so it is particularly satisfying that we return to Baltimore,” said Krebs. “Researchers will be able to access this rich set of resources on the institutional history of the study of language and literature.”

“This is a signal opportunity for both institutions,” said Schilling. “I’m humbled to know that the Sheridan Libraries will be preserving this part of our early institutional and departmental legacy.”

The Records of the Modern Language Association, 1883-2017, are being processed and will be made open for research use during the 2025-26 academic year.

The post Historic MLA Archive Returns to Its Roots at Hopkins appeared first on The Sheridan Libraries & University Museums Blog.

Now, joining the collection are two rare works: a 1741 printing from Fürth (in present-day Germany) of the Ein Ya’akov—an important compilation and exegesis by Jacob ben Solomon Ibn Habib that greatly expanded the reach of the Talmud to less specialized audiences—and a 1822 printing from Direnfurt (in what is today Brzeg Dolny, Poland) of the Sefer Zevah Shemuʼel, a guide to kosher butchery (shechita).  

Excerpt of Ein Ya’akov (Fürth, 1741)

Perhaps even rarer than these items, however, is the donor, Eren Parla. Mack Zalin, the Librarian for Classics, Comparative Thought and Literature, Jewish Studies, and Modern Languages and Literatures at the Sheridan Libraries describes Parla as “a young man who approached me out of the blue earlier this year with the type of donation one typically encounters from distinguished and aged scholars who are cleaning out their offices after long and productive careers. Eren, on the other hand, is just getting started.”  

Though still an undergraduate at George Mason University, Parla has already made extraordinary contributions to the promotion of material culture around the world. Among them is his recent, voluntary repatriation to the Korean Studies Institute in Andong of a priceless UNESCO-listed Confucian woodblock that sat in his grandparents’ house for decades. Less conspicuous, but no less remarkable, are his efforts to place hundreds of antiquarian Jewish books—some collected by his ancestors and others purchased with funds out of his own pocket—in research libraries across North America, including the Smithsonian’s American History Museum, YIVO, the Jewish Veterans Museum in Washington, D.C, and Harvard’s Judaica Division, so that they can be more accessible to scholars and the general public alike.  

That the Sheridan Libraries are included among the ranks of such venerable institutions is a testament to the existing strength of its holdings in Judaica and the reputation of the Leonard and Helen R. Stulman Jewish Studies Program at Johns Hopkins. 

“Eren’s generosity, born from a desire to share knowledge widely as the descendant of educators, is a testament to the Jewish principle of l’dor v’dor, which means “from generation to generation,” says Zalin. “His donation will doubtlessly inspire future gifts, as well, which we are most grateful for. Todah rabah, Eren!”

Ein Ya’akov (Fürth, 1741) and Sefer Zevah Shemuʼel (Direnfurt, 1822) pictured prior to their accessioning.

This Sunday, November 2, 1-3 PM, join Zalin and Associate Professor Samuel Spinner, Tandetnik Chair in Yiddish Language, Literature, and Culture as they explore more than a dozen rare works from the Sheridan Libraries collection of rare Judaica and discuss how these materials inspire teaching, research, and cultural life at Hopkins, across Baltimore, and around the world. The free event will be held in the Carriage House at Evergreen Museum & Library.

Advance registration is requested. Walk-ins welcome with photo id if space is available: https://events.jhu.edu/form/hopkins-judaica

The post L’dor V’dor: Renewing a Legacy of Gifts to Jewish Studies appeared first on The Sheridan Libraries & University Museums Blog.

Green Open Access publishing (referred to as Green OA) is a type of publishing sometimes referred to as self-archiving, where the user deposits their manuscript into a repository of their choice. Sometimes, the user can deposit a preprint, which is a version of their manuscript that precedes formal peer review, into a preprint server like bioRxiv.org or medRxiv.org. It is highly recommended that the preprint is protected by a Creative Commons License before it is deposited into a preprint server.

Preprint deposits popularity rose at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, when getting information out quickly was critical, and continues to be a great option. Since preprints skip the peer review process, ideas and concepts are shared more quickly and more broadly. Another option, also called a postprint or an Author Accepted Manuscript (AAM), is the version of the manuscript after it has been completely peer reviewed that can be deposited into a repository. PubMed Central (PMC) is a popular federal repository that often receives postprints like these in their archive. In theory then, you can publish free, non-OA and get your AAM into a digital repository like PMC to get your research out there for the world to freely access.

Diamond Open Access publishing (referred to as Diamond OA) does not charge APCs to make your publication free for the public and world to read and publish. So how do Diamond Open Access publishers sustain themselves? These publishers are typically academic-led and community-driven, leveraging support from institutional, governmental, and volunteer sources to cover their operational costs. Universities and libraries are often major funders, absorbing the costs of publishing as part of their commitment to scholarship and open science. 

Here at Hopkins, the JH Libraries support a preprint peer review service and Diamond Open Access journal known as Peer Community In (PCI). A preprint that has been peer reviewed by PCI can be accelerated for publication through skipping the peer review process for PCI-friendly journals and at PCI’s Diamond Open Access Journal, Peer Community Journal.

Learn more about the world of preprints, Green and Diamond Open Access publishing, and PCI, at the PCI Keynote Talk on Friday, October 24, 2025 from 11:00 AM to 12 noon EDT. Registration is required.

The post Solutions to Publishing in a Time of Funding Instability – Green and Diamond Open Access Publishing appeared first on The Sheridan Libraries & University Museums Blog.

Researchers engaged with open access may have specific questions about the intersection of copyright, AI, and open access publishing. Will my open access publications be used to train AI? Can I use open access publications to train an LLM tool in my research group? 

Luckily, we have increased guidance and more understanding about these intersections and how to navigate them within our own work. 

Training AI Tools on Open Access Content 

Open access scholarship published by academic journals or hosted in pre–print and Green Open Access archives can be useful for training some AI tools. It’s important to remember that just because this work is openly available to read, it doesn’t mean it’s “free” to use; in contrast, it is likely copyrighted material.  

Many researchers have questions about using copyrighted material to train AI tools. The Library Copyright Alliance (LCA), which represents the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) and the American Library Association (ALA), released a set of principles in 2024 affirming that that using copyrighted material to train AI is generally a fair use permitted by copyright law. While many copyright infringement lawsuits for AI training are still making their way through the courts, a recent decision in Bartz v. Anthropic agrees with the LCA principles on fair use. 

However, access to open access material mixed with subscription material provided through the library’s subscriptions for Johns Hopkins students and researchers may be governed by additional and important database licensing restrictions. To aid researchers, we have a helpful list of databases that permit text and data mining like the kind used to train AI tools on our website. 

Will My Open Access Scholarship be Used to Train AI? 

Scholarship you post to a repository such as JScholarship or PubMed will likely be used to train AI tools. While in some cases, publishers are making licensing arrangements with technology companies for content hosted on their platforms, content accessible on the open internet is likely also being used for training. In these scenarios, tech firms or researchers believe they have a fair use to train on open access materials. There is no way to prevent your open access scholarship, or any information you share on the open web, from being used to train AI models.  

That doesn’t mean that all training leads to negative outcomes. Particularly for scholarship that is breaking new ground or exploring topics that have not been centered in your discipline, having the perspectives of that work represented in the statistical models that generate AI outputs can be important. We know that AI tools can replicate societal biases through insufficient training, limitations of the models themselves, and challenges in AI design. When your open access scholarship is included in training data, it’s one way to passively challenge these biases. 

Many publishers, including those that publish AI, are now adding information about AI training in author agreements. However, determining whether or not your work will be licensed to a technology company for AI use is significantly more prevalent in scholarly publishing of monograph-length works.  

It’s also important to understand that your publication agreements can be the determining factor about who decides to enter into licensing agreements for your scholarly work to AI companies. If you transferred copyright to your original scholarship to a publisher, whether it’s a journal article or a monograph, the publisher could make all decisions about AI licensing and how (or if) any royalties are paid to authors.  

While it may seem like authors can do little to control how AI tools use their work in training, it’s important to understand that outputs are still governed by copyright law in the United States. Generative AI tools that allow copyrighted open access to works to be reproduced may not meet the legal standards for fair use. Scholars have an important role in shaping policy and ensuring that AI tools follow copyright laws. Interested authors may want to consider following or joining the Authors Alliance, an advocacy organization for authors. 

Do you have additional questions about AI, open access, and copyright? Email us at copyright@jhu.edu  

The post Open Access Publishing and AI: Considerations for Authors appeared first on The Sheridan Libraries & University Museums Blog.

Join the Johns Hopkins Libraries to celebrate International Open Access Week 2025, Oct. 20-24, an initiative held annually to inspire global momentum toward the open sharing of knowledge to address important social issues. This year’s theme, Who Owns Our Knowledge, asks a pointed question about the present moment and how, in a time of disruption, communities can reassert control over the knowledge they produce.

A collaborative team consisting of the Sheridan Libraries, Welch Medical Library, Arthur Friedheim Library, and JHURA has planned a series of events designed to help Hopkins researchers and students explore how open access can expand the reach, visibility, and impact of their scholarly work. Complete information may be found on the Open Access Week at JH Libraries web page.

Keynote

• Friday, Oct. 24, 11 a.m.
  Reimagining Scientific Publishing: The Peer Community In (PCI) Revolution

As part of Open Access Week 2025, Thomas Guillemaud and Denis Bourguet, senior scientists at INRAE and co-founders of the groundbreaking Peer Community In (PCI) initiative, will deliver a keynote exploring a bold new vision for scholarly publishing. PCI offers a free, transparent, and community-driven alternative to traditional journals by organizing disciplinary communities of researchers who evaluate and recommend preprints. Join the JH Libraries to rethink the future of scholarly communication and consider how open, inclusive, and researcher-led models like PCI can reshape academia for the better.

Since its launch in 2017, PCI has grown into a global movement with over 20 thematic communities, 2,500+ participating scientists, and support from more than 200 institutions worldwide. Each PCI community, such as PCI Evolutionary Biology, PCI Ecology, and PCI Registered Reports, operates like a journal but without the financial and accessibility barriers. Recommenders (acting as editors) oversee rigorous peer review and publish openly accessible recommendations, complete with DOIs, making preprints citable and credible

Guillemaud and Bourguet will share insights into the origins of PCI, born from their critique of the costly and opaque traditional publishing system, and discuss how PCI empowers researchers to reclaim control over the dissemination of scientific knowledge.

Open to the public. Advance registration: https://welch.jhmi.libcal.com/event/15389770 

Classes

Open to the Hopkins community only. Advance registration required.

• Monday, Oct. 20, 12 noon
  Open Access Publishing Basics
• Tuesday, Oct. 21, 12 noon:
  Choosing Open Licenses for Your Research Data and Software
• Thursday, Oct. 23, 12 noon
  ORCID iD and SciENcv Biosketches: Getting Started with Researcher Profiles
• Thursday, October 23, 12 noon
  Preparing to Share Human Participant Data in a Repository

The post Celebrate Open Access Week with Hopkins Libraries, Oct. 20-24 appeared first on The Sheridan Libraries & University Museums Blog.

On October 21, Homewood Museum will open If Homewood’s Walls Could Talk: A History of an American House, a new exhibition exploring the house’s full 224-year history. Beginning with its construction in 1801 for the family of Declaration of Independence signer and enslaver Charles Carroll of Carrollton, through its 1902 acquisition by Johns Hopkins University, to its 1980s restoration and launch as a historic house museum, the house has served many functions. Using archival photography, textiles, student diaries, historic documents, furniture, oral histories, and more, the exhibition will provide an overview of nine distinct eras in the house’s history. Developed to be in dialog with the 250th anniversary of the United States, as well as the university’s sesquicentennial, If Homewood’s Walls Could Talk allows the house to tell its own story through the voices of the people who have lived, worked, and learned inside its walls.

In anticipation of the exhibition’s opening, here’s a preview of a few of the objects that will be on view. To make plans to visit Homewood and view the exhibition, click here.

This portable writing desk, featuring the Carroll family crest, was once owned by Charles Carroll of Carrollton, the father of Charles Carroll of Homewood. Carroll was the only Catholic and the longest-lived Signer of the Declaration of the Independence. It is not known how Carroll used this desk or what he may have written on it. However, the idea that he may have penned letters relatedto the American Revolution or national congressional proceedings on it remain a part of its lore.

Portable writing desk, ca. 1800, Unknown English artist; Mahogany, brass, baize; Homewood Museum.

In the 1930s, Homewood underwent a major historic renovation for its first incarnation as a museum. The 1932 installation, funded by antiques collector Francis P. Garvan, was not intended to accurately depict the Carrolls’ time at Homewood with its furnishings. Rather, this incarnation of the house sought to emphasize the beauty of American antiques using objects such as this cellarette.

Cellarette, ca. 1800, Unknown Baltimore maker, Mahogany (primary wood), Homewood Museum.

This diary, part of a set, was kept by Johns Hopkins University undergraduate student, William Grauer, a member of the class of 1936. Grauer’s diaries provide a vivid depiction of daily life on campus around the time that Homewood Museum started to serve as the university’s president’s office.

Diaries, ca. 1931, William Grauer (American, 1915-2011), Ink on paper, Ferdinand Hamburger University Archives, Johns Hopkins University Sheridan Libraries

The Historic American Building Survey (HABS) was founded in 1933 through the Works Progress Administration to create jobs for unemployed citizens. HABS was one of Congress’s earliest efforts to preserve the nation’s cultural heritage by creating architectural models and renderings of historically significant buildings, including Homewood.

Artist’s Model of Homewood, ca. 1939-1943, Works Progress Administration Artist for the Historic American Building Survey, Painted wood, gesso, Homewood Museum.

When Homewood opened as a museum in 1987, the first cohort of museum guides needed to be trained. These volunteers trained with staff to learn the history of the house, the objects in the collection, and how to connect this information with the visitors they met. This unknown guide’s notes were well-used and pocket-sized, perhaps as a study tool during training.

Museum Guide’s Notebook, ca. 1987, Unknown guide, Index cards, pen, graphite, paper, tape, Homewood Museum.

The post New Exhibition at Homewood Museum Tells House’s 224-Year History appeared first on The Sheridan Libraries & University Museums Blog.

What’s 89 years old and better than ever, thanks to a recent restoration? Evergreen’s Steinway and Sons Baby Grand Model B piano, of course!

The instrument was acquired by Evergreen’s Alice Warder Garrett in 1936, the same year its diaphragmatic soundboard was first patented. Garrett was an arts patron, who also trained as a singer in her youth. In the early 1920s, she worked with the Russian artist Léon Bakst to transform a gymnasium and classroom in Evergreen’s North Wing into a theater where she could perform and host outside performers. Garrett’s Model B likely complemented the talents of the young artists she invited to play in the Bakst Theatre, and provided professional-grade accompaniment for her own endeavors.

First produced in 1891 by the German-American company, Steinway & Sons, the Model B quickly gained a lasting reputation for quality playability and sound. It is still in production today and is well-respected for its refined tone and broad dynamic range. The only Steinway smaller than the company’s concert grand with a continuous bridge, the Model B has longer keys than any Steinway model and one continuous bent rim comprised of 16 layers of maple that provides structural integrity and gives the piano its well-known longevity. Perhaps most importantly, the piano includes Steinway’s diaphragmatic soundboard, which permits rich and sustaining sound in both concert halls and small spaces. Evergreen’s particular model retains its original finish of Adirondack red spruce, a heavy wood known for the rich sound it produces that is now difficult to source because of historic deforestation and other environmental factors.

However, as Evergreen’s Model B aged, tucked into a snug alcove to the left of the stage, it was played less frequently and fell out of tune. Hairline cracks formed in the bridge pins and the strings deteriorated, impacting its sound. Experts were called in for consultations. The piano could be saved, but it would need extensive restoration.

Then, two years ago, the Evergreen House Foundation—a private, independent organization established by Garrett to steward her collections—agreed to fund the restoration through a generous gift from Stockman Family Foundation. PianoCraft of Gaithersburg did the work, and, earlier this summer, the piano returned to Evergreen’s Bakst Theatre, good as new.

This Sunday, for the first time in years, the piano’s rich tones will once again resound through the Bakst Theatre, as Evergreen kicks off its 72nd Music at Evergreen concert series with a performance by renowned pianist Brian Ganz. The concert is sold out, but a limited number of tickets may be available at the door on the day. The concert starts promptly at 2 p.m. and will be followed by a reception with the performer. More information is available here.

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Welcome back to our Responsible AI series, created by the Digital Scholarship and Data Services department as part of its ongoing commitment to promoting ethical and responsible AI practices for the Hopkins community.

Using AI tools responsibly means being aware of their potential for inaccuracy and evaluating their output before integrating it into your research and scholarship. In addition to hallucinating, or producing inaccurate information, these tools can also reproduce problematic views present in their training data, which can perpetuate bias if unchecked. 

Where Does the Training Data for LLMs Come From? 

Generative AI tools work by predicting responses to user prompts based on correlations found in their vast training data. Where does all this training data come from? 

The short answer is the internet. LLM-powered chatbots like ChatGPT typically draw their training data from a number of internet sources, including the Common Crawl, Wikipedia, pages linked by Reddit posts, and book databases. Image generators like DALL-E and Stable Diffusion are trained on large collections of images scraped from the internet and labeled by humans, such as LAION.  

Types of Bias 

Training datasets are vast, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re representative of society. In generative models, two types of bias interact to amplify dominant views: 

• Social bias refers to biases present in the training data that reflect hegemonic views that exist in our society, such as misogyny, racism, ageism, etc. While developers take measures to filter hateful speech from training data, implicit biases can persist. 

• Availability bias refers to the fact that socially biased views are over-represented in training data because of compounding factors related to internet participation—from who has internet access, to who is most active on the sites scraped. 

Availability bias amplifies social bias, meaning that content produced by LLMs is more prone to reflect bias than the average person. Responsible AI users know how to evaluate AI-generated content for bias to prevent harmful consequences. 

How Does Bias Manifest? 

Here are some things to look for when evaluating AI-generated content for bias: 

• Stereotypical associations: Say you are a public health provider giving a presentation about the importance of affordable housing. To add interest to your presentation, you use a generative AI tool to create an image of people in affordable housing. The image you generate depicts stereotypical associations that have been amplified by the data available to the AI image generator, but you don’t realize this. When you display this image during your presentation, it makes some members of the audience feel uncomfortable and unwelcome at your presentation. 

• Lack of information about under-represented groups: Say you are a clinician, and you decide to use generative AI for a quick overview of the side effects of a newly developed drug. If women react differently to the drug, but are under-represented in the training data, the information you receive could have adverse effects if applied to women. 

• Skewed perspectives on history and current events: Say you are an undergraduate student writing a paper on the history of a censored social movement, and you ask generative AI for a summary of this topic to get you started. Training data sourced from the internet may represent only mainstream perspectives on the topic. Without the ability to evaluate the sources the AI tool is pulling from, you may assume that the information provided by the AI tool is the full picture. 

• Linguistic bias: Say you are an educator using generative AI to create a writing prompt for your class. Because the text used to train AI is not evenly sourced from across the world, the material you generate includes some vocabulary and cultural references specific to the United States, and international students have a harder time completing the assignment. 

Tips for Responsible Users 

• Identify training data sources: If you can, identify the sources of the training data for whatever tool you are using (this may be easier for tools that are published open source.) You can start by searching for the “model card” or “system card” for whatever tool you’re using. Consider who might be over- or under-represented in those sources.  

• Consider impact: Think about who will be impacted by your use of AI-generated information or content, and if they are likely to be accurately represented in the training data. 

What Can Researchers Do? 

Less biased AI starts with well-documented, representative training data.  

Researchers can contribute to higher-quality AI tools by curating and carefully documenting training datasets like these Responsible Datasets in Context or NAIRR’s Datasets to power AI literacy, education and innovation, so that the information fed to AI models is contextualized. JHU Data Services can support researchers in publishing high-quality data via curation services for data and code shared in the Johns Hopkins Research Data Repository.  

Wikipedia edit-a-thons, like Art+Feminism and this Edit-a-thon for Disabled Scientists at JHU, can help make Wikipedia, which is one of the primary sources of training data for AI models, more representative of diverse perspectives. Keep an eye out for edit-a-thons in your area of expertise to help contribute to a more representative internet. 

No Bias, No Problem? 

Representative training data can improve AI, but it’s important to recognize that accurate representation in AI tools can be weaponized against marginalized groups. For example, the accuracy of facial recognition technology means that it can cause great harm in the wrong hands. 

When it comes to information and the technologies that harness it, societies with an unequal distribution of power must navigate a tension between openness and safety. This underscores the importance of consent and self-determination when it comes to digital content—a topic our next post on privacy and data stewardship will cover.  

The post Bias in AI: How to Spot It, Why It Matters, and What You Can Do appeared first on The Sheridan Libraries & University Museums Blog.

As digital content & outreach coordinator for Hopkins Retrospective, I also attended the conference, and want to offer my takeaways. I attended over half a dozen sessions, many of them offering new perspectives on public history work. Among the most impactful for me were a session on a community-engaged model for developing school programs about slavery, a reflection on an exhibit and event on Black and African Canadian hair stories at the Canada Science and Technology Museum, and a tour of historical commemoration via plaques and statues in downtown Montréal.

In addition to hearing about others’ work, we were also able to share the work we do through Hopkins Retrospective in two sessions. Allison and I presented together at “Engaging Communities in Critical University Histories.” We shared a roundtable with JaJuan Johnson from The Lemon Project and Kirt von Daacke from the University of Virginia, a fellow member of the Universities Studying Slavery Consortium. While not physically present at the conference, Angela Koukoui contributed to the proposal and preparation of our roundtable, representing her past experiences with the University of Maryland’s 1856 Project and Center for Archival Futures.

Our roundtable focused on how public history projects housed in universities can ethically engage with local communities. In the first half of the roundtable, we shared our experiences engaging with and working in solidarity with local community stakeholders. In the second half, we broke the audience into small groups and discussed shared issues and brainstormed different ways to enhance community collaboration and power sharing.

I also represented Hopkins Retrospective in a session titled “Solidarity in Our Storytelling: Lessons in Collaborative Historiography.” I sat down with three other panelists to discuss projects that consider how public history makers and the field as a whole have told stories and written history either with subjects as co-writers/participants or in highly collaborative modes that defy traditional and/or solo author/researcher approaches. My fellow panelists’ topics spanned from the challenges and joys of documentary filmmaking in a closed community to local history organization collaborations with college students and building an oral history project about university librarians. I spoke about my experiences using social media, specifically Hopkins Retrospective’s Instagram, as a tool for meaningful collaboration with your community and its capacity to elevate historical content.  

Lastly, Joseph Plaster, curator in public humanities and director of the Winston Tabb Special Collections Research Center, also sat on a roundtable at the conference titled “Activating Queer/Trans Archives: Oral History as Public History.” The roundtable brought together LGBTQT2+ oral history organizers from the U.S. and Canada. The session interrogated how the ethics of care shaped the interview process, how they have challenged “traditional” ways of practicing oral history, the tensions of reaching a broader audience and safeguarding communities, and how best to activate queer archives for education, social justice, and public engagement.

The NCPH’s annual gathering of public historians, archivists, scholars, community members, and those set on enriching their communities through history from around the world offers a much-needed hub for inspiration and network building. The bilingual invitation for the conference also opened the floor for understanding the context of many of our projects beyond our institutional boundaries. We have the power to transform our communities through the marriage of history and solidarity/solidarité.

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